Loafing

[madbaker]

This week's Resolution Recipe: Chocolate-Prune Loaf Cake.

butter for greasing
1/2 cup good-quality cocoa powder, plus more for dusting the pan
5 oz milk or semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used a combination of 70% and 82% dark. Life is too short to waste calories on milk chocolate.)
15 dried pitted prunes (I used dried apricots - we had them leftover from my Boston trip.)
10 Tbsp 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp buttermilk (I used half-and-half, as we had it leftover and I didn't want to buy a pint of buttermilk to use a small amount)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I cut to 1/3)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 large eggses
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda

Heat the oven to 350 with the rack in the center. Grease a standard loaf pan and dust with cocoa powder.
In a small saucepan, bring 1" water to a simmer. Put half of the chocolate in a small heatproof bowl and set over the simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. (In other words: set up a double boiler, which I have and did...) Let stand until the chocolate is melted, then stir until smooth. Keep warm. Put the prunes in a bowl and pour simmering water from the saucepan over the prunes to cover; let stand 10 minutes to rehydrate. (Since the dried apricots were quite moist, I skipped this step.)

Whisk together the buttermilk, oil, sugars, eggses, and vanilla. In a separate medium bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. Remove the prunes from the water and finely chop. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet, mixing until smooth, then stir in the melted chocolate. Add the remaining chopped chocolate and the prunes, and stir to combine. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until puffed and cracked on top, and it passes the toothpick test - 40-45 minutes.

Let cool on a wire rack, then turn out of the pan and let cool completely. Cut into fat slices and serve.

What worked: It was fine.

What didn't: It didn't rise as much as if I had used buttermilk. Actually a bit dry; I might have needed to not cut the oil and/or soak the apricots, even though they had plenty of moisture. Although a slight drizzle of apricot brandy helped immensely.

Alice Medrich's Bittersweet tends to add ~1 Tbsp butter when using very dark chocolate. That would have helped with the dry too, had I thought of it.

Will I make it again? Maybe. It's not tremendously interesting on its own but would be good with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I bet candied ginger would go nicely in this.

Comments

[kareina]

Yes, if you ever do this again, try with a bit of butter and candied ginger, for science.