I made these as a quick-and-easy dessert to take to dinner with friends, since I was also busy making olive bread as a surprise for them.
Churro Bites
inspired by this post
Ingredients
box of angel food cake mix (or if you have a good recipe, make one from scratch)
several Tbsp cinnamon (throw in some Vietnamese cinnamon if you want it strong!)
several Tbsp sugar
Equipment
oven and cake pan (if you need to make your cake), cutting board, knife, bowl
Instructions
Make your angel food cake according to package instructions. Allow it to cool completely. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut the cake into bite-sized cubes. Roll each cube thoroughly in the sugar and cinnamon (tap them to shake off the excess).
Yields
a whole cake's worth
Total time
about an hour; check the instructions on your cake box; mine took 30 minutes, and I let it cool for about 30 minutes outside of the pan
Cleanup rating 3/5
You'll get cinnamon and sugar everywhere, but that's relatively easy to clean up. Other than that, you only have a few things to clean (bowl, pan, knife, cutting board). My hands always get a thin stickiness on them from working with angel food cake, though. Wash everything thoroughly! (Like you should anyway.)
Difficulty rating 3/10
Any idiot can bake an angel food cake. (You literally preheat the oven, mix the box of powder with the prescribed amount of water, pour it into a pan, and put it in the oven.) Letting it cool is a matter of not doing things, and cutting it up is less difficult than I expected (I had a fantastically sharp knife, though). Just don't try to rub your eyes while your fingers are coated in cinnamon. Not a good idea.
Flavor rating 7/10
Angel food is my favorite cake (it's like a giant, fluffy, marshmallow... but cake!) and I love cinnamon sugar, so this is pretty awesome. The original recipe called for frying the cake cubes in oil, which would have given them that awesome crispy churro texture, but I had neither the time nor the inclination to fry them. Some of the feedback I got (all positive) was that they're strong, and you so often get cinnamon-flavored desserts that barely taste like cinnamon at all. (I shared the secret: Vietnamese cinnamon.)
Adjustability: low
I don't know what else to do to these things. You could fry them like in the original post, or make an icing to drizzle on top or dip in, but that's about all I can think of. If you use a different type of cake, it would probably get too crumbly.
Make it with...
Everything. I originally decided to make them when we were going to have fish tacos for dinner, but it worked equally well with sausage-tomato-cream sauce and rigatoni. It would work with just about anything, I think. Or as a stand-alone dessert.
Let's talk lime cake. I made this for Game of Thrones night! Everyone said it was good (and I agree). (Apologies for the photo... I forgot to take a picture when it was still whole... so this is the piece I took to work the day after.)
Lime Cake
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp butter (room temperature)
2 eggs, well beaten
juice of 1 lime
1 1/2 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
powdered sugar
Equipment
mixer, oven, 8"x8" square cake pan
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the eggs and lime juice and mix thoroughly. Add the flour and baking powder and mix thoroughly. Pour (my experience was more like "drop") into your greased and floured cake pan (I had to spread it evenly with a spoon, so do that if you need to). Bake 25 minutes (inserted toothpick should come out clean). Let it cool for a few minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a cooling rack to finish cooling. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before it's completely cooled (it will stick better if it's a little warm).
Yields
I don't know, an 8"x8" cake.
Total time
About 45 minutes (maybe a little longer if you forgot to get your butter up to room temp before you get started). It takes a little while to get the butter and sugar creamed (unless I'm doing it wrong).
Cleanup rating 2/5
Remember my rule about rating cleanup of things that involve powdered sugar? That applies here. Also, I didn't cool my cake on the cooling rack so it kind of stuck to the plate but still, not a biggie.
Difficulty rating 4/10
The most difficult thing about this recipe is creaming the sugar and butter (not my favorite thing in the world to do). Remember: I use a hand mixer. So that contributes. But you have to get the batter spread evenly in the pan or it's probably not going to turn out well for you.
Flavor rating 8/10
YUM. Everyone seemed pretty happy about this one. It almost totally disappeared, which is a good thing for cake.
Adjustability low
At least, as far as I know, it's low. The original recipe recommended garnishing with chopped peanuts, which I planned on doing, but I had no peanuts. I want to look into some kind of honey sauce I could put on top... but still, options are limited.
Make it with...
My coworker Missi was the lucky recipient of my other leftover piece that came to work with me, and she said it was screaming for coffee (not in the way that it's dry but in the way that it would pair extremely well with coffee). I don't drink coffee, so I wouldn't know, but I'll take her word for it. I think it would go really well with some fresh strawberries too.
