Swedish Visiting Cake with a twist...or two...or three!

This was a busy week, with an even more busy weekend. Busy but good! I like these kind of days: those days when you have lots of things going on but they are all good things! It feels good! Good things, good events, good people...it makes me get to the evening tired but with that sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that give me serenity.

We had a good amount of work at the school this week. We cooked some amazing recipes with the kids (I will try to blog on this later this week) and we have some amazing one coming on next week. On top of it, I got a new job as academic tutor for k-12, which I think will keep me pretty busy once the school period starts again. To complete the week, this is a big weekend for Wally. He (and his band, miRthkon) is playing his biggest gig ever at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco tonight! We are so excited!! To complete the excitement one of his best friend, Zev, came over all the way from Austin to visit us and see the show... how cool is that! That's a great friendship! 

As I said, so many rewarding events this week! Life can be really good huh? So, I decided to make it even better with a nice breakfast cake but, of course, I did not have time to spend hours researching some new or original recipes. But who said that a great cake has to be new or original or complicated? Whenever I need a good fool-proof recipe, we all know already where I'm going look at, right? Yes, of course...Dorie Greenspan's books! Her recipes never fail me :) 

What I also love about Dorie Greenspan's recipes is that you can usually twist them as much as you want and the success will still be sure! So that's what I did this week. I was planning on making the famous Swedish Visiting Cake since a long time but given my time constraint (and to Wally's sometimes picky tastes) I had to give it a couple of twists....Ok, maybe more than a couple...Can I still call it Swedish Visiting Cake if I changed a few things? Can I still check it out of my "want-to-make-soon" list? Yeah, I think I can...I will still call it Swedish Visiting Cake and as always all the merit for the success goes to Dorie Greenspan. What would we do without her?!

Swedish Visiting Cake Squares

Ingredients

230 gr (8 oz or 1 cup) sugar

2 large eggs 

5 gr (1/4 tsp) salt

5 ml (1 tsp) pure vanilla extract

2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) pure orange extract

230 gr (8 oz or 1 cup) all-purpose flour

113 gr (1 stick or 8 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

brown sugar, cinnamon and white chocolate for sprinkling*

*I used two tbsp of brown sugar, 2 tbsp of cinnamon and 2 oz of white chocolate but you can use the proportions you prefer, depending on your tastes.

Stir 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon in a small bowl.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch cake pan or even a pie pan and place the pan on a baking sheet.

Pour the sugar into a medium bowl. Whisk in the eggs one at a time until well blended. Whisk in the salt and the extracts.

Switch to a rubber spatula and stir in the flour. Finally, fold in the melted butter. 

Scrape half of the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Sprinkle the brown sugar-cinnamon mixture  and a few white chocolate chips over the batter. Cover with the rest of the batter (you need to be very careful in pouring the rest of the batter because it is very dense and, thus, hard to distribute homogeneously. If the batter is too stick try to spread it with a slightly wet spatula) and smooth the top.

Place the pan on a baking sheet and bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it is golden and a little crisp on the outside; the inside will remain moist. Remove the pan from the oven and let the cake cool for 5 minutes on a cooling rack before unmolding it onto a serving plate.

Source: Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan