Milk Street BAKES (Amazon affiliate link) This is a fabulous baking book! And in Milk Street tradition, it’s filled with recipes that aren’t going to be in the average baking book. So many delicious and unexpected bakes! This is a really fun book to play in. It will be loved by the amateur and the experienced baker alike. It’s a huge volume and the cover design is just gorgeous.
I’ll tell you all about the bakes we tried, but let’s get you that Almond-Coconut Cake with Cherries and Pistachios recipe first! Love love love this cake. Every bite is filled with big pops of flavor. My daughter laughed and said this is what people want fruit cake to taste like. Moist, dense, and rich, and filled with cherries, coconut, and pistachios. Strongly flavored and not a bit sweeter than it needs to be. Go make it. Hug me later!
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EXCERPTED FROM MILK STREET BAKES BY CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL. COPYRIGHT © 2024 BY CPK MEDIA, LLC. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE MURPHY, USED WITH PERMISSION OF VORACIOUS, AN IMPRINT OF LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. NEW YORK, NY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ALMOND-COCONUT CAKE WITH CHERRIES AND PISTACHIOS
This rustic cake is our adaptation of a recipe from “Honey & Co.: The Cookbook” by London restaurateurs and chefs Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer. Dense, moist and filled from top to bottom with fruity, nutty flavor and texture, the cake is great as dessert, brunch or with coffee or tea. Honey & Co. flavors it with mahleb, a baking spice made from the seeds from a variety of cherry; we use easier-to-source almond extract. Store leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.
Start to finish: 1¼ hours (20 minutes active), plus cooling
Servings: 10 to 12
141 grams (10 tablespoons) salted butter, melted and cooled, plus more for the pan
100 grams (1 cup) almond flour
87 grams (2/3 cup) all-purpose flour
45 grams (½ cup) shredded unsweetened coconut
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon table salt
3 large eggs, room temperature
107 grams (½ cup) plus 1 tablespoon white sugar
73 grams (1/3 cup) packed light brown sugar
½ teaspoon almond extract
1½ cups pitted fresh or frozen sweet cherries, thawed and patted dry
48 grams (1/3 cup) unsalted roasted pistachios, chopped
Powdered sugar, to serve (optional)
Don’t use sweetened shredded coconut, as it will make the cake too sugary. Unsweetened shredded coconut—not wide shavings—is the right variety. If fresh cherries are out of season, don’t hesitate to use thawed frozen cherries—they’re equally tasty on the cake. Lastly, don’t worry that inverting the cake out of the pan will cause the toppings to fall off. The fruit and nuts are baked in, so only a couple small pieces may come loose, if any.
Heat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the middle position. Butter a 9-inch round cake pan, line the bottom with a round of kitchen parchment, then butter the parchment.
In a medium bowl, whisk together both flours, the coconut, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, the 107 grams (½ cup) white sugar, brown sugar and almond extract, then whisk until well combined. Whisk in the melted and cooled butter. Whisk in the dry ingredients until homogeneous; the batter will be thick but pourable.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using your hands, tear the cherries in half over the batter, allowing the juice to fall onto the surface, then drop the pieces onto the surface in an even layer. Sprinkle with the pistachios and the remaining 1 tablespoon white sugar.
Bake until a toothpick inserted at the center of the cake comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Cool on a wire rack until barely warm to the touch, about 1 hour. Run a paring knife around the inside edge of the pan to loosen the cake, then invert onto a platter. Lift off the pan and peel off the parchment. Re-invert the cake onto a platter. If desired, dust with powdered sugar just before serving.
Back to that review….
Savory Kale and Two-Cheese Scones. Very much to our surprise, this was our favorite! They’re super hearty, and the flavor is dialed all the way up and perfectly balanced. And the texture is to die for. Earthy kale, salty sharp cheeses, a little sweet pop from the raisins, and nutty seeds. They’re total lookers, too.
Three-Seed Beer Pretzels. These are delicious. I’ve never seen the baking soda baked pre-simmer before. These taste amazing and have that gorgeous chewy-fluffy balance. They’re meant to be enjoyed with mustard, but I centered dinner around them with a bratwurst potato onion bake and crisp sweet apples. Perfection.
Bete Noir. Whoever penned this certainly knows their way around cocktails. Bourbon, yes, but I’ve never seen bitters in a cake before. It looks intimidating but it’s really not. The cake was huge success. I had a little flambe action with the candied bourbony orange peel, so it’s a little darker than the book, but the taste was fabulous. As Julia Child said, “I don’t know if the flambe does anything, but it’s fun!”
German Apple Cake. This is the cake on the cover. It looks like it’s going to be a fussy recipe, but it’s Tuesday-night easy! The flavors and textures are divine. It’s very almond and butter forward. Everyone should have this one in their back pocket!
Brazilian Cheese Bread. I milled my own tapioca into tapioca starch from tapioca, so the exterior is not as smooth as it should be, but wowza, these are so easy to make and so much better than what’s commercially available.
Zucchini Bread with Orange Zest and Chocolate Chunks. Just fantastic bread. The flavors play beautifully together. It’s wonderfully moist. And the finishing sugar giving this little bit of sweet crunch to the top is chef’s kiss.
German Blueberry Streusel Cake. Delicious!!! It’s how you want your coffee cake to be! It tastes super fruity but stretches 2 cups of blueberries with a bunch of pantry items, so it’s super budget-friendly, too. They really missed an opportunity not pulling together a list at the beginning of all the “make ahead” recipes. Making this the day before and then giving it 8-24 hours in the fridge before finishing it really makes it such a practical and flexible recipe, the sort people really prize for entertaining and busy occasions where you want something wonderful to be at the ready! I made this on Saturday and then finished it early Sunday morning before a lovely family outing. Perfection!
Tahini Browned Butter Cookies. These are fantastic. Posh, grown-up peanut butter cookies. We loved the optional chocolate dip with toasted sesame seeds, too. But we did try them unadorned just to be thorough. Twice.
Pizza Dough. This recipe is easy and makes 4 10” pizzas. You can use it that same night or within 48 hours, so it’s nice and flexible. I made two pizzas that night, and two more two days later. 4 different pizzas! Super worth the little bit of time to get the recipe together.
Fig, Blue Cheese, and Prosciutto Pizza. Oh my word. This is a fantastic pizza! Sweet figs, savory salty prosciutto, and tangy blue cheese finished with acidic pops from balsamic glaze and zippy scallions.
Pizza with Pepperoni, Mozzarella, and Hot Honey. Oh, lets not forget the pepperoncini. This is a sweet and spicy meat lover’s dream. They mentioned hot capicola or hot soppressata variations. Can’t wait to try those, too!
Upside-Down Pizza with Fennel, Taleggio, and Salami. Okay, this was supposed to be an upside-down pizza with a different dough, so I tossed the veggies on a baking sheet with their olive oil, salt, and pepper for 15 minutes while the oven was finishing its preheat, so they would work on this short-broil on the baking steel thin pizza style. My grocer was out of Taleggio, so I had to sub in Brie. Really delicious and interesting pizza.
Pizza with Ricotta, Zucchini and Mint. Wow, this is a cool pizza! Cheesy lemony base didn’t overpower the zucchini, and the nuttiness of the pistachios and fresh pops from the basil finished it beautifully.
Spinach and Cheese Borek. This is seriously addictive. Spinach, feta, and mozzarella, encased in phyllo layers brushed in a milk-olive oil mixture. The texture is great. Crispy, but not dry at all. It’s dotted with sesame and nigella seeds at the end. They mention that nigella are also called kalonji. The spice merchant I use sells them as Charnushka.
Almond-Coconut Cake with Cherries and Pistachios. Love love love this cake. Every bite is filled with big pops of flavor. My daughter laughed and said this is what people want fruit cake to taste like. Moist, dense, and rich, and filled with cherries, coconut, and pistachios. Strongly flavored and not a bit sweeter than it needs to be.
You want to see more Milk Street? Sure! Here are the last 3 blogposts I did about them… Milk Street 365
Vietnamese-Style Meatball Lettuce Wraps
Tacos al Pastor
Greek Egg-Lemon Soup
#MilkStreet #177MilkStreet @177MilkStreet #MilkStreetBakes #MilkStreet365 #ChristopherKimball #JenniferGuerrero #TheNotSoStarvingArtist @StarvingArtistEats #JensProteinNiceCreams #Ninja #NinjaCreami #NinjaCreamiDeluxe #ProteinIceCream #Protein #Macros #healthy #cottagecheese #recipes #cookbook #NinjaCreamy #NinjaCreamyDeluxe #NinjaCreamiDelux #NinjaCreamyDelux
Need anything? I’m an Amazon affiliate. Any time you use one of my links to get to Amazon to make a purchase, Amazon gives me a tiny commission – and it costs you nothing extra! Thank you!
Need that book? Milk Street BAKES (Amazon affiliate link)
Jen’s books
Jen’s Protein Nice Creams
Jen’s Protein Nice Creams 2
Jen’s Protein Nice Creams 3
Hope you love them!!!
Need more info? Here’s an FAQ blogpost!
Next! You need a machine!
I have the Ninja Creami Deluxe 11-in-1. The containers hold 24 oz and it has the most settings. All of my recipes are made for these 24 ounce containers. Those 24 oz containers are perfect for the hub and I to split. This machine is amazing!
The Ninja Creami 7-in-1 is also highly rated. It has a few fewer functions and the containers are 16 oz. If you’re going this route, just make 2/3 of each of my recipes and modify the nutritional info to 2/3!
An immersion (stick) blender.
Cuisinart Smart Stick Blender. This fits right into the container, so you can mix your base without having any extra dishes. It makes it all streamlined. You could do it in a food processor, but that’s a lot of cleaning after each flavor. The immersion blender makes it so easy and tidy that you’ll use it all the time! (And not ice cream related, but combining a stick blender and a mason jar, sauces and dips are a breeze!)
Extra containers!
The Ninja Creami Deluxe comes with 2 containers. After you blend your base, you have to stick it in the freezer for 24 hours before it goes in the Creami. I bought two extra sets of 4 containers so that I’d have a total of 10 to work with. I personally went with generic. They are cheap and work just as well! BE SURE TO GET THE RIGHT CONTAINERS FOR YOUR MACHINE!!!! THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE!
4 pack of the 24 oz Deluxe size 4 pack of the 16 oz 7-in-1 size
Wine glass covers.
10 Silicone Mug Cup Covers. Huh???? Yeah. Things expand when they freeze. The top of your concoction is perfectly level when you put it in your freezer. You pull it out and some weird frozen sculpture is trying to emerge from the surface. We don’t want to break our Creami blade! What to do? Some people put their mixtures in the freezer with the lids off until they freeze. Others shave down the icy protrusion. I just pop a wine glass cover right on the mixture’s surface and pop my lid on. Solved!
Protein powders
The first two are the main two I use for everything! (I’m putting links for the 2 lb containers, but the 5 lb are more economical!) The next three are fabulous, one recipe powders to add to your collection after the main two!
All 3 books Vanilla ice cream whey Extreme milk chocolate whey
Book 1 only Girl Scout Thin Mint Girl Scout Coconut Caramel S’mores whey (Amazon only has the 5 lb right now. I’ll update the link when the put the 2 pound back up.)
Books 2 and 3 Ryse Jet-Puffed (Several flavors and I’m in love with this stuff!!! It’ll be in book 3, too!)
Book 2 only Quest Salted Caramel
Book 3 only Unflavored Collagen – lots of recipes Vanilla Casein – 1 recipe
Sweeteners
The first two are my main. I just use the confectioner’s version for red velvet, but you could totally use plain. Absolutely sub in whatever your favorite sweetener is!
Regular Swerve, Brown Sugar Swerve, Confectioner’s Swerve – There’s an Amazon pack with all 3!
Extracts
Sometimes, even with 1 ½ to 2 cups of fabulous fruit in the concoctions, the flavor just wants a little boost to push it from yummy to fabulous! I love extracts.
Vanilla extract Almond Extract Rum extract Butter extract Strawberry extract Raspberry extract
Peach flavor Buttery sweet dough emulsion Boiled cider
Add to the bin for Book Two Mango Coconut
Add to the bin for book 3 Vanilla Bean Paste Cream cheese icing flavor Caramel flavor
Butterscotch flavor Rose water
Other Stuff
PB Fit (low fat peanut butter powder)
Max Mallows (zero sugar marshmallows) Only a 6-pack is available now. I’ll update this link when 1 or 3 are back up. Burnt Caramel flavor Max Mallows – pack of 6
Jordan’s Skinny Sauces Salted Caramel Fun addition, BUT!!!! It’s like a jack in the box. You lightly squeeze and nothing. A tiny bit more pressure and a violent stream rockets out! I look like Will Ferrell in Elf squeezing it in the most tentative manner. I just increased the size of the hole and it’s less dramatic. lol!
Lavender
Hibiscus
