Brown Butter and Lime Loaf cake with Dulcey Lime chocolate ganache/glaze
On the back of a sixteen quart bag of potting soil the words “mix thoroughly” in the instructions catch my eye. Sitting on an armchair in the sun room on one of those spring mornings where the sun paints everything it touches in shimmery light, I do as instructed with the soil and think of cake. Mixing soil reminds me of mixing and baking in general, so my mind makes a beeline to cake thoughts as I begin to repot my plants. The whole time I’m thinking about cake which I can say happens a lot, no matter what I’m doing.
The sweet pepper seeds go from the seedling tray into their second temporary home, red Solo cups. The scent of wet soil sends me time traveling to being a kid and playing in my grandparent’s backyard while my grandpa waters flowers growing on the borders of the lawn. I sense immediately the hold gardening will have on me. I lift the sprouts out of the seed cell by gently inserting a butter knife around the edges of each cell to loosen the soil. I have only a small belief that I’m doing this correctly but I’m mindful to not disturb the roots, then set them into the hole I dug in the cups. In total I planted about nine seeds and from the nine, six of them emerged from the soil, no longer dormant and ready to move into their next stages of growth.
I’ll need something to help me easily carry the plants around the house, moving with that spring sunlight throughout the day so I get out the quarter sheet pan that I typically use for toasting nuts and set a parchment paper on top. I’m not sure why I do this other than habit, but I figure the parchment can help absorb drainage from watering. The six cups, which fit perfectly on a quarter sheet pan by the way, then get set on top of the pan like they’re getting ready to get baked in the oven. I place them next to a sunny window, murmuring to them grow, grow, grow the same way I once talked to sticky buns encouraging them to rise, rise, rise.
Eventually the pepper plants will go into bigger pots that will live outside on the deck in the warmer months, where the internet tells me they will thrive by first producing flowers before finally producing peppers for harvest. I hope by now me saying that I plan on using these peppers in a cake somehow is not surprising. Next I’m planting zinnias, cosmos, and petunias, making good on a promise to myself that I made back in January to finally start a potted garden. My family lost my beloved tío Miguel, my grandpa’s brother-in-law and best friend for over 60 years to COVID in January and I knew I wanted to plant flowers for him. I could not go home for his funeral and my family had to wait until March to even have an outdoor memorial, so this feels like something small, something tangible I can do in his memory. The flowers will not only make our deck prettier, and not only be planted in remembrance, but will also be used for cake decoration. So I can already see how gardening is something that will keep giving and giving.
The cake I was thinking of while repotting was a brown butter and lime loaf cake, so that’s what I did here. To solidify the butter, simply chill in your fridge until solid then cream it in your stand mixer with the sugar (an electric hand mixer also works). Solidifying should take about ~35 minutes, but the butter is ready to go as soon as it has become solid. If the browned butter seems hard when you first take it out of the fridge, leave it on your counter or in the stand mixer bowl until it softens a bit. A stand mixer is powerful enough to cream the butter in this state, but I suggest letting it soften just a bit. If using an electric hand mixer definitely let the solidified browned butter soften longer. You’re just trying to take the browned butter from its liquid state, to a more solid form so you can cream it with the sugar. Recently I purchased some dulcey chocolate from Valrhona and decided to add some lime zest to a ganache for this cake. I got dried calendula flowers from my CSA (I’m doing monthly recipes for their website btw!) which I think are so pretty. I was inspired by my talented baker friend Lakshimi who makes the most beautiful botanical cakes with flower adornments and decor. You could do nothing else to decorate a cake except place a gorgeous flower atop like a crown and no one would hold it against you.
I love seeing the speckles in the cake from both the brown butter and the vanilla bean paste. Feel free to swap in vanilla extract and don’t be afraid to use at least a whole tablespoon in the batter. This recipe is modified just slightly from Sally’s Baking Blog, but I upped the amount of citrus by a lot; I ended up using four limes which is the correct amount imo. If you don’t want to use dulcey chocolate, which is just caramelized white chocolate, you could make a white chocolate ganache instead. To make the ganache simply follow Stella Park’s instructions, except add lime zest after mixing the chocolate and cream. I probably poured my ganache a bit too soon which is why it looks thinner than Stella’s (let’s just call it a sauce!), so definitely let it cool for 30 minutes like she instructs. This cake is quite dense so don’t worry if the top cracks. A quick lime juice and zest + confectioner’s sugar glaze would work too, but I really like the richness from the dulcey teaming up with the rich brown butter.
Yield: one 9x5 loaf
Total time: about 2 hours
214 grams (1 ½ cups) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
230 grams (2 sticks) unsalted butter, browned, then chilled until solidified
200 grams (1 cup) granulated sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
60 grams (about ¼ cup) sour cream or Greek yogurt, room temperature
45 ml lime juice (from about 3-4 limes)
zest from 4 limes
1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
Dulcey Chocolate Ganache, scaled down in half
zest from 1 lime
To make the cake:
Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9x5 loaf pan with cooking spray and line with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer cream solidified browned butter and granulated sugar on medium speed (speed 6 on a Kitchenaid Mixer). Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
With the mixer on low, add in the eggs one at a time. Mix just until eggs are fully combined. Add in the sour cream, lime juice, lime zest, and vanilla bean paste or extract and mix. If the batter looks a bit curdled at this point, don’t trip. It will come together once the dry ingredients are added.
At this point I like to remove the bowl from the stand mixer and mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula. I do this to avoid over-mixing which is easy to do in the stand mixer. Gently mix dry ingredients into the batter, being mindful not to over-mix. The batter is quite thick.
Spoon batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for about 55-60 minutes. At the halfway point tent the loaf pan with aluminum foil to prevent the cake from browning too much on the top. Start checking for doneness around the 50 minute mark.
The cake is done when a cake tester, toothpick or just a fork comes out of the center of the cake with few cake crumbs.
Let the cake cool in the loaf pan for about 10 minutes, then lift the cake out using the parchment paper. The cake needs to be cooled completely on a cooling rack before pouring the ganache over.