Brown Sugar Spice Cake

For day 3 of bake-a-thon I have a spicy brown sugar cake. This recipe is from back of the bundt pan cover. I baked this cake 2-3 weeks ago. The recipe called for 3 eggs and 2 mini bundt pans to bake the cakes. Since I have only one mini pan and is a bit tedious to 1/2 an egg, I baked 1/3 of the recipe using 1 egg.

I bought this pan almost a year ago and used the pan to bake this cake few days ago. Ever since I baked in this pan, I have fallen in love with the mini bundt pan. Yesterday I baked another cake and watch out for the recipe. This pan is perfect size for a family of two and hope to bake more cakes in it.

The recipe listed below is 1/3 of the original recipe that I baked. At the bottom of the post, I also gave the fully recipe in an orange box, typed word to word from the pan label. I actually wanted to take pictures of the recipe and use that instead as this is also my entry for this week’s CCChallenge. I completely forgot I had an ophthalmologist appointment this morning which I had scheduled few months ago. Even the doctor’s office forgot to confirm the appoint until late yesterday evening. Had I remembered about my appointment, I would have taken the pictures, uploaded and scheduled the post yesterday itself. This morning the doctor performed a comprehensive dilated eye exam and due to the drops used for the exam, my vision was blurred most of the morning and early afternoon. And now I am in no mood to take pictures so copy pasting the full recipe, word to word that I had typed into a word document few days ago. As for the eye exam, my eyes are healthy and my far sight is perfect, except for my near sight. I will have to use reading glass for reading which I have been using for the past few months and the doc says it is perfectly fine considering my age, the signs of aging!

Total Time: 40 minutes
Preparation: 8 – 10 minutes
Bake Time: 30 minutes
Serves: 2 – 4

Ingredients:
Cake:

• ¼ cup (½ sticks) soft Butter
• ½ cups Light or Dark Brown Sugar, packed (I used brown sugar)
• 1/12 tsp. Ground Nutmeg (I used about ¾ of a 1/8 tsp.)
• ¼ tsp. Ground Cinnamon
• 1/6 tsp. ground Allspice (little over 1/8 tsp. and less than ¼ tsp.)
• 1/12 tsp. ground Ginger (about ¾ of 1/8 tsp. or little less than 1/8 tsp.)
• 1/6 tsp. Salt (little over 1/8 tsp. and less than ¼ tsp.)
• 1 large Egg
• ½ + 1/6 cups (85 grams) Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• ¼ cup Apple Juice (but I might have mistakenly used 1/3 cup)
• 1/6 or little less than ¼ cup chopped, toasted Walnuts or Pecans (opt. and I forgot to toast my walnuts. I used about 8 whole walnuts and chopped them)
• 1/12 cup (less than 1/8 cup, approx. 1 ½ tbsp.) crystalized Ginger (opt and I did not use it)
• 1 Bundt Pan (3 cups capacity)

Glaze:

• 2 tsp. Butter
• 2 – 2 ½ tbsp. granulated Sugar
• 2 tbsp. Apple Juice
• 1 tsp. Lemon Juice
• 1/16 tsp. (a dash) Ground Ginger

Preparation:

• Cake – Brush the interior and the tube of the bundt pan with butter. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• In a large mixing bowl beat together butter, sugar, spices, salt and baking powder. I used a wooden spoon and had to put my hands to work. It is lot easier if using an electric beater or a mixer.
• Add the egg and beat until smooth and fluffy.
• Fold in 2 – 3 tbsp. of flour at a time, alternating with juice. Fold the flour in scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl after each addition.
• Blend in the nuts and ginger, if using.
• Pour the batter into pan, tap and shake the pan to settle the batter evenly in the pan.
• Bake the cake for 34 – 38 minutes. My cake was done in 30 minutes. The cake should be golden brown and when tooth pick or cake tester insert into the center should come out clean.
• Remove the cake from the oven, let the cake cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out of the pan and cool on a cooling rack.
• Glaze – While the cake cools, prepare the glaze. Take all the ingredients in bowl and microwave for 20 – 30 seconds until butter melts. Stir the butter mixture until sugar melts. Sugar will melt in the warm mixture and no need to heat it further.
• Brush the warm syrup/glaze on warm cake. Allow the cake to cool completely. After brushing the syrup on the cake, there was some left over syrup. I drizzled some syrup on a slice of cake and the slice of cake was delicious with sweet and lightly sour syrup. It blended well with the spices that went into the cake.

Note:

• I made 1/3 of the original recipe. I am listing the full recipe below. The preparation is similar to the one I listed above. The only thing to keep in mind when making full recipe is to add one egg at a time beating it until each egg is mixed in smoothly and the batter is fluffy.
• When adding flour, add 2/3 cup of flour at a time alternating with apple juice. Divide the batter evenly in two pans.
• Glaze can be prepared in the microwave or on a stove top over medium heat until butter and sugar melts.

Events: Above B&W picture is my entry to B&W Wednesday # 153 hosted by Lynne an even started by Susan and currently organized by Cinzia. This is my entry for this week’s Cooking from Cookbook Challenge and today’s post for Bake-a-thon 2014