Paulchens FoodBlog?!

So here we are again:  The Bread Baking Babes!

This month Tanna said “Let them eat cake and make it with potatos!” – yes you read right dear readers tho this Potato Streusel Cake techincally is no bread at all sometimes we Babes just need to bake cake!

She adapted the recipe from One Potato, Two Potato by Roy Finamore

From the books intro:

There are a lot of things called potato cake in this book, but this one’s a real cake, of the coffee cake school. It’s based on an old Pennsylvania Dutch recipe.

Again some of us Babes had a Google+ hangout session to bake and chat away while baking this lovely potato cake. If I recall it right there were: Natashya, Susan, Ilva, Görel, me – did I miss someone?

I love this bake together with the Babes even tho not all of us are baking when we have these hangout sessions. It’s so nice to hear and see the Babes and talk about the baking…. hope we can hangout together again soon Babes!

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Streusel Potato Cake
(Kartoffel Kuchen)

Recipe Adapted from: One Potato, Two Potato by Roy Finamore

Yield: 2, 10 inch round cakes; 4 eight inch round cakes

Ingredients:

For the Cake:
1 pound russet or all purpose potato, peeled and cubed
8 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
5 cups AP flour
1.5 cups white whole wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
4 tablespoons flax seed meal
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the Streusel
1/2 cup oat bran
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
8 tablespoons butter, room temp.
3/4 cup walnuts or pecans or almonds
1/3 cup white raisins

Directions:

• Cook potatoes until very tender, just falling apart. Drain and reserve potato water. Idealy: rice the potatoes otherwise mash them.

• Combine with butter and 1 3/4 cups warm potato water. Allow butter to melt and water to cool to luke warm.
• In a standing mixer bowl: mix together the potatoes, potato water & butter, yeast, sugar, eggs and 2 cups of flour. Beat until smooth. This is VERY liquid at this point.
• Cover the sponge with plastic and leave in a warm place until it’s bubbling happily. Original recipe allowed 1 hour for this. I altered this to a 5 hour rest in the fridge.
  Tanna: I’m working on the premise that a coffee cake is a morning thing so I aimed for an overnight rise in the dough with shaping in the AM.

• Stir in remaining 4.5 cups flour, nutmeg and salt using the dough hook (or strong wooden spoon) for about 5 minutes. Dough should be very smooth.
• Tanna: I never got a really smooth dough. I tried using Richard Bertinet’s slapping technique for very liquid doughs but didn’t really have any success. I probably added another almost 1 cup of flour here but didn’t want to push it anymore than that.
• Cover again & leave to rise until doubled. 6. Again, original recipe allowed for 1 hour. I let this rise overnight.
•  Punch the dough down and turn out onto a lighty floured surface.
• Divide the dough in half. If you work quickly while the dough is chilled you can get a reasonable nicely tucked round. As it warms, it’ll get more liquid on you. Shape into two rounds. Original recipe: Place into two 10-inch round cake pans.
  Tanna: I did four rounds and used 2 8 inch and 2 10 inch round cake pans. My four cakes were about 2 inches tall.
• Preheat oven to 400° at least 20 minutes.
• For the Streusel: Stir flour, brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl and add butter. Mix together creating a soften mixture with dark color and sticky texture. Work in the nuts.

• Sprinkle streusel over the cakes.
• When cakes are covered, dimple the cakes with your fingers – much like dumpling foccacia. Dimpling will bury some of the crumbs and leave others on the top.
• Cover with plastic.

• Allow to rise in a warm place until doubled, taking about 45 minutes.
• Bake cakes at 400° 20 to 25 minutes.
• Cool on rack … but not cold … this is too good warm. This is beautiful toast! Freeze the second cake if you can get it to the freezer before it’s gone.

 

 

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

 My Verdict: 

I have no idea how this cake could ever be baked in 20-25 minutes! Mine took about 45-55 minutes and I only used half the recipe and did two cakes! Unfortunately my crumbles got a bit too dark due to the longer baking and the rather high heat. I covered the cakes with tin foil after about 30 minutes baking. Even tho after 55 minutes the cakes seemed to be done, I guess I should have baked them a little longer ’cause they both collapsed while cooling down and were not nearly as fluffy as the one Tanna showed us on our BBB blog.

Nevertheless you really should try it because it might not have been the prettiest cake I’ve ever baked but sure was a very very tasty one!
If I were to bake it again I’d bake it with way less heat – maybe at about 170-180°C for about 60 minutes or even longer to be sure that it’s really done inside. On the positive side (apart from being really tasty – did I mention that?)  it keeps quite well for a few days and freezes well too. I have to admit tho I liked it best still warm directly out of the oven…

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

You sure want to bake this bread as well, don’t you?

Please do so, you will not regret it. If you snap some pics and share your thoughts about this month’s bread on your blog Tanna will be more than happy to add you to the BBB Buddy round up on November 29th.  If you do not own a blog, no worries, you can also post your picture to Flickr or any other photo sharing site and share your thoughts there.

One word about that whole Buddy thing: 
The Bread Baking Babes are a closed group but we thought it would be fun to reward people who take the effort of baking our breads with us and give them a nice Buddy Badge and mention in a round up post every month. Just to say thank you for baking along and sharing your thoughts with us.

Since we are Babes and do no obey to rules, there are nearly no rules for Buddies, except these two:

1. Bake the featured bread, snap a pic & share your thoughts about how you liked it (or not liked it)
2. Send an email to the Kitchen of the Month to notify  us and make it easier to write the round up.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Don’t forget to visit my fellow Babes and see what they did with this lovely Bread this month.
Oh and don’t forget to visit Katie our BBBBB (Bitchin’ Bread Baking Babe Bibliothécaire) who writes up such lovely round ups of all the BBB Breads every month!

Bake My Day – Karen | blog from OUR kitchen – Elizabeth  | Feeding my enthusiasms – Pat  | Living in the Kitchen with Puppies – Natashya | Lucullian Delights – Ilva | Notitie Van Lien – Lien |Wild Yeast – Susan | My Kitchen In Half Cups – Tanna

Canela and Comino – Gretchen (Babe on Hiatus) | Grain Doe – Görel (Babe on Hiatus) | Living on bread and water – Monique (Babe on Hiatus)  | The Sour Dough – Breadchick Mary (Babe on Hiatus) | Thyme For Cooking – Katie (Babe on Hiatus)| Cookie Baker Lynn – Lynn (Babe on Hiatus)| I Like To Cook – Sara (Babe on Hiatus)

Thinking of you with Love: Glenna (Alumni Babe) | Sher (Angel Babe)

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

I send this over to Susan’s Yeastspotting.
YeastSpotting is a weekly showcase of yeasted baked goods and dishes with bread as a main ingredient.
If you are not familiar with YeastSpotting just scroll the archive and you’ll know what I am talking about.
To submit your post simply klick here!

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***