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Old Witch’s Magic Nut Cake

12.21.2014 by J. Doe // 6 Comments

I don’t really remember much of my mother’s cooking, which is odd because it’s what I grew up eating. We could not afford to eat out much; even McDonald’s was a treat. She had a few things I liked, like toad-in-the-hole, and a chicken in hoisin recipe that she found in the paper and was her staple for guests. Then there were the other things, like eggplant parmesan, that she declared healthy and left me with a lifelong aversion to eggplant.

When you hear the word eggplant, you might think, Delicious, but the word that comes to my mind is Slimy.

My father had a similar experience with my mother’s food; the story he likes to tell is about the first cheeseburger she cooked for him, which involved pouring a can of undiluted cheese soup over a patty. I’ve not seen anyone make a cheeseburger that way, before or since, he’ll say.

Holiday cooking was a source of alarm. At my grandmother’s house, it involved popcorn balls – the recipe for which I still wish I had – and cookies, and one magical year, she produced three kinds of pie when I could not decide which kind I wanted most – apple, pumpkin, or mince. My mother did not have a standard repertoire, and would attempt things she found in the paper, with mixed success. When I was in second or third grade, she decided we would make a gingerbread house, which was very exciting until the sugar mortar refused to hold the walls together, and the resulting frustration led to a screaming match, followed by tears, with no pretty candy-clad house at the end.

Still, my mother would occasionally stumble onto a recipe that worked and when she did, she stuck with it, doggedly, for years. For the holidays, it was Old Witch’s Magic Nut Cake, which came from the back of one of my books, Old Witch and the Polka Dot Ribbon. The first time she made it, she knew it was a winner, and every year that followed, she made loaves all through the fall, giving them as gifts to teachers and crossing guards and offerings to holiday potlucks.

I didn’t have many holiday recipes, so when I reached my teens and started babysitting, I made loaves of it too, and gave it to the families I babysat for, who all pronounced it delicious. One recipient told me she had discovered it was incredibly good spread with soft cream cheese, and I was surprised to realize the original recipe calls for a cream cheese frosting. My mother never made it and neither have I: the cake is perfectly moist, spicy, and nutty, and doesn’t need anything else. Still, if you wanted to make it into a cake, you could just pour the batter into the right size pan and top it with your favorite cream cheese frosting – nothing too sweet!

Or do like I do and have a piping hot piece with a bit of salted butter – pure winter decadence.

I usually make the bread in two loaf pans, but you can of course make smaller gift loaves if you like. Be very careful to check with a toothpick, rather than use the stated times – the cake is finished when a toothpick comes out clean, which may correspond to the expected baking time, but more often than not, doesn’t.

Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake

Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake
 
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Author: adapted from Wende and Harry Devlin, Old Witch and the Polka Dot Ribbon
Ingredients
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 15-ounce can pumpkin
  • ¾ cup vegetable oil
  • ½ cup water
  • 2½ cups all-purpose flour
  • 2¼ cups sugar
  • 1½ tsp baking soda
  • 1¼ tsp salt
  • ¾ tsp nutmeg
  • ¾ tsp cinnamon
  • 1 cup golden raisins
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil two loaf pans and set aside.
  2. Beat together wet ingredients in a bowl. In a second bowl, mix together dry ingredients. Combine the two mixtures, then mix in raisins and nuts.
  3. Pour batter into loaf pans, and bake for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. Cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
  4. Let loaves cool for 15-20 minutes in the pans, then remove and finish cooling on a rack.
  5. If desired, top with your favorite cream cheese frosting and additional chopped walnuts.
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Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // baking, pumpkin

Pumpkin Coffeecake with Brown Sugar-Pecan Streusel

11.24.2012 by J. Doe // 10 Comments

The hardest part of Thanksgiving, for me, is this: What do I eat for breakfast?

I have a day off, and thus, eating cereal while not being in a rush seems like a waste of a perfectly good breakfast. But I host Thanksgiving every year, which means by the time I get up on Thursday to get the bird in the oven, half my dishes are already in the dishwasher and the other half are headed there. I guess I could have some bagels on hand, but that seems heavy, given there’s a big meal on its way. Yes, I could buy something, but that too seems to come up short in light of all the traditional home cooking that engulfs my kitchen that day.

I want something that says Thanksgiving: seasonal, home-made, traditional.

This year, though, I think I’ve finally found the perfect thing. I received a review copy of Home Baked Comfort (Williams-Sonoma), and after making the Lemon-Blueberry Loaf with great success a couple of times, I decided that the Pumpkin Coffeecake might be just the thing to kick off my Thanksgiving morning. I baked it on Wednesday, so it would be waiting for me Thursday morning.

What with having cranberries and twice-baked potatoes on the brain, I managed to make mistakes in pretty much every step of the recipe. I misread the butter and flour quantities, and ended up with one giant streusel crumb rather than a bowl full of small ones. I attempted to correct the error without much luck, and ended up having to chop the streusel into the required little pieces. I used the wrong size pan. I forgot to set the timer on the oven.

It was delicious in spite of me: Moist and spicy and pumpkiny. The recipe calls for a glaze but I don’t think it needs it. Three days later, it’s still lovely with a warm cup of coffee.


Pumpkin Coffeecake with Brown Sugar-Pecan Streusel
 
Print
Prep time
15 mins
Cook time
50 mins
Total time
1 hour 5 mins
 
Author: Home Bakes Comfort
Ingredients
Streusel
  • ⅓ cup flour
  • ½ cup light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 6 tbsp cold butter, cut in pieces
  • 1 cup lightly toasted chopped pecans
Coffeecake
  • 1½ cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • ¼ tsp grated nutmeg
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ cup unsalted butter
  • 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ cup pumpkin puree
  • ½ cup sour cream
Instructions
  1. Preheat over to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9-inch cake pan.
  2. Make the streusel: In food processor, whir together flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt, then add the cold butter and process until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Toss in pecans.
  3. Make the batter: Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.
  4. In a stand mixer fitter with the paddle, beat butter and brown sugar until well combined. beat in eggs one at a time, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add pumpkin and sour cream and mix well. Stir in the flour mixture; batter will be quite thick.
  5. Spread half the batter in the prepared pan. Sprinkle half the streusel on top. Spread remaining batter over that, and top with remaining streusel. Bake about 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
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This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other culinary surprises await?

Categories // The Joy of Cooking Tags // baking, pumpkin, recipes

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