Like me, Hanaâ and Woody both live in the hinterlands of Minnesota. (If you doubt that it's the hinterlands, ask yourself if you live in a place where one of the biggest political powers is the Greater Metropolitan Mosquito Control District).
A few months ago, Hanaâ e-mailed me with the suggestion that we get together to bake a HCB weekly selection. That seemed like an excellent idea, and Woody signed up to
critique,
supervise, help. We settled on the next cake from the Quick and Easy List: the Many-Splendored Quick Bread, scheduled for October 18. I wanted Hanaâ to think I was super-organized, so I had everything ready to go by 12:45.
My walnuts were toasted, my frozen bananas were thawed (and liquified), and my zucchini and carrots were grated. Hanaâ arrived at 1:00 on the dot (seriously--not at 12:59 or at 1:01). Woody was late. He had some lame excuse about having to bake a cake.
Oh! Not only did Hanaâ arrive right on time, but she also brought a present--her Minnesota State Fair Prize-Winning Lemon Cake!
More about that later.
I did one regular-sized loaf pan, and Hanaâ did three mini-pans. I made the recipe exactly as is, and Hanaâ omitted the walnuts. (She's violently allergic to nuts, so I told her it was okay to skip them. Nice of me).
Other than that, our cake/breads were exactly alike and ready to go into the oven at the same time.
And here comes Woody! He has a new gadget with him, made by the inventor of the Beater Blade. It's a lemon-shaped lemon zester that holds the zest inside the lemon. It's awesome. Hanaâ and I were mighty impressed.
And he also brought along gold stickers for us. No, not because we were good (I didn't say gold stars). Gold stickers to affix to our copies of Heavenly Cakes!
And he also brought us a new cake from Rose's cookbook in-the-making. But the cake is Top Secret, so I can't even show you a piece. The Baking CIA altered the photos so no identifying marksk are visible.
But both cakes--Hanaâ's Prize Winner and Woody's Top Secret--were excellent. And then, after trying both of these cakes, of course we had to sample the Many-Splendored Quick Bread--both Hanaâ's version and mine. Hanaa could try only her own because she didn't think it would be a good idea for her to eat the one with nuts. She'll show you her version on her own blog, but here's a picture of one of her little minis right out of the oven.
And about 15 minutes later--because it was a lot bigger--mine came out of the oven.
They both looked very handsome. The loaves didn't look that much different from the outside, but I was surprised at how much difference there was between them when we sliced and sampled them.
The inside of Hanaâ's loaf is more golden than mine, which was considerably darker, both because of the walnuts and the fact that my banana was darker than hers (she had cleverly mixed hers with lemon juice to keep it banana-y looking). Her version tasted more like banana bread than mine, where the walnuts added another dimension of flavor.
Both were very good, and very different from anything else in the book: simple, moist, and not at all shocking to anyone's cardiologist. It's more bread than cake, but if you baked it in a bundt pan and poured a glaze over it, I'm guessing that no one would argue with you if you called it a cake. Probably no one would argue with you about anything if you offered them a piece of this Many-Splendored Thing, no matter what you called it.
TASTING PANEL Jim: "It's very good. I like the crunchiness of the nuts, and the banana flavor that's subtle, not excessive."
Woody: "It's the healthiest cake in the book--a complete meal in a cake."
Hanaâ: "I didn't really taste the carrots or zucchini. I like how moist it is--moist without being wet."
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