We all have those recipes that don't go quite to plan. When I was twelve, my home economics teacher begged me to never take the subject as an elective after my macaroni and cheese turned out grey! Shortly after I got married, I made a chicken curry and carefully halved everything in the recipe...or so I thought. It turns out that forgetting to halve the amount of lemon juice required can make or break a recipe!
But what about those times when a recipe goes wrong, and you love it.
WARNING: Cake purists will hate what they are about to see.
I came across a recipe in my files simply titled Century Old Blackberry Cake. I have no idea where it is from, but when I suggested making it with blueberries instead of blackberries, hubby's eyes lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. So make the cake I did. As it happened, the recipe did not come with an oven temperature so a little trial and error was required. The recipe also claimed you needed half a cup of cloves, but I sensibly adjusted that to half a teaspoon.
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c butter
2 c flour
1/2 c buttermilk
2 tsp nutmeg
2 c blueberries
5 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
Cream sugar, butter, and eggs. Mix together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Add to creamed mix, then mix in buttermilk. Add blueberries last and be careful not to smoosh them too much. Bake in greased pan at about 300 degrees for 1 hour.
So far, so good, although the cake did start to sink in the middle as it cooled. (This will be important later, folks!)
The recipe suggested topping said century old cake with caramel icing. I did a quick search and turned up the
Cupcake Project's recipe for old-fashioned southern style caramel icing.
Perfect!
ANOTHER WARNING: You may collapse at the amount of sugar being used. Cake Purists: If you're still with me, you may want to run. Don't say I didn't warn you about the carnage that will follow.
Making this icing convinced me of one thing - old fashioned southern women had way too much time on their hands if they had nothing better to do than stand over a pan stirring long enough to make this icing. There, I've said it!
OK, to make your icing, mix 1/2 cup butter, 2 cups of sugar, and 3/4 cup evaporated milk in a pan. You want the butter to melt and the sugar to dissolve, but you do not want the mix to boil. Once everything has melted, turn to a low heat.
Meanwhile, on another burner, heat a cast-iron skillet. Then add half a cup of sugar. Keep stirring as the sugar turns to a liquid, but if you do it too quickly or for too long, you end up with harder than rock sugar. (Can you tell that I did this?)
Once you have liquid sugar, you pour it into the other sugar mix, but again, you have to stir it quickly and the other mix can't be too cool, or the liquid instantly turns to rock. (I did this too.)
And then you stir.
And stir.
And stir.
And I don't have enough patience to keep stirring like this, but eventually you'll have a thickish caramel icing which turns to a soft ball if you put a bit in cold water. When it reaches that stage, leave it to cool a bit, but not too much, before pouring it over your cake....
...which is where things took another odd turn. As I poured, the dent in the middle of my cake became larger and the caramel icing disappeared into a sinkhole. Of course, this meant I had no idea what I would find when we cut into the cake later that evening.
What a find! Yes, the cake had a dent in the middle, but the caramel had leaked into the center of the cake, mixing with the blueberries to make a deliciously gooey center.
If my cake went wrong, I'm not sure I want it to be right!
