The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook (318 page)

SERVES 8

This cake packs potent, yet well-balanced, fragrant, spicy heat. If you are particularly sensitive to spice, you can decrease the amount of dried ginger to 1 tablespoon. Avoid opening the oven door until the minimum baking time has elapsed. Serve the gingerbread plain or with
WHIPPED CREAM
.

1.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 8-inch square baking pan, line with parchment paper, grease parchment, and flour pan.

2.
Bring stout to boil in medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda (mixture will foam vigorously). When foaming subsides, stir in molasses, brown sugar, and granulated sugar until dissolved; set aside. Whisk flour, ground ginger, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and pepper together in large bowl.

3.
Transfer stout mixture to second large bowl. Whisk in eggs, oil, and grated ginger until combined. Whisk wet mixture into flour mixture in thirds, stirring vigorously until completely smooth after each addition.

4.
Scrape batter into prepared pan, smooth top with rubber spatula, and gently tap pan on counter to release air bubbles. Bake cake until top is just firm to touch and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on wire rack, about 1¹⁄
₂
hours. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 days.)

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

While we (usually) love the broiled icing on this classic snack cake, the cake itself is often dense, gummy, and bland, and the icing can be saccharine sweet and tend toward greasiness. We wanted a moist, not dense, cake with buttery undertones topped by a broiled icing that featured chewy coconut, crunchy nuts, and a butterscotch-like flavor. Replacing some of the brown sugar with granulated sugar in the cake meant less moisture, which lightened the cake’s texture. We also reduced the proportion of flour to oats, using the minimum amount of flour needed to keep the cake from collapsing into crumbs. We still had to tackle the gumminess, which was created partly by soaking the oats in hot water; the hydrated oats were a sticky mess when we stirred them into the batter. But folding in dried oats didn’t work—they never fully hydrated during baking and tasted raw and chewy in the finished cake. The answer proved to be soaking the oats in room-temperature water rather than boiling water, minimizing the amount of released starch. For the icing, cutting back on the sugar brought the sweetness in line, using melted butter (rather than creaming the butter into the sugar) simplified the recipe, and adding a splash of milk made the icing more pliable.

SERVES 8

Do not use old-fashioned or instant oats for this recipe. Be sure to use a metal baking pan; glass pans are not recommended when broiling. If you have a drawer-style broiler (underneath the oven), position the rack as far as possible from the broiler element and monitor the icing carefully as it cooks in step 5. A vertical sawing motion with a serrated knife works best for cutting through the crunchy icing and tender cake.

CAKE

ICING

1. FOR THE CAKE:
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Make foil sling by folding 2 long sheets of aluminum foil so that they are as wide as 8-inch square baking pan. Lay sheets of foil in pan, perpendicular to one another, with extra foil hanging over edges of pan. Push foil into corners and up sides of pan, smoothing foil flush to pan. Spray foil with vegetable oil spray.

2.
Combine oats and water in medium bowl and let sit until water is absorbed, about 5 minutes. In another medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg together.

3.
Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar on medium speed until combined and mixture has consistency of damp sand, 2 to 4 minutes, scraping down bowl as needed. Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined. Add flour mixture in 2 additions and mix until just incorporated, about 30 seconds. Add soaked oats and mix until combined, about 15 seconds. Give batter final stir by hand.

4.
Scrape batter into prepared pan, smooth top with rubber spatula, and gently tap on counter to release air bubbles. Bake cake until toothpick inserted in center comes out with few crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking. Let cake cool slightly in pan, at least 10 minutes.

5. FOR THE BROILED ICING:
While cake cools, adjust oven rack 9 inches from broiler element and heat broiler. In medium bowl, whisk together brown sugar, melted butter, and milk, then stir in coconut and pecans. Spread mixture evenly over warm cake. Broil until topping is bubbling and golden, 3 to 5 minutes.

6.
Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 1 hour. Remove cake from pan using foil and transfer to platter. Gently push side of cake with knife and remove foil, 1 piece at a time. Serve.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

A perfect recipe for pound cake is hard to find. Good-looking pound cakes tend to resemble yellow layer cakes: fluffy, bouncy, and open-textured. Those that taste good often bake up as flat and firm as bricks. We wanted to retool this classic recipe to make it great-tasting and ultra-plush, every time. The first key was starting with chilly 60-degree butter. Room-temperature butter didn’t aerate properly and thus produced flat, dense cakes. We found the eggs also needed to be at 60 degrees in order to not deflate the batter, and if they were beaten together first then gradually poured into the batter (rather than added one at a time as in most recipes) we got a cake with a higher rise and lighter texture. Finally, we chose cake flour (all-purpose flour was too protein-rich and delivered dry, tough cakes), but because of the flour’s softness we had better luck incorporating it into the batter by sifting the flour over the batter and folding it in by hand instead of using the mixer.

SERVES 8

The butter and eggs should be the first ingredients prepared so they have a chance to stand at room temperature and lose their chill while the oven heats, the loaf pan is greased and floured, and the other ingredients are measured. The test kitchen’s preferred loaf pan measures 8¹⁄
₂
by 4¹⁄
₂
inches; if you use a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, start checking for doneness 5 minutes earlier than advised in the recipe.

1.
Place butter in bowl of stand mixer; let stand at room temperature 20 to 30 minutes to soften slightly (butter should reach no more than 60 degrees). Using dinner fork, beat eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla in 4-cup liquid measuring cup until combined. Let egg mixture stand at room temperature until ready to use.

2.
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 8¹⁄
₂
by 4¹⁄
₂
-inch loaf pan.

3.
Fit stand mixer with paddle and beat butter and salt at medium-high speed until shiny, smooth, and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes, scraping down bowl once. Reduce speed to medium and gradually pour in sugar (this should take about 1 minute). Once all sugar is added, increase speed to medium-high and beat until mixture is light and fluffy, 5 to 8 minutes, scraping down bowl once. Reduce speed to medium and gradually add egg mixture in slow, steady stream (this should take 1 to 1¹⁄
₂
minutes). Scrape down bowl, then beat mixture at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes (batter may look slightly curdled). Remove bowl from mixer and scrape down bowl.

4.
Sift flour over butter-egg mixture in 3 additions, folding gently with rubber spatula until combined after each addition. Scrape along bottom of bowl to ensure batter is homogeneous.

5.
Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth top with rubber spatula. Bake cake until golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes, then invert cake onto wire rack and turn cake right side up. Let cake cool completely on rack, about 2 hours, before serving. (Cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

Reduce vanilla extract to 1 teaspoon and add 1¹⁄
₂
teaspoons almond extract along with vanilla to eggs. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sliced almonds over surface of batter just before baking.

Reduce vanilla extract to 1 teaspoon and add 1 tablespoon grated then minced orange zest to mixer bowl just after adding eggs in step 3.

Double all ingredients and substitute a 10-inch tube pan, greased and floured, for loaf pan. Bake cake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees and continue to bake until cake is golden brown and wooden skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 30 minutes, then invert cake onto wire rack and turn cake right side up. Let cake cool completely on rack, about 3 hours, before serving.