Almond Brown Butter Cake

This year I made my own birthday cake.

That might sound a little weird, but I promise it's not. It's actually pretty perfect -- I think it's going to be a tradition. You should try it sometime.

I am not a tremendous cake fan. Traditional two-layer birthday cakes slathered in buttercream frosting are all right, but after 23 years I wanted something different. A standard go-to birthday cake in my family is German-chocolate cake. My little sister always gets a chocolate cake that you bake in a skillet and finish with caramel, fudge, and pecans. Given the fact that the birthday cakes in my family tend to be rich and chocolatey, I needed to come up with another recipe to add to our repertoire. I also needed to find one that didn't involve using boxed cake mix. My mother and sister are both fantastic bakers and I feel like I need to keep up with them -- and boxed cake mix doesn't fit that bill.

Enter this almond brown butter cake.

If you're not a from-scratch baker and are used to boxed cake mix (like I am!), don't be alarmed. This is a pretty easy recipe: if I can do half of it with a beer in one hand while teasing Sarah about her frantic photo-editing session, you can do this. And the results are gratifying. Very, very gratifying.

The original recipe, which I found here, calls for hazelnuts instead of almonds. But normal people only eat hazelnuts at Christmas, apparently, because not one grocery store in town had them in stock. It also calls for browned butter (obviously), which is fantastic, and it's topped with a chocolate ganache that's about impossible to mess up. It would also be very good with syrupy cherries or something similar.

Please don't be intimidated by this recipe. It's not as easy as mixing up a box of cake mix, but it's not at all hard and you'll be rewarded at the end.

Almond Brown Butter Cake

Ingredients

For the cake:

-5 oz. (about 1 heaping cup) blanched almonds

-1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter

-1/2 vanilla bean

-1 1/3 c. powdered sugar

-1/3 c. flour

-5 extra-large or 6 large egg whites

-3 tbsp. granulated sugar

For the ganache:

-4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips or finely chopped chocolate

-1/4 c. heavy cream

-1/2 tsp. instant coffee granules

Garnish:

-Sliced almonds (optional)

Process

Preheat the oven to 350. Spread blanched almonds on a cookie sheet and bake until golden-brown and toasty -- about 5-8 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

Prepare a 10" cake pan either by lining the bottom with parchment paper, buttering it, spraying it with cooking spray (that's the route I went), or a combination of all three. You can't really be too thorough.

Place butter in a medium saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and use a knife to scrape the pulp and seeds into the pan. Add the vanilla pod to the butter and melt it over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until the solids in the butter browns. Browned butter smells nutty and rich and is delicious. Keep an eye on it, though, because browned butter can quickly become burned butter if you're not paying attention. And burned butter is the pits.

Once your butter is sufficiently cooked, remove and discard the vanilla pod. Set the butter aside to cool.

Use a food processor to grind your toasted almonds to a fine powder. In a large bowl, whisk together the ground almonds, powdered sugar, and flour. Set aside.

Combine egg whites and granulated sugar in another large bowl. Beat with an electric beater until it forms stiff peaks. The texture you're aiming for is sort of like hair mousse. But don't think about it that way. They're much more delicious than hair mousse.

Alternate folding the butter/vanilla mixture and almond/flour mixture into the egg whites, making sure all ingredients are thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake at 350 until the cake is golden-brown and a fork inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. This took our cake 40-45 minutes, but it can take as long as an hour. Check regularly after about 35 minutes to make sure you don't burn yours. When your cake is done, carefully remove it from the pan and let cool on a wire rack for at least a half-hour.

When your cake is mostly cool, mix up the ganache and toast the sliced almonds. In a double boiler, melt together heavy cream, chocolate, and instant coffee, stirring occasionally until smooth. If you're like us and you don't have a double-boiler, you can fake it by filling a large pot with water and putting your ingredients in a smaller metal pot or mixing bowl. Place the smaller pot in the large one: the water shouldn't be able to splash into the ganache. Learn from my mistake: keep an eye on your almonds while you make the ganache. I burned mine and spent nearly 10 minutes picking the good almonds out of the  burnt ones.

Transfer cake to a serving plate. Pour ganache over the cake, making sure it's evenly distributed. Sprinkle with toasted sliced almonds before serving.

All our love,
Sarah and Abby


PS. Florence and the Machine.
You're welcome.