Southerners Eat Too Much Cake

Could it be? Could it be that I actually made an honest-to-betsy Southern cake with a real life Southern pedigree? It seems so! The caramel cake is a southern classic with a capital C. Most authors agree that it is a staple of Southern cooking, with particular praise going to the Mississippi delta for its love of this cake. That being said, there is no classic recipe for this old favorite. Everybody’s grandma has there way of doing it, and everybody who makes it these days just can’t quite do it as well as they used to (at least that’s what all the blogs say). But I have a colleague who loves caramel cake, and I wanted to get this in before they left on summer vacation.

So what is caramel cake? It is a basic yellow cake, usually 2-3 layers, with a caramel frosting. The frosting is typically (though not always) a boiled frosting that sets into a hardened shell upon cooling to room temperature. So where did I begin? With tragedy.

Like a good cultural connoisseur, I didn’t want to get caught with just a single source for all my Southern baking. But like a bad librarian, I didn’t think to stick with my trusted sources. I abandoned Southern Living for Cheryl Day’s A Treasury of Southern Baking where I attempted to make the caramel cake recipe and the accompanying frosting.

Reader, I tell you, the recipe was the problem.

You see, the cookbook author told me to stir the caramel frequently, but she did not say how many Great American Rescue Dog Show contestants I could watch between stirring. She also neglected to mention how hot my stove was or the relative weakness of the cake when I was trying to balance it on my arm upside down. Okay, between you and me, maybe the recipe wasn’t the problem. I was off my game, and I have the tragic results to show for it.

It takes forever to make caramel. When I had come back for the 20th time to stir it, it had gone over and just started to scorch. I hated to poor all that effort down the drain, so I forced the icing through a sieve to remove the charred bit. After testing the flavor, it was okay to use. I tried to ice the cakes, but having such a high temperature meant that a lot of my liquid had evaporated, so I was left with about half the icing I needed. Add this to a recipe that said to butter but not parchment line my pans (always line them with parchment, you fool!), and it was a recipe for disaster. You can see the results below. It tasted fine. Pretty good actually. But we would have to be really close friends for me to serve you this cake.

So, I was pretty upset.

I was so disheartened. My kitchen was a wreck. My cake was even worse shape. And I didn’t know how to salvage this monstrosity. That’s when Dale said (between laughter at my cake-based trauma) that I should turn them into cake pops.

Now there’s an idea. I had never made cake pops, but I had left over skewers that I could cut in thirds and a cake I would never serve, so why not? If they sucked, I could chunk them, no harm no foul. So I scooped the cake into a bowl, squished it altogether, and rolled them into rough balls. The cake made 28 cake pops, which I stuck in the fridge. Later, I’d coat them with some dark chocolate I had lying around and some leftover sprinkles from Shavuot a few years ago. They’re very sweet (aren’t all cake pops?), but totally serve-able.

Now, I am not above being beaten by a cake. I have made things, had a bite, and thrown them in the trash. But I can make caramel cake. I have done it before. But I just had followed the path of a recipe that led me astray and not onto the path of righteousness. I needed someone stalwart. Someone proven. Someone virtuous to bring me out of this baking funk.

King Arthur Flour is my go to baking resource. Their website rules, their products are great, their recipes are clear and tested, and they’re employee-owned. What more could you want? I mean, they are out of Vermont, but that’s totally south of lots of places (in Canada…), so maybe they could help me out.

And I wasn’t so set on a traditional Southern caramel cake anymore. I just wanted a cake that was caramel. So I went with their Caramel Cake recipe. They’re short on descriptions, but their riff on the classic Southern cake uses caramel throughout the cake (not just in the icing) and a more reliable brown butter icing for a more consistent result than the typical caramel frosting found in Southern cakes. A cheat, but it had been a long afternoon, and I still had a second caramel to make.

This was another yellow style cake, but this time, instead of making a straight caramel, I made a caramel syrup that was combined into the cake, the frosting, and drizzled over the cake. It made for a very caramel-y tasting cake that was rich, sweet, earthy, and very satisfying. I think this might be my favorite cake I’ve made so far. It was well worth the hassle to get here.

Is this a true Southern caramel cake? No. It lacks the crunch of the icing that is key to that. But I’d argue that’s more a difference of technicality than taste. I’ll definitely try a caramel icing again (with a different recipe, jaysus chreesto), maybe in a mini-layer cake as we head into the fall. But for now, I’m counting this adventure in cake a success. I mean, with Southern cake expedition resulted in two cakes. Two cakes! Damn, Southerners eat too much cake.

I told a few people that I was embarking on this project, and my colleague Donna specifically requested to know when chocolate cake was in the offing. That took the Chocolate Chiffon Cake up the list.

So, is this cake Southern? Well, Southerners might like to claim it, but the origin of this cake is less disputed than many other classics. Traditionally, Harry Baker of California, an insurance salesman cum caterer is said to be the originator in 1927. Baker kept the popular cake’s recipe a secret, making a grapefruit version a staple at the Brown Derby Restaurant. In 1947, hHe sold the cake to General Mills, and a Betty Crocker pamphlet with 14 versions was introduced in 1948. Chiffon cake had it’s heyday in the 1950’s and 1960’s when it was a simple and fashionable desert. Versions abound, ranging from basic to grapefruit to rum to the chocolate I made this week.

However, maybe not all is at is it seems. A 1934 South Carolina newspaper had a recipe for Apricot Chiffon Cake, well before Baker sold his recipe. Further, the recipe bears a resemblance to the chiffon pies that were known as “sissy pies” or “fairy tarts” in the early 1900’s. So, similar concepts may have been in the air, but this cake was definitely popularized through its commercialization by Betty Crocker (who put out a cake mix for it in the 1960’s).

I continued on using a Southern Living recipe this week. And it wasn’t until I got into it that I realized I was missing supplies. In particular, I was missing a 10 cup tube pan, more commonly known as an angel food cake pan. I don’t particularly care for angel food cake, so it’s no wonder I didn’t have one. So I went on a little bit of an ingredient and tool spree, and got some stuff I’d need for the next few weeks.

So, this cake comes together as most cakes do. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, salt) and then add in egg yolks, coffee, a small amount of oil, and vanilla. Combine until smooth. Then the egg whites are beat to stiff peaks with some of cream of tartar and folded in. The egg whites do the bulk of the lifting work in this recipe, though there is a some light leavening with the baking powder. The batter fills about 2/3 of the tin, and it cooks for an hour at 325. When it comes out, I used the legs on the tin to balance it over a skillet and let it cool for two hours before removing the cake. Dust with powdered sugar and serve. It makes for a tall, imposing cake.

How is it? It’s just like my forebears in the 1960’s said: it is light. It has a delicate, chewy texture and a nice, light chocolate taste. The serving notes say to pair it with whipped cream and fresh raspberries, and I cosign on this. The sweetness of the cream and the tart raspberry pairs nicely with the bitterness of the coffee/chocolate. There are versions of this cake that split it and add a layer of cream in the middle. I think this would be fine if you were going to serve it that day; otherwise, I think it would make the light cake soggy.

You can see in some of the pictures where I didn’t quite get it all the way cooked, so it was a little denser than it would have been with a full cook out.

I didn’t mind it. For something I’d never had, this really spoke to me, and I really enjoyed its mouth feel (what a word, though true), and I think I’ll be making it again. And now I know that I have a showpiece in case I ever need to impress my husband’s work colleagues that he brings home from the ad agency in our Mad Men-era alternate lifestyle.

The first cake up in the SETMC project is the classic Hummingbird Cake, a cake that I not only have never made, I had never tasted before.

The hummingbird cake was first submitted to Southern Living magazine in 1978 by Mrs. L. H. Wiggins of Greensboro, North Carolina. While little is known of Wiggins, the history of the cake predates this magazine article. Most have placed the origins of the cake in Jamaica in the late 1960’s, originally called the “Doctor bird cake” and it was used in various materials promoting tourism to the island. Versions of the cake also started popping up in community cookbooks in the early 1970’s. It was also the favorite cake at the 1978 Kentucky State Fair. Then there’s apocryphal reasons: it’s called hummingbird because guests will hum or they’ll hover over the cake dish. Others say that the hummingbird cake got its name from how sweet it is (and the birds attraction to sugar). However, it may be possible to say that the Wiggins Southern Living cake is the “definitive” version: the cake is Southern Living’s most popular and requested recipe of all time. I was surprised when I read that, so that’s why I had to start here.

This version of the hummingbird cake is a three layer cake separated and covered with a cream cheese frosting. Instead of butter, vegetable oil is used, leading to a bread like structure. Sweetness is added to the cake through a can of pineapples in juice and diced bananas, while chopped pecans add a crunchy and more earthy element. In the words of my husband: “it’s like a cake version of banana bread.”

So what did I think? Well, it wasn’t too tough to make. It’s a thick batter, so evening out the layers before it goes into the oven is key. Besides that, it’s a standard whipped up cream cheese frosting. Because the frosting is so soft, decoration is always going to be a little “homey,” and really, nuts are the only way to add any sort of finishing. The cake is so soft that cutting makes it fall apart and pieces are more mounds of cake than actual slices.

The taste of the cake is very sweet. Like I had the first piece and my brain was on fire and spinning for half an hour sweet. There is two pounds of sugar in the frosting and another 2 cups in the cake (plus what’s in the fruit). This is a sweet for those with a true sweet tooth. And while I enjoyed it, I honestly couldn’t see what the fuss was. If anything, it was like a carrot cake with a less rich spice profile.

But then again, the cake sort of grew on me over time. If you embrace the mound of it all, it actually provided a really good mix of cream cheese frosting, fruit, nuts, and cake. And as I kept sneaking back for another small piece, I found that a bite or two was the perfect way to eat this. Pair it with a dark cup of coffee or a strong tea, and would be a perfect way to round out an evening.

I took the last 2/3 into work on Monday (ironically enough, the same day as our Employee Appreciation Event), and it was gone by the end of the day. People really seemed to enjoy it which speaks well to the cakes crowd-pleasing nature but also its ability to retain moisture (I made it Saturday morning, and it was still totally good to go on Monday kept at room temperature in a cake tin).

Something I would make again, but not something likely to make the pantheon of my personal favorites.

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