Just ask my kids…I am ALL about making up new baking recipes at home, and giving them funny names! I’m here to inspire all of you to begin your very own journeys of creating real, “family-secret” recipes for baked goods and breads that can get passed on from generation to generation. Too often, we all love a recipe our mothers made, that was said to have come from our grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. How deflating is it to discover, then, that this favorite recipe actually came from the back of a box or soup can? I know I, for one, love the tradition that baking foods and desserts from scratch holds in my home, and I want desperately to educate everyone out there that family recipes can in fact be created NOW for all of the generations to come.

It’s easy to start! Take a favorite recipe from any book, say a Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Try it out as the recipe states, make notes about what you would like to change (ex. more salt, less salt, more brown sugar for a molasses taste, crunchier (more butter), chewier (more eggs), etc.) and with your next recipe, change your ingredients a tad, and remark on how well you liked your own changes. Over time, you WILL develop your very own family recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies that is individually yours, one that your family will ask for with mouths watering time and time again.

Incidentally, this is something we constantly do for savory recipes. We are hesitant to do this with baking because we have always been told that baking is a science and we must follow every direction exactly. This is true for candy especially, but please note that not following an ingredient list or method exactly will not result in baking ruin—JUST a different cake, cookie, mousse: whatever the product may be. For example, using room temperature butter and creaming it with sugar will result in a very different cake texture-wise than melting butter and folding it into your batter will. You might actually come to find, however, that you prefer the texture of the melted butter cake to the creamed butter variety. This is all about experimentation—and all of your results should still be incredibly edible!

Once you’ve mastered the “Recipe Doctoring Stage,” might I suggest moving on to something a little more daring? Now, what I am about to introduce can be a little daunting for baking renegade newcomers. But let’s give it a go…how about writing your own recipe entirely BASED on your preexisting knowledge of baking ingredients and the role they play in the foods we bake? Here’s a great example of something I just conjured up a few days ago out of baking excitement and pregnancy hunger pangs for crumb cake.

Every time I make a crumb cake out of a book, I’m never happy with the recipe. I know what I want: moist, cake-like, light (not dense), sweet and salty, and a realyl good streusel on top. I woke up on Saturday morning with, yet again, a strong desire for crumb cake, but had trouble with the idea of getting out of bed to make a so-so cake. SO!…I decided I would make up my own recipe. Now, when you do this, the first thing to do is to get out a pad of paper and pencil and make note of your ingredients and process. This is so that you can keep track of your recipe, no matter how bad or great it comes out! If you’re not so happy with your results, at least you have a platform from which to build off of.

So, I used my knowledge of pound cake (the idea that you use a pound of flour, pound of sugar, pound of butter, hence the name “Pound Cake”…this may not be the exact recipe, but you get the picture…) and translated that idea into a crumb cake recipe, in which I used the theme of “TWO” of everything…hence my rather creative name, “Two Cake.” My results? Unbelievable! This is a family treasure, for sure! Also, I can rest assured that no other family has this exact recipe. Except, now I’m going to share…so scratch that last part=)

TWO CAKE

preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Combine:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons leavening (1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder)

2 half teaspoons salt (1/2 for now, half for streusel)

In a separate bowl, combine:

2 eggs

2 half cups dairy (1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup whole milk)

2 half cups sugar (1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup granulated sugar)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Melt butter and set aside:

2 sticks butter (1.5 sticks melted, retain half a stick and cube it, reserving for streusel)

Cake Process:

Combine dry and wet ingredients with a whisk, reserving butter and fold in gently with a rubber spatula until butter is incorporated. Set batter aside, which will help to aerate…my sneaky little tip is that melted butter, folded in to cooler ingredients, will actually fluff up your batter if you let it sit on the counter for 10 minutes.

Streusel

In a food processor, combine…

2 half cups pecans or walnuts

2 teaspoons cinnamon

your remaining 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup flour (ok…not “TWO” but no one’s perfect)

1/2 cup brown sugar (ok…not “TWO” but no one’s perfect)

remaining half stick of butter, cubed

Process until mixture is in medium-fine crumbles

POUR batter into a buttered 9×9 brownie pan or glass baking dish, top with all streusel, and bake for 30-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out moist but clean.

A great thing about this recipe is that you can eat almost right away.  Allow to cool for just 5 minutes, then cut straight out of the pan into squares and serve warm.  This cake can be stored with aluminum foil to cover at room temp for 4 days.  It just gets better with time, but should be served either room temp or warmed in a 350 degree oven.  IF you want to keep this cake around longer, either refrigerate or freeze in wrapped aluminum foil for easy reheating.

Hope you like this cake as much as I do.  What’s next?  Maybe there is a THREE CAKE in my future…