Jam Crumb Cake Third Attempt: The Charm

The springform pan and melting the preserves seem to have done the trick. I have, at last, a successful version of this cake. I feel like I’ve just finished my first marathon. I’m exhausted, but proud of my accomplishment.

This recipe has drifted pretty far away from the original, mostly in technique, rather than ingredients. To ensure success I now have everything ready to go, then combine it all, and get it in the oven within 5 or so minutes. The original instructions for this cake called for mixing up the batter, plopping in some preserves, then mixing and scattering the crumb topping over it and baking. I’ve managed to complicate this process somewhat.

Here, at last, is the recipe, with my notes:

Jam Crumb Cake
adapted from Gourmet magazine, December 2007
serves 6-8

For Cake
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder (I use single acting homemade baking powder)
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ stick unsalted butter, melted
½ cup milk
1 large egg
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
½ cup raspberry jam or preserves
Juice of ½ a lemon

For Crumb Topping
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt
½ cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Make Cake: preheat oven to 350 degrees F, with rack in middle. Generously grease an 8 ½” or 9” springform pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and spray parchment paper with cooking spray.

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

Whisk together butter, milk, vanilla, and egg in a large bowl, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined. Pour batter into cake pan.

In a small pan over medium heat, heat preserves with the juice of ½ a lemon until almost completely melted. Remove from heat and stir until all jam is melted, then drizzle over batter. Using a knife, stir preserves into the batter until well incorporated, but not completely combined (some streaks of jam should still be visible in the batter).

Make Crumb Topping:
Whisk together butter, sugars, cinnamon, and salt until smooth. Stir in flour, then blend with your fingertips until incorporated. Sprinkle crumbs in large clumps over top of the cake.

Bake until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean, and sides begin to pull away form the pan, about 30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes, then remove outer ring of springform pan and let cool to room temperature.

I’d probably add even another teaspoon of vanilla to this the next time I made it. And I combine the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet in another, melt the jam, and then make the topping. Then I mix the wet and dry ingredients, pour them into the prepared pan, add the jam and swirl, then top and bake to get the whole thing into the oven as quickly as possible.

The end product is not too sweet, has a nice shot of fruit from the preserves, and a firm, moist texture. The reason I was so devoted to this thing is because I think it’s a nice change from the usual sour cream coffee cake, or variation on sticky buns that calls for pecans or other nuts. I think this cake would be good with any kind of preserves stirred through it (I’m intending to make it in the summer when the blackberries are ripe and I can make a variation on blackberry preserves to use), lemon curd, or for kids with melted peanut butter and jam mixed in. The basic cake is so simple that it would be a good blank canvas to play with.

Phew!

Jam Crumb Cake: Second Attempt

After reviewing what may have been my mistakes in my previous attempt, I gamely gave this cake another go. This time I was careful to follow not only the recipe instructions to the letter, but also my own modification intentions.

I did some reading on the single acting baking powder I make from scratch. Everything I’ve read cautions that you must be sure to get the batter into the oven quickly quickly because the baking powder starts to act as soon as the liquid hits it. Too much delay results in a flat product. Check.

My own modifications included making only a half recipe of the crumb topping, and reducing the baking powder to 1 teaspoon. Check, check.

And the result was…still a flop. After 35 minutes I pulled it out of the oven and let it cool. It looked beautiful, as you can see. When I tried to cut it, I discovered that the preserves I used settled to the bottom of the pan, making it difficult to get the pieces out whole. Because the thing was cooked in a 9” round cake pan, it was impossible to flip the cake out without destroying the topping (later it occurred to me that I might have been able to do the two-dinner-plates flip flop thing, although the topping still would have suffered somewhat).

This time I called in a consultant to help me assess the damage and identify a mitigation plan. Alex looked at the heap of crumbs on the cutting board and suggested using a springform pan and lining it with parchment paper. We have a small problem, because I don’t think I have a 9” springform pan (just a 10”), but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My thought is that the preserves are too solid and that’s why they’re sinking. Next go around I’ll melt them, possibly with a little lemon juice, on the stove, then drizzle them into the batter. We also agreed that the batter itself could use a shot of vanilla.

By the time I’m done with it, the only remnants of the original recipe will be the flour and the preserves.

Jam Crumb Cake: First Attempt

My initial intention was to publish the full story about this in one entry. However, it's spinning out rather longer than I anticipated, so I'm going to "serialize" it to avoid having a painfully long post.

I tried to make a recipe from a magazine, and it failed utterly. As in vastly undercooked, woefully overtopped, horribly overleavened failed. It was really heartbreaking. This recipe looked so tempting, so alluring. The batter tasted amazing—perfectly balanced, clearly it was destined to be an outstanding finished product. In my experience if the raw batter tastes good, you’re golden.

And yet, there was something that nagged at me as a made the topping. When I scattered it on, it filled up half the pan. That didn’t look right. In the picture the topping didn’t completely obliterate what was underneath it—the underneath peeped out coyly, giving a glimpse of the glorious within. But I decided that this was a magazine of long standing, with top notch recipe developers, so I would forage ahead and assume that they knew best.

As the oven door shut, I nearly clapped my little hands with joy and anticipation. In a mere 25 minutes, I would be reveling in my concoction. I could hardly wait.

And then I started to smell The Smell. That acrid, black-brown smell that can only mean one thing. I opened the oven door and sure enough, the batter was oozing out of the pan, over the sides, and down onto the cookie sheet that was (thank God) on the bottom rack of the oven. The outer edge was foaming and frothing like a rabid raccoon, while the center looked to be serenely untouched by the surrounding heat.

I shut the oven door and said a little prayer, hoping that a miracle would occur in the next 12 minutes, and perhaps it would work out after all. Or maybe the face of the Blessed Virgin would be visible when the timer went off, and I’d be able to auction it on eBay.

To make a long story short (too late), I was bitterly disappointed. Not only was the resulting goo undercooked in the middle and overflowing its banks around the edge, but there wasn’t even a suggestion of the Blessed Virgin. Not even an apostle! The thing was a complete and utter failure. I tasted part of the outside cooked part, and it had potential; it wasn’t a complete throw away (well, that one was, but the recipe itself wasn’t).

And so, like a heartbroken girl at the end of a bad relationship, I went over in my mind everything I’d done, torturing myself with what I could have done differently, how I could have saved it. The two things that sprung to mind were the baking powder and the topping—next time I’m halving the topping, end of discussion. The baking powder, however, is a discussion in itself.

Many years ago I read Edna Lewis’s A Taste of Country Cooking, in which she proclaimed (correctly) that commercial double acting baking powders leave behind a metallic and often overly-salty unpleasant taste in baked goods. Having noticed this myself, I took to heart her recommendation that homemade single-acting baking powder was a cheap luxury, and one worth having.

It was some years before I went ahead and made my own according to her recipe of 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar. I had one interestingly similar experience to the present one with some blueberry muffins just about the time I made the first batch. Since then, however, I have made many, many baked things with my homemade baking powder (including a lemon cake that took two days to make) and never had a problem.

And then I ran out of baking powder. And then I made another batch. And then this overflowing thing happened again.

About the only thing I can think of is that maybe I didn’t mix the two ingredients well enough, and there was too much baking soda in what I used. According to my research this could have caused the Mount Vesuvius result I achieved, except that there were no acidic ingredients in the batter. From what I’ve read, it’s an acidic component (such as buttermilk or yogurt), combined with the heat of the oven, that causes the chemical reaction that produces the carbon dioxide bubbles to form.

So I’m a bit stumped. But I am determined! This recipe is too good to let get away. I will reduce the amount of topping. I will remix my baking powder. I will tinker with the amount of baking powder. I will prevail! I will not be beaten down by a Jam Crumb Cake!