When my parents were both working, I would spend afternoons as a young boy at my grandparents’ house — Phil and Greta’s house, as my parents always called it. Whenever you visited you would find Greta preparing a meal, smiling. She used real milk, real butter and a whole lot of love, and she and Phil both lived long lives well into their nineties.
Greta’s almond cake was the standard everyone in our family used. Whatever version we ended up with at Christmas, we always remembered Greta’s kitchen and her smile.
Ingredients
- 1¼ cups sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1½ teaspoons pure almond extract
- 2/3 cup milk
- 1¼ cups flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 stick melted butter
Method
- Spray an almond cake pan with non-stick cooking spray.
- Beat the sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla extract and milk together in a bowl.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix well.
- Add the melted butter and mix well.
- Bake at 350°F for 40 to 50 minutes. The edges must be golden brown.
- Cool in the pan before removing — the cake will break if you turn it out too soon.
- Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.
Let it cool in the pan
This is the step that decides whether you get a cake or a pile. The pan’s fluted shape is what makes it an almond cake rather than a loaf, and the cake has to firm up before it will leave those grooves in one piece. Wait until the pan is cool enough to hold comfortably.
The other two
Ours is one of three almond cake recipes in the family, and they are not the same. Kathi’s leans on natural ingredients, and Mrs. Olson’s is the one that turned up when the wind went cold. Worth baking all three and picking a side.