Eat This Cake Whenever The Hell You Want

fruit & nut snacking cake (also makes a great cheese cracker)

Sometimes when I want to bake, I really want to bake. I’ll have perfectly tempered butter that I’ll cream until fluffy before folding in sifted flour. I’ll make a towering cake layered with curds and pralines and mousse, all covered in swiss meringue buttercream and homemade sprinkles. Other times, I want to turn on the oven, stir together a simple batter, and get to the eating part a whole lot faster. This cake is for those days when I’ll looking to find the shortest distance between myself and a baked good.

This cake uses the muffin method, which is hands down, the easiest way to cake. The dry ingredients are whisked together in one bowl, the wet in another, then the two come together in a few swift strokes. The other two cake-mixing methods (the creaming method and the reverse creaming method) require room-temperature ingredients, lots of creaming and scraping, and usually an electric mixer.

So, if the muffin method is so easy, why cake any other way? With the muffin method, all the lift comes from baking powder, while with the other two methods, you get extra fluff from creaming the fat full of teeny air bubbles. The creaming and reverse creaming processes also have a lower risk of overmixing and developing gluten, so you end up with a more fine-textured and tender cake.

But for an everyday snacking cake, the muffin method is perfect. The batter is nice and thick thanks to greek yogurt, making it ideal for loading up with mixins. (The thick batter keeps the fruit and nut from sinking to the bottom.) I like a mix of figs and walnuts best, but feel free to use whatever you’ve got. As an extra bonus, you get free aromatherapy as it bakes and fills your kitchen with the perfume of citrus, honey, and olive oil.

The cake is very lightly sweetened, so for more of a dessert vibe, I like to toast the slices in butter and then drizzle them with honey. Or get really crazy and turn the cake into rusks for serving with cheese, just like those very expensive fig crackers they sell in the dairy aisle. Freeze the cake overnight then thinly slice and toast until totally dry and crisp.

Fruit & Nut Snacking Cake

makes one 9 by 5-inch loaf | active time: 30 minutes | total time: 1 ½ hours plus cooling

PRINTABLE RECIPE HERE: