Almond Wedding Cake #BundtBakers

A simple one-bowl batter is the base of this beautiful almond wedding cake, decorated with almond buttercream icing and pearl and flower flourishes.

My mother’s very favorite cake is wedding cake. She is seriously disappointed if she has to leave a reception before the cake is cut. And if it’s almond wedding cake, oh my! No way she's leaving without a piece!

When the theme "white cake" was chosen a few months back for this month’s Bundt Bakers, I planned right away to bake this cake when I was in Houston visiting my mother. She is an avid follower of my blog and often sends me notes to say how hungry she gets from looking at my photos. It would have been too cruel to bake her favorite cake and not give her some.

Almond Wedding Cake

Credit for this batter recipe is goes to Wedding Cakes for You. The ingredients list is all theirs, except for the metric conversions. A two-layer cake bakes up perfectly in a 12-cup Bundt pan. I think we can all agree that despite this not being a traditional shape for wedding cake, it works beautifully. Who doesn't love a Bundt?

Ingredients 
For the cake batter:
2 cups or 250g all-purpose flour plus extra for the Bundt pan
1 1/2 cups or 300g granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 100g shortening plus extra for the Bundt pan (I use the original white Crisco.)
1 cup or 240ml milk
1 teaspoon almond extract
5 egg whites

For the frosting:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons shortening
4 cups confectioners' sugar
3-4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
Optional for whiter white icing: Sugarflair food coloring paste. Follow these instructions. It's science! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBl9Gz9eTqg

Method 
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with shortening and then coat it with flour.

Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt to your mixing bowl. Give it a mix. Add the shortening to the flour mix along with the milk and almond extract. As soon as it’s all mixed, turn the mixer up to medium high. Beat for a couple of minutes.

Add in the egg whites and beat slowly till they are mixed in. Now beat on medium high for 2 minutes.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

Bake 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the center comes out clean. Mine turned out a bit darker than usual since I chose to bake in a dark pan that I seldom use. (I have made a note to myself for next time. My Nordic Ware pans never fail me this way!)

Meanwhile, make the frosting by beating together the butter, sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy.

Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool for about 10 minutes in the Bundt pan.

Turn the Bundt out of the pan onto a wire rack and cool completely before frosting and decorating.

Once cool, I spread the frosting on so that the contours of the Bundt pan still showed through, then covered it immediately with sparkling white sugar sprinkles so that they would stick.

These are the flowers, sprinkles and pearls I used for decoration.

• White sparkling sugar sprinkles 
• Large sugar pearls 
• and edible wafer roses (not very tasty, I must admit, but they are pretty)

This almond wedding cake was a hit! My sister and her girls helped themselves to wedges and my mom enjoyed the rest. And now that the blog post is public, I am just waiting for the email saying she wishes she still had some! Three, two, one ...

Enjoy!

What's your favorite white cake? Check out the list below for the wonderful cakes my Bundt Bakers are sharing today. Many thanks to our host Nichole from Cookaholic Wife!

• Almond Wedding Cake from Food Lust People Love
• White Chocolate Mud Bundt Cake from All That’s Left are the Crumbs
• Yolks Bundt Cake from Merce’s Cake
• Dream White Cake from Sneha’s Recipe
• Kentucky Bourbon Butter Cake from Cookaholic Wife
• Coconut and White Chocolate Bundt Cake from Pat y Co. Candy Bar
• White Chocolate Bundt with Apple Cider Glaze from Sweet Sensations
• White Chocolate Bundt from A Day in the Life on the Farm

#BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on the BundtBakers home page.

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Burmese Curry Paste

This Burmese curry paste recipe is the spicy base for all chicken, fish or vegetable curries, according to my Burmese friend, Ma Toe, an excellent cook. It makes enough for three pots of curry so you make it once and freeze the balance. A brilliantly efficient way of cooking.

Burmese curry does not use spices, just a paste made of onions, garlic and ginger, cooked until fragrant and then reddened with cayenne and paprika or annato. For chicken curry, you add cinnamon sticks when cooking. For fish curry, you add tomatoes and lightly crushed lemon grass stalks.

Burmese Curry Paste

I love using this curry paste for a hybrid Indian/Burmese potato curry as well. The sauce is the best!

Ingredients
4 large onions
2-3 normal heads of garlic or 4-5 small ones
About 5-6 inches of fresh ginger
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light cooking oil plus a little for the pot
1-2 teaspoons cayenne
2-3 teaspoons of paprika or ground annato

Method
Peel your garlic or buy fresh already peeled. Do not use garlic paste or chopped garlic in a jar. They have other ingredients to keep the garlic from discoloring which add a weird flavor. I spread newspaper on my coffee table and watch TV while I peel. Goes quick.

Peel your ginger and chop it finely.

Peel your onions and chop them into quarters or eighths.

Put the whole lot into a blender with the canola and 1 cup or 240ml of water. Here Ma Toe would use just oil so don't tell her about my substitution with water. Her paste is richer and her curry gets a dark red slick of oil on top when it is cooked. Divine but not as healthy. Shh. (Feel free to use all oil if calories are not an issue for you. Seriously, much richer!)

It may not all fit at once so put what you can and blend for minute or two then add in the rest. Blend until you have a smooth paste, turning the blender off and pushing the bits down occasionally.

Heat up a little more canola oil in your pot and then pour in the paste.

Cook and cook and cook, stirring occasionally. It turns green as you cook it which is pretty cool, since you put nothing green in there. I don’t know why that always fascinates me. Like magic.

Once I asked Ma Toe how to know it was ready and she said, “When it doesn’t smell like onions anymore.” I’d say about 20-30 minutes will do it.

Now add the cayenne and paprika (or annato.) Cook a little longer and stir thoroughly until the color changes.

Now we are looking more like curry! If you like spicy, you can add even more cayenne.

This is going to be enough paste for three pots of curry so let it cool a little. Save it divided in three bags and pop it in your freezer.

Check out my Burmese Chicken Curry recipe here!

And last Friday, I posted my Burmese Fish Curry recipe too. So good!

Pin this Burmese Curry Paste! 

Cinnamon Raisin Bread #BreadBakers

Home baked cinnamon raisin bread makes the most wonderful breakfast or snack, fresh from the oven, or toasted and slathered with butter. As an extra bonus, your whole house will smell divine!

I am not a huge fan of raisin bread but my husband is. When we were first married and still living in the States, I would buy those little loaves – Pepperidge Farm maybe? – because a bigger loaf would get stale before he could finish it. Then we moved overseas and occasionally I’d bake him some cinnamon raisin bread. But it was a rare treat.

When our Bread Bakers host chose grapes for this month’s theme, it seemed like the perfect reason to resurrect my old favorite cinnamon raisin bread recipe. Then meanwhile, my husband and I decided to try to cut back on carbohydrates. The good news is that the recipe has stood the test of time and his co-workers were very, very lucky.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

If your raisins are juicy and plump already, you can skip the first step of soaking them in juice. Mine had been in the cupboard a while and that little trick revived them. This slightly sweet bread recipe is adapted from my old standby, Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, 1980 edition.

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 110g raisins
1 cup or 240ml very warm apple juice*
2 1/2-3 cups or 315-375g flour
1/3 cup or 75g sugar
1 packet active dry yeast (1/4oz or 7g or 2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup or ml milk
1/3 cup or 75g butter, plus extra for the mixing bowl and bread pan
1 egg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For topping – optional
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons sugar + 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, combined

*I used a mix of apple and orange pineapple, because I didn’t have enough apple juice. Use what you’ve got! Unless you’ve only got tomato juice. That would be weird. Just use warm water.

Method
In a small bowl, pour the very warm juice over the raisins. Leave to plump up for at leave half an hour. This can also be done the day before. Simply store the covered bowl in the refrigerator overnight. Drain the raisins and discard the juice. (Or save it to use in muffins or other baked goods.)

My raisins soaked up about 1/3 cup or 80ml of the juice.

Measure your sugar, yeast, salt and half a cup or 63g of flour into the bowl of your stand mixer or other bowl if you are going to use hand beaters.

Put the milk and butter in a microwaveable container and heat until it reaches between 120-130°F or 49-54°C. If you don’t have a thermometer handy, this will feel quite hot to the touch (I mean, put a finger in it.) but you should be able to keep your finger in it comfortably. The butter doesn’t need to completely melt.

Pour the warm milk mixture into the mixing bowl and give it a good whisk.

Set aside for about five minutes to make sure the yeast is active. It should start to foam up.

Add the egg. Beat until combined. Add one cup or 125g of flour and beat well.

Add more flour, a half a cup at a time until you have a soft dough and it’s too stiff to beat in the mixer anymore.

Use a wooden spoon or a sturdy spatula to mix in the last of the flour. Unless you have a bread hook for your stand mixer, in which case use that now and for the kneading. If you don’t have a bread hook, scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a floured surface. In either case, knead well for about five minutes.

Wash your mixing bowl out and rub with butter. Form a ball out of your dough and pop it back in the bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave to rest and rise in a warm place.

Ideally, you want it to at least double in size. This can take anywhere from an hour or two, depending on your yeast.

Tip: If your room is colder than 80-85 °F or 26-29°C, put the stopper in your sink and fill it part way up with hot tap water. Set the bowl in the sink.

While the dough is rising, grease your bread pan with butter.

When your dough has risen sufficiently, punch it down. Spread it or roll it out into a rectangle (about 12x16in or 30x40cm) on top of a large sheet of cling film on a clean counter top.

Tip your raisins out of the strainer on to a couple of paper towels and pat dry.

Sprinkle the plump raisins and cinnamon over the rectangle of dough.

Start rolling the dough up on the short side until you have a neat tube.

Tuck the sides of the roll under. Place the dough seam side down in your greased bread pan.

Set the loaf in a warm place - this could be the kitchen sink with hot water again, if necessary - and allow to rise until doubled.

When it’s getting close, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Gently brush the loaf with the melted butter and sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar, if desired.

Bake for about 50-55 minutes or until the crust is a nice golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when thumped. If you use a thermometer, the internal temperature should be 190°F or 88°C. Tent the loaf with aluminum foil if it is browning too quickly.

Turn it out on a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month's Bread Bakers host, Sneha from Sneha's Recipe. Check out all the great grape bakes we have for you!

• Buccellato di Lucca from Gayathri's Cook Spot
• Cinnamon Raisin Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Cinnamon Raisin Rolls from Ambrosia
• Golden Raisin Walnut Bread from Cindy's Recipes and Writings
• Mini Raisins Buns from Sneha's Recipe
• Roasted Grape and Pear Kuchen from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Red Wine Rosemary Bread from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Sausage and Cambozola Pizza with Arugula and Grapes from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Sourdough Focaccia with Pickled Grapes and Speck from Baking Sense

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it! 

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