Sunday Feast № 14 | Cherry Poppy Seed Cake, or how I survived baking after not paying attention to loaf pan size

While and after reading "The Sweet Life in Paris" by David Lebovitz, I started frequenting his blog, where recently he posted his adaptation of the cherry poppy seed cake from newly released "Sweeter Off the Vine" by Yossy Arefi.    Still in the throws of "I can do baking" and having acquired a loaf pan, I had a go. It looked very easy compared to the blind bake followed by baking with the filling that the lemon tart required. No sifting. No kneading. No whisking, per say. Just dry ingredients and wet ingredients eventually combined and poured into a loaf pan en masse. Even the streusel topping looked easy. The fact that he clearly and up front calls for a 9 in/23 cm loaf pan I didn't note.    You see, I still remembered reading his loaf recipes from "The Sweet Life in Paris" and noting that all of them required an 8 in/20 cm pan. An autopilot, especially in a non-baker, is a dubious thing. No biggie you would think, right? Seeing mine filled not far off the brim with the batter and the streusel and ending with streusel surplus gave me a pause, but then I ushered it all into the preheated oven. I would like to say that me putting a baking tray underneath the pan was a learned trick to prevent possible spillage onto the over floor. Alas, no. It was a matter of convenience and prevention: easy sliding of the goodies from and to the middle oven rack, while avoiding the inevitable, in my case, singes of my hands, typically below the thumb, from the top oven rack. You'd think I'd invest in some oven mitts instead of making do with folded over dish cloths. Nonsense! But I digress. The advantage of an oven door with a glass panel and an inside light is that you can watch like a hawk the proceedings within without opening the door and tempting fate with temperature drops.    And there it was. The batter ever so slightly rose above the brim. Gasp! Will it spill?! Mind you, I am doing all this at around 11PM after a full day, and despite a 24/7 supermarket close by, this was not time for second attempts if I am to wake up early the next morning for another full day. So I checked. Sure enough. An autopilot, especially in a non-baker, is a dubious thing, more so since my loaf pan is 8½ in/21 cm! Neither 8 nor 9! Change in loaf pan dimensions from 8 in/20 cm to 8½ in/21 cm to 9 in/23 cm results in reasonable respective shifts in volume from 4 cups/948 ml to 6 cups/1.4 l to 8 cups/ 1.9 l, according to Joy of Baking. The batter did not keep on rising at the brim though. Phew! So how long will it take to bake? David wrote it took him 50 min. By now I figured that I have to abide some rules and do the skewer test in the middle to make sure the cake was fully baked at 50 min mark, then at 60, then at 65, then I watched the middle rise some, and then I lost the count of 5-10 min intervals, but I think it took ~80 min. I let the cake be on a cooling rack in the pan till the morning.    And the result? Tasty moist cake, as promised. Lessons learned in baking in this round: pan size matters and attention to detail is required, but with a bit of time and patient testing it might work out. Just don't bet on it every time. Also, any unbaked and baked streusel makes for a great addition to yogurt.