Glazed Almond Butter Cake, #The Cake Slice Bakers

The Cake Slice Bakers are a group of bakers from around the world. Currently, the challenge is to bake one of four preselected Carole Walter's Great Cakes recipes.  Glazed Almond Butter Cake was this Ninja Baker's winning choice.

This month's Glazed Almond Butter Cake for the Cake Slice Bakers
takes the cake!
A featherlight buttery crumb is topped by a
sticky melted brown sugar, butter and almond glaze.

Dorothy was right. “There’s no place like home.” But what do you do when lost in the wondrous land of Oz? Which path do you take when home is far away? Do you meditate to center yourself? Go hang gliding?  Pretzel yourself into yoga poses? (Kudos to you if you choose yoga. My flexibility factor is zip!)

Glazed Almond Butter Cake

After meditation, baking brings me a sense of tranquility. I was reminded of this when mixing up the ingredients for this month’s challenge: Glazed Almond Butter Cake. It’s delightful seeing eggs pirouetting in my kitchen stand mixer, turning from rich golden circles into pastel. Diamond speckles of sugar hitting the beaters as it combines with the eggs are somehow also very conducive to contentment. Even sifting cake flour becomes child’s play as a snowy mini Mt. Fuji appears.

Who knew?

The still sweets of life can be found in baking Glazed Almond Butter Cake.

Smearing butter with care on the spring form pan, preparing the pan for its journey into the oven is a pleasure, too. In the past Baker’s Joy or butter cooking oil were sprayed. Currently, however, I am inspired by New York Times bestselling author / chef Kathleen Flinn.  In The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, Chef Flinn extols the virtue of using real ingredients over fake chemical crammed “food.” Gotta Get Baked’s Nancy, the talented baker with a terrific sense of humor, gifted me with this gem of a book. (Thank you, Nancy!)

Smelling the heady aromas of baking cake bring me home.
How about you?

Preparing the brown sugar, butter and slivered almonds topping for the cake also mesmerized me into enjoying the present moment. Of course, the heavenly aroma of baking cake always brings me home.

Out of respect to the copyright issues with Carole Walter’s Great Cakes, I’m not writing out the recipe. However, here’s a link to a similar recipe.  If you wish to purchase the cookbook, Amazon is open 24/7.