Almond Poppyseed Cake from Claire Saffitz Review

Perhaps it's time for a little "flour" content in with all this fabric. When Claire Saffitz announced she had a book coming out, I hopped right over to Amazon and pre-ordered it. I love cookbooks. I try not to buy too many because I don't have the time to make everything, nor do I have the shelf space, but I love cookbooks. I love flipping through them, I love the photography, and I love just reading the content and recipes. I did decide Dessert Person needed to be on my shelf, though. I love Claire, and I love dessert.

When I received it, I flipped through it many times. I wanted to make everything. As often happens with me, the book offered me too many choices, and I didn't know where to start. So I set it aside for a while. Shortly after that, I discovered that Claire has a new YouTube channel. She's showing off tips and tricks for the recipes from the book. Not only that, but her cat Felix makes several appearances, and I'm here for it!

Last week's episode was Claire's Almond Poppyseed Cake. Over Christmas, I attempted to make my grandmother's poppyseed bread and failed miserably. I have a recipe, but it's not directly from her, so I'm not sure how accurate it is. I do have some ideas to edit this recipe to make it more like hers, but I've moved on to other poppyseed items for now. I was a little anxious about this cake since it you bake it in a Bundt pan, and I can count the number of times I've had a Bundt come out cleanly on zero hands. It always ends up falling apart no matter how I grease, flour, pray to the Bundt gods, and it always makes a mess. Claire did note in the video and in the recipe that you can bake this in two loaf pans, but where's the fun in that?

To do everything I could to prevent the dreaded sticking, I did what Claire did in the video. I used a neutral oil (vegetable), brushed it all over the pan, and then coated it in flour, gently tapping out the excess. I've done the shortening/flour technique for years before baking spray was a thing, it is how my mom taught me to handle pans, specifically for cakes, so I have experience with it. As I finished and set the pan aside, I stared at it skeptically and said, "Please release the cake when the time comes." Then I moved on to gathering my ingredients.

I've gotten better over the years at the mise en place thing. Everything progresses more smoothly with baking and cooking when I have everything already set out and ready to go. Sometimes it feels like I'm wasting dishes, but I have a dishwasher, and if the Finish commercials are correct, it takes less water to run the dishwasher than washing the dishes by hand. It's probably reasonably accurate given how I wash dishes when I do it by hand, so if I use a couple of tiny bowls in exchange for sanity and ease, I guess that's okay.

This is a beautifully simple cake. I knew from watching Claire's video that it's not the most complicated recipe that she has, and the book has difficulty levels assigned to each recipe, and this one is labeled "very easy." Dessert Person also features a unique recipe matrix that compares time to difficulty. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I have hugged this book several times because I love it so much.

There is no creaming, no sifting, no whisking all the dry ingredients together, unlike many cakes. You just put the dry, turn on the mixer a couple of spins, turn it off, and add the wet ingredients all at once. You then beat it for a couple of minutes, and it makes a beautiful, soft, silky batter. I've mentioned before that recipes that call for softened butter aren't always my favorite. This is mostly because I don't like waiting for butter to soften, and if I try to speed it up, I make a mess of it.

I poured the batter into the prepared pan, and it looked a bit more full than it should be, but I went ahead with it anyway. As I watched it bake (I didn't have an oven with a window growing up until I was closer to a teenager, so it still thrills me to turn the oven light on and watch things bake.), I realized that perhaps I should've double-checked the capacity on my pan. I'm pretty sure it was a 10-cup Bundt, and the recipe calls for a 12-cup Bundt. I didn't have any spill-over. My Bundt just ended up having a domed bottom, not a big deal in the long run. The cake finished in the amount of time given in the recipe, which surprised me since there is a lot of batter here. I took it out of the oven, gave it another look, and asked it to please come out of the pan in 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes passed, I took my offset spatula, stabbed around the edge of the pan, put my cooling rack on top, flipped it over, lifted the pan, and....cake still in the pan. I flipped it back over and more aggressively dug around the outside with the offset spatula in hopes that it would separate from the pan. I went through the process again, flipped it over, and the cake came out! In one piece! I stabbed the cake all over with a bamboo skewer and brushed on the glaze.

Then, I had to wait until it cooled to try it. This was hard, but luckily it came out around the time I needed to start making dinner, so I had enough to distract me from the delightful smelling cake. When it was finally time to taste the cake, I was thrilled! This cake is delightfully light and fluffy. It has a delicious flavor, and the bites that had the edges with the glaze were my favorite. The soft inside balanced so well with the flavorful edge. Since there was a lot of cake here, I shared it with my parents and sister, and they all agreed they would happily eat it again. And, I would happily bake this one again!

Since I've had the book, I've made one other recipe from it. I'll come back and chat about that one soon. If you love desserts and/or baking, I highly recommend Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz.