I finally found it!
When I was a teenager, I went on a bit of a baking bender.
I even made a gluten-free orange chiffon cake that we all loved. But the one
thing I never managed to make work was a basic yellow cake. This was
unfortunate, since it's my dad's favorite cake. I resigned myself to using a
cake mix and moved on. Fast forward a few years, and I saw a recipe for yellow
cake on my favorite food sight - SmittenKitchen. What peaked my interest was
her comment about how so many people fall back on Duncan Hines because they do
a freakishly good job of creating a cake that is always plush and moist,
something that homemade yellow cake recipes fail to do. They are dense, crumbly
and - in my experience - have an odd after taste.
What finally convinced
me to give it a try was the batch of cupcakes I made for the 4th of July. They
were from my usual box, and they tasted like...food science. I make my own
yogurt, for crying out loud, surely I could handle making this cake without the
aid of twenty mystery ingredients.
So today, I finally gave it go. I made a half recipe and
tried to keep my expectations low, but I needn't have. It was a huge success!
And timely, because now I don't need to take a 2 year supply of cake mixes with
us to Norway. Or, worse, by them in bulk(!) from Ramstein. Nobody needs that
kind of trouble laying around the house.
Here's the link if you'd like to give it a
try:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2012/07/flag-cake/
She's talking about a flag cake in this post, but all you
really need is the cake recipe. One tip from me is to make sure you bake the
cake until a toothpick/knife poked in the center comes out CLEAN. This cake
will not bake or rise as fast as a box cake. The texture and flavor of the cake
makes me dream about turning it into an Italian Cream Cake for Cameron's
Birthday, but we are enjoying it with chocolate frosting, or even just a
dusting of powdered sugar and fruit. I suspect that my Dad will actually still
prefer the box version - sometimes you just want the Twinkie, you know - but
for all other occasions, this is my new go-to basic cake. Give it a try!
