I haven't found the perfect Boston Cream Pie yet, but today I am making a Birthday cake, this is one of my favorite recipes adapted from a backpack book called The Hungry Hikers Book of Good Cooking by Gretchen McHugh. This is a pound cake that we always took hiking with us because it is a dense delicious cake that takes a beating in your pack and still comes out a treat. Made for the pack it is done in loaf pans, I use the small ones so I have cakes for two, but for the Birthday cake I use a bunt cake pan. You can add any combination of peels or just one if you desire, I always like to add a tsp each of orange, lemon and grapefruit. If making for home I make a glaze to put on top and allow it to run down the sides.

Citrus pound cake

1/2 lb butter (do not use marg)
3 cups flour scoop measured
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp each of lemon peal, orange peal, and grapefruit peal
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 and prepare pans by coating with shortening or butter and dusting with flour.
Cream together butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time and beat in. Measure flour in a bowl and add baking powder, sift ingredients together. Add flour alternately with milk beginning and ending with flour. Stir in grated peals and pour into pan. You can use two 8" loaf pans or one Bunt cake pan. Bake one hour or until the cake springs back when you touch it with your finger. Glaze with Citrus glaze.

Citrus Glaze

1 1/2 - 2 cups conf sugar
3 tablespoons juice, I use one tablespoon each of orange, lemon and grapefruit
1 tsp mixed peal

Add juice to conf sugar beating until smooth, add more conf sugar to adjust consistency of glaze if desired, stir in peal and allow to set to mix flavors for at least one hour before pouring on cake.

Winter time blues and Boston Cream pie

Winter is dumping on us again, snow, snow and more snow, but I guess that is winter in Maine! The last storm buried my car in the hospital parking lot completely, not one spot of that bright blue Fit showing anywhere in the big mound of snow, when you have to shovel out to just get your doors open, that is a lot of snow!

I have been on the search for a really fantastic Boston cream pie recipe, there are tons of recipes on line, but so far either failed attempts or bad reviews have yet to find that perfect recipe. I remember making one as a child using vanilla sugar. Vanilla sugar had a vanilla bean buried in it, sitting for a few weeks occasionally shaking to distribute the flavor, this sugar was then used in both the cake and the cream filling. I am not sure if my childhood memories make this cake taste better then it really did, but the recipes I have tried so far fall far short of the effort to make such a cake from scratch.

My best stop for recipes is usually Epicurious.com, but the recipe there had so many bad reviews I really hesitate to make a third bad cake. Of the recipes I have tried, the cakes have come out heavy or dry, and the pudding too thick or floury.

So the search is on for a light buttery vanilla cake fulled with a creamy vanilla custard and topped with a rich fudge chocolate topping! I may have to search out each component for my own Boston Cream pie, but in the mean while I have a recipe I am going to try, reports on that soon.