November is always a exciting time for the "Cake Slice Bakers". November is when we start baking from a new book. Maida Heatter's Cakes was the new selection for this season.
For my first bake I decided to go with Kugelhopf. A raisin-nut coffee cake, made with a yeast dough. In the last six years with the Cake Slice, I've only encountered two Cake recipes calling for yeast. Kugelhopf was one of our four selections this month, and I could not pass up the opportunity to bake with yeast.
I used a bundt pan to bake my cake, although I wished I would have had the lovely Kugelhopf cake pan.
This cake is a pretty simple recipe. I do recommend you purchase the proper pan. I had overflowed batter drip all over my CLEAN oven, not very happy about it, but my lesson learned.
The recipe suggest the cake be eaten the next day, but do I listen? No. Not very impressed with the warm slice I had. I could not taste anything but the rum infused raisins. Not very pleasant. The next morning I decided to try another slice before I gave this cake a unfair review. The cake was ten times better, I could no longer taste the alcohol of the rum, and the cake sliced nicely. I liked it so much better. The cake is a slightly dry cake, it does get drier with time. The next time around I would definitely double the raisins and almonds in the recipe, I felt it lacked flavor. Nevertheless the cake was not wasted, my husband was never more delighted he had almost entire cake to himself to eat all week long.