Elizabeth Alston's Best Baking: 80 Recipes for Angel Food Cakes, Chiffon Cakes, Coffee Cakes, Pound Cakes, Tea Breads, and Their Accompaniments [Paperback]

Elizabeth Alston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2, 2000

Indulge your sweet tooth with eighty of Elizabeth Alston's most beloved and delicious baking recipes. A compilation of her popular Tea Breads and Coffeecakes and Simply Cakes, Best Baking features such delectable delights as Brown Sugar--Brown Butter--Hazelnut Pound Cake, Tennessee Whiskey Cake, Plum-Walnut Kuchen, and Chocolate Orange Crumb Cake, as well as tempting toppings and sauces to accompany these treats. Alston's helpful tips will guide every baker, from the novice to the professional, and make home baking fun and easy. You'll be getting rave reviews in no time! So whether it's for breakfast, afternoon tea, dessert, or a midnight snack, you'll find the perfect recipe in Elizabeth Alston's Best Baking.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Elizabeth Alston is the food editor of Women's Day magazine and the author of Tea Breads and Coffeecakes, Muffins, and Biscuits and Scones.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Simple Sour Cream Spice Cake

Makes 9 Portions

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup reduced-fat or regular sour cream
9-inch square baking pan

A satisfying cake that has a lovely flavor and texture. Sift a little confectioners' sugar over the top shortly before serving.

Heat the oven to 350 F. Grease the pan.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer on high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until pale and fluffy Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Scrape the bowl. Add the baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt. Beat on low speed until well blended, continuing to scrape down the sides.

With mixer still running, add about 1/2 cup of the flour and, without waiting for it to be completely blended in, add about one third of the sour cream. Add the remaining flour and sour cream in the same way. Mix only until blended.

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan. Bake until the cake is light gold in color and a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour.

Place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 20 to 30 minutes. Loosen the edges of the cake with a knife and turn it out onto the rack. Turn the cake over and let it cool completely. Serve soon, or wrap airtight and let stand at room temperature overnight.

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Orange and Lemon Chiffon Cake

16 Portions

2 lemons
1 or 2 navel oranges
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1cup egg whites
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 x 4-inch tube pan (a removable bottom is helpful)

This has an absolutely delightful flavor, and no one will guess that it is made with extra-virgin olive oil or that the egg yolks found in a traditional chiffon cake have been dispensed with. Do use extra-virgin or virgin olive oil; it makes a serious contribution to the overall flavor. The cake looks pretty sprinkled with confectioners' sugar before serving.

Heat the oven to 325 F. If the pan has a removable bottom, do nothing to it. If it does not, lightly grease the bottom. Line the bottom with wax paper or parchment paper cut to fit, and lightly grease the paper.

Scrub and dry the lemons and oranges. Grate the colored part of the peel, taking care not to grate any bitter white part, until you have (loosely packed) 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel and 2 teaspoons grated orange peel (see Note). Juice the fruit and measure 1/2 cup orange juice and A cup lemon juice.

Put the flour, 1 cup of the sugar, and the baking powder into a large bowl. Stir to mix well. Add the oil, fruit juices, and grated peel. Beat smooth with a wooden spoon.

Put the egg whites and salt in a deep narrow bowl and beat with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, until they lose their yellow cast, greatly increase in volume, and begin to turn very white.

While still beating, sprinkle in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, about 2 tablespoons at a time. The whites will become very thick and very white and the beaters will leave a deep trail.

Whisk or beat about one eighth of the whites into the flour mixture. With a large metal spoon or rubber spatula, fold or gently stir in the remaining whites.

When well blended, pour the batter (8 cups) into the pan.

Bake until golden brown, springy to the touch, and a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes.

Turn the pan upside down on a wire rack. If the cake has baked higher than the rim of the pan, turn the pan upside down onto a beer or soda bottle (the bottle goes in the hollow tube). Leave on the countertop until the cake is completely cold. Loosen the edges (and tube) with a knife. Turn out the cake, loosen and remove the pan bottom, or peel off the paper. Serve freshly baked, or store airtight 1 day at room temperature before serving or freezing.

Note: Instead of grating the peel you can remove the peel of the lemons and one of the oranges with a vegetable peeler. Put them into a food processor or blender with the I cup of sugar and process 3 or 4 minutes (yes, that long) until chopped as fine as possible. The sugar will be moist. Add it with the oil, not the flour. Be sure not to try to whip it with the egg whites, because the citrus oils will deflate them.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1st edition (February 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060953292
• ISBN-13: 978-0060953294
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let them eat cake!, June 6, 2001

By 

Carole (Suwanee, Georgia (suburb of Atlanta) United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elizabeth Alston's Best Baking: 80 Recipes for Angel Food Cakes, Chiffon Cakes, Coffee Cakes, Pound Cakes, Tea Breads, and Their Accompaniments (Paperback)

I have a number of Elizabeth Alston's books, and she is true to form in this one. I would venture to bet she is from England, or at least has an English heritage due to her taste in cakes. You won't find sheet cakes or layer cakes calling for lots of super sweet icing in this book. These cakes are for the purists out there who appreciate the complex flavors and textures of unadulterated cake. Each one is unique and delectible. The point is that the CAKE itself is the star of the show here. I truly enjoy some of her unique flavor combinations and variations in these recipes. (A note about flour: I have found that using cake flour does not give as good a crumb and weight to the pound cakes or the heavier coffee cakes. Not only does it cause the cake to be too "crumbly", but the cake dries out after a day or two. Reserve the cake flour only for recipes that are for light cakes such as Angel Food cakes.)

Another thing I appreciate about this book, and her baking for that matter, is that you can bake more than one batch at a time. In fact, I think the cakes taste better when done that way. With the flavor combinations she has assembled, her suggestion to allow the cake to rest one day before serving or freezing is a good one. This allows all those wonderful flavors to mingle, or as my grandfather used to say, to let the flavors "meditate".

None of her recipes are hard, complicated or time-consuming. In fact, they are pleasingly quick to prepare for baking. When I am not baking a cake, muffins or scones from one of her cookbooks, I am reading them, scouring them for inspiration to be creative. She has taught me a lot about expanding my horizons in this area, for which I am thankful. My husband is thankful as is his coworkers. This morning he took a freshly baked creation to work to share with his department. Shortly after noon I received an abrupt e-mail saying that if I ever wanted to see my husband again I would have to send at least five of those cakes to the office!! The staff must have loved them to want cake ransom for my husband's return. Get the book and watch with pleasure as your loved ones and friends pig out on your creations in a wild food orgy. But be careful...you might find yourself chained to the kitchen with someone holding a gun to your head as you are trying to get YOURSELF out of ransom!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, December 16, 2000

By 

J Keistler "[e-mail]" (Lake Jackson, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Elizabeth Alston's Best Baking: 80 Recipes for Angel Food Cakes, Chiffon Cakes, Coffee Cakes, Pound Cakes, Tea Breads, and Their Accompaniments (Paperback)

I haven't made all the cakes in this book, but I've made over half of them, and all have worked out well. My primary interest is in the pound cakes and angel food cakes; I've made all of these. In particular, the fresh raspberry and the lemon-vanilla cakes have turned out extremely well. In the pound cakes, I had the best result with the sour cream/chocolate chip and the soaked orange cakes. I've also made almost all the chiffon recipes, with the best reslts with the orange-and-lemon and the chiffon spice cakes.

This book has detailed instructions to accompany the recipes, making it easier for beginners to follow. Too often, smaller books such as this will sacrifice instructions for saving space, and this one doesn't.

My only disappointment is the quality of the book itself. There are no photographs, and the quality of the paper and binding don't bode well for heavy use. I plan to transcribe a few recipes out into the computer and the book won't be used again. The recipes are a good buy for the book's price, though. Just don't expect to hand this volume down to your children!

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must have, April 19, 2000

By 

Jennifer Ambroise (Medford, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elizabeth Alston's Best Baking: 80 Recipes for Angel Food Cakes, Chiffon Cakes, Coffee Cakes, Pound Cakes, Tea Breads, and Their Accompaniments (Paperback)

This book is just great. The recipes are simple, easy to follow, and they taste wonderful. The explanations given are so helpful.