Chocolate Loaf Cake with Vanilla Glaze @LucyBurdette

 

LUCY BURDETTE: This is a great cake if you don’t have the motivation to make a layer cake (I didn’t!) but want to serve a nice dessert. You could frost it with chocolate icing, and the chocoholics in your company would applaud you. I like chocolate, but I also like vanilla and this checked both boxes.

I read recipes from Pastry and Beyond and King Arthur Flour and came up with this combination. It’s quite sweet enough for dessert (my hub thought ice cream was a good addition,) but it also could be a tea cake or even something eaten for breakfast. (That could be a stretch.) As suggested by the Pastry and Beyond blog, it is not necessary to use a mixer. A whisk does the job perfectly well.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour 
• 1 tsp espresso powder, optional
• ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
•  ½ cup unsalted butter, melted
• ½ cup milk, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• ¼ cup boiling water

Ingredients for the vanilla glaze:

3/4 cup sifted confectioner sugar

2 to 3 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350.

In one bowl, place the flour, the espresso powder, the cocoa powder, baking powder, and the salt. (I sifted them together, as some of my ingredients came out of the freezer and were a little lumpy.)

In a small pan, melt the stick of butter and set this aside to cool.

In a second bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar. Whisk in the cooled butter, the milk, and the vanilla extract.

Whisk the two sets of ingredients together, and then add the hot water and stir that in.

Prepare an 8 x 4 loaf pan by greasing, and then fitting a piece of parchment paper inside so a couple inches stick up above the longer edges. This sling will make it easy to remove the cake.

Add the chocolate batter to the pan and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, checking with a toothpick or wooden skewer to be sure it’s done but not dry. Let the cake cool on a rack for half an hour, and then remove it to a pretty plate.

In a small bowl, mix the sifted confectioners sugar with a tablespoon or two of milk and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Once the cake is completely cooled, paint on the glaze. Serve exactly as it is, or with ice cream.

Since this is not a messy cake, it's perfectly fine to eat while reading...

A DISH TO DIE FOR, #12 in the Key West food critic mystery series, will be out on August 9, but is now available wherever books are sold

About A Dish to Die For:

Peace and quiet are hard to find in bustling Key West, so Hayley Snow, food critic for Key Zest magazine, is taking the afternoon off for a tranquil lunch with a friend outside of town. As they are enjoying the wild beach and the lunch, she realizes that her husband Nathan’s dog, Ziggy, has disappeared. She follows his barking, to find him furiously digging at a shallow grave with a man’s body in it. Davis Jager, a local birdwatcher, identifies him as GG Garcia, a rabble-rousing Key West local and developer. Garcia was famous for over-development on the fragile Keys, womanizing, and refusing to follow city rules—so it’s no wonder he had a few enemies.

 When Davis is attacked in the parking lot of a local restaurant after talking to Hayley and her dear friend, the octogenarian Miss Gloria, Hayley is slowly but surely drawn into the case. Hayley’s mother, Janet, has been hired to cater GG’s memorial service reception at the local Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook—and Hayley and Miss Gloria sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners.

But the real clues appear when Hayley begins to study the old cookbook, as whispers of old secrets come to life, dragging the past into the present—with murderous results.

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