It helps if you read the directions

I engaged in two cooking experiments this weekend, one more daring than the other. First, the daring one. I wanted to make a coffee cake on Saturday, but I couldn't find a recipe that looked good and for which I had the ingredients. Also, I wanted to use up some of the black cherries we had.

I decided to start with a Betty Crocker recipe and alter it a bit. The final recipe is below. If I had it to do over, I would use 1/2 c. sour cream and 3/4 c. milk instead of the heavy cream. That was good, but it ended up quite dense. Also, I would do a proper coffee cake crumb top. This recipe ends up with just a normal cake top, which I didn't care for.

Cherry Coffee Cake

Ingredients

• 2 c. flour
• 3/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. butter, softened
• 1 c. heavy cream
• 1/2 c. milk
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 c. black cherries, pitted
• 2 Tbsp brandy
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Directions

1. Preaheat the over to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease a 9x9x2-inch pan.
3. Mix the dry ingredients except the nutmeg (flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt) together in a large mixing bowl.
4. Beat together the egg, butter, and vanilla.
5. Stir the milk and heavy cream into the other wet ingredients.
6. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry, just until blended.
7. Spread a layer of batter on the bottom of the pan. Try to use about 1/3 of the batter.
8. Mix the cherries, brandy, and nutmeg together in a small bowl.
9. Spread half the cherries in a layer in the pan.
10. Spread another layer of batter, another layer of cherries, and top with batter.
11. Bake for 45-55 minutes.

The brandy didn't lend much flavor, as far as I could tell. Also, something a little tart or sour would have been nice. Next time I'll use sour cream in the batter or blueberries and some lemon zest. All in all, this turned out really well.

The other recipe I experimented with is another Betty Crocker recipe, this time for Zucchini Bread. We are overrun with zucchini and there's only so much I can do with it. I looked at some really good recipes in other cookbooks, but I just didn't have the patience today, so I used Betty's. However, one of the big lessons I learned from the book Cookwise was how much leavening you should use per cup of flour and that over-leavened cakes can be just as flat as under-leavened cakes.

It takes about 1/4 tsp of baking soda to leaven 1 cup of flour. Baking powder is a little less effective (so it takes more to get the same leavening), but it has other redeeming features. I've already fixed one recipe using this information and the zucchini bread recipe also looked really over-leavened. It called for 2 tsp of baking soda and 1/2 tsp of baking powder to leaven just 3 cups of flour. It should have needed 3/4 tsp of baking soda at most. I erred on the side of over-leavening and used 1 tsp baking soda and the 1/2 tsp baking powder.

All this time I thought I just sucked at making quick breads because they were always sunken for me. Today's zucchini breads were nicely domed and just perfect! The zucchini lunch recipe I made was a little less successful, but it was edible.