Buttermilk bonanaza and a cranberry cake recipe

A couple weeks ago, the grocery store had buttermilk on a "manager's special" price of just $.99 for a half gallon. It was expiring the next day, but I figured buttermilk is basically bad milk, so just like yogurt, it lasts way after the expiration date. I have never used much buttermilk, but I decided that this was a personal challenge.

I knew my first recipe: my mom's cranberry upside-down cake. She has made this a few times when Jon and I have been visiting, and typically she makes them two days in a row because after we all have a small piece as dessert, my dad and Jon manage to eat the rest of the cake over the course of the evening. The cranberry cake only used 1/2 cup of the buttermilk, so I had a long way to go to make the half gallon disappear. It was really fun to browse recipes, get suggestions from my facebook friends, and try new things, and yesterday I successfully finished off the buttermilk with this delightful maple buttermilk pie. It turns out there aren't a lot of healthy buttermilk recipes. Most of them are pancakes, biscuits, scones, and cakes. The buttermilk mission was a nice excuse to indulge, which is very welcome in a snowy winter.

Today I'm including the cranberry cake recipe, which I foolishly didn't photograph. What was I thinking? It's beautiful. The cranberries collapse during cooking and make a beautiful topping on the cake. In the next few days, I'll be posting some of the other recipes I used to get through the buttermilk.

Cranberry upside-down cake

This is great topped with whipped cream.

3/4 cup butter, divided (1/4 cup and 1/2 cup) and softened

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 bag (12-16 oz) cranberries

1 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup milk or buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter a 9x9 baking dish. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 1/4 cup butter and brown sugar. Pour the mixture into the baking dish and pour cranberries on top.

Mix together the flour and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream remaining 1/2 cup butter with granulated sugar. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating after each addition. Add vanilla extract. Add the milk or buttermilk and dry ingredients, just mixing.

In a small bowl, beat egg whites until they hold stiff peaks. Fold egg whites into batter. I was worried that the batter wasn't combining well enough with the egg whites, but it tasted fine in the end, so don't worry if it seems too doughy and stubborn.

Spread batter evenly over cranberries in the baking dish. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 55-60 minutes. Remove cake from oven. Run a knife around the sides of the pan. Let sit 15 minutes, then invert onto a plate. Let it sit a few minutes before removing pan.

Buttermilk count: 1/2 cup

Buttermilk bonanza total: 1/2 cup

Plum Cake "Tatin"

I don't have a TV, so I don't normally get to watch the Food Network. But when I was at a math conference in Connecticut, I got to see a couple entire episodes of Barefoot Contessa. She made this cake in one of them. It is my understanding that a tarte tatin is a caramelized apple tart baked with the crust on the bottom. This has cake instead of pie crust and plums instead of apples, but it's the same idea. My pictures aren't good, but this recipe is. The fruit, which cooks on the bottom of the pan, is sweet and moist and infused with caramel flavor. If I were to do one thing differently, I would squeeze more plums in the bottom because they are the highlight of the dish. There is a good chance that visitors to my house will get this for dessert. I also plan to try it with different fruit. I think apricots would be fantastic. If anyone ever has an Iron Chef: Plum party, I will win every prize.

Plum Cake "Tatin" by Ina Garten
6 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature, plus extra for greasing the pan
10-12 plums, preferably "prune" plums, cut in half and pitted
1 3/4 cups white sugar, divided (1 cup plus 3/4 cup)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Confectioner's sugar for dusting, optional

Grease a 9-inch pie or tart pan generously with butter. Place plums, cut-side down, in the bottom. Combine 1 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water in a small saucepan. Cook over high heat until sugar is 360 F. It should be a warm amber color. As tempting as it is, don't stir the pan. Just swirl it gently. Pour evenly over plums. It will bubble and hiss and eventually harden. Don't worry. It will turn liquid again when you bake it. It should look like this:
While the caramel is setting, combine butter and 3/4 cup sugar in a medium mixing bowl and cream until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the sour cream, zest, and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir until just mixed. Pour the batter into the pan and bake at 350 F, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool 15 minutes if you can stand it. Then invert onto a cake dish. If a plum sticks to the pan, gently cajole it out and replace in the top of the cake. Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar if you want.

Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze

Jon and I aren't big dessert people. The main exceptions are ice cream for Jon and dark chocolate for me. But neither one of us is much of a baker. However, I've been seeing a lot of really nice-looking dessert recipes recently, so I think we might be indulging a little more this summer. This is the first dessert I've made in a while. I got the recipe from the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, and we both thought it looked good. Raspberries are my favorite berry, and I make yogurt all the time, so it was a logical choice. The only thing I didn't have was a Bundt pan, so I made it in my heart-shaped cake pans because we love each other. (And because those are the only cake pans we have.) We decided to make it into two small cakes rather than one two-layer cake. We are having friends over for dinner tomorrow, and the layer we haven't cut into yet will be perfect for them.

I don't know if I will make this cake again. It is very good, but it is very sweet. I know that it's a cake, but it was a little too much for me. The glaze is also quite sweet. Next time I will use lemon juice instead of orange juice in the glaze. (The original recipe just called for water. I used orange juice because there was orange juice in the cake batter, so it seemed to make sense.) I ended up squeezing a little lemon juice onto mine, and it really helped cut the sweetness.

The texture was also more muffin-y than cakey. I like muffins, but I was after cake. It was a lot denser and moister than most cakes. I might use this as a really indulgent muffin recipe. If I do use it again, I will cut the sugar dramatically. Since it was a cake recipe, I didn't want to mess with the chemistry before trying it once. I think of cakes as being very fussy about the wet/dry/fat/whatever ratios. But muffins are more forgiving, and I think I could decrease the sugar to 1 cup and be fine. It sounds like I didn't really like it, but that's not true. It tasted really good, and the raspberry-almond combination was superb. I would just change a couple things in the future. But I am publishing the recipe as I made it because you might like it that way.

Close-up so you can see the texture

Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze
This is my version of the recipe. The original can be found here.

3 cups flour, divided (2 1/2 cups and 1/2 cup)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tbsp orange juice, divided (2 tbsp and 2 tbsp)
1 1/2 tsp almond extract, divided (1 tsp and 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
3 eggs, room temperature
1 cup plain yogurt
2 1/2 cups frozen raspberries (most of a 1-pound bag), or fresh if you're super-rich
1 cup powdered sugar
Lemon wedges, optional

Butter and flour two small cake pans. Preheat oven to 350° F.

Mix 2 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar by hand or with an electric mixer until creamy. Add 2 tbsp orange juice, 1 tsp almond extract, and orange zest and beat together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add yogurt and mix together. Pour in the dry ingredients and beat just until blended. Combine raspberries and 1/2 cup flour in the medium bowl you just poured the flour out of. Toss until raspberries are coated in flour. Fold into batter. Pour into prepared cake pans and bake for 40 minutes or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool for 30 minutes if you can stand it.
While the cake is in the oven, make the glaze. Combine powdered sugar, 2 tbsp orange juice, and 1/2 tsp almond extract and whisk together with a fork (or whisk) until a thick glaze forms. Add more juice if you need or want to.
To serve, cut a slice of cake, pour some glaze on, and squeeze a little bit of lemon juice over it if it's too sweet for you.