Every year, my man-friend and I host a half-time-show-watching-party on Super Bowl Sunday. This is really just an excuse for me to cook up some highly caloric deep fried food and share it with my favorite people. This year, I also decided to add an indulgent cake to the mix. Over the holidays, I bought this beautiful cookbook at the Historical Society in Indianapolis:
(As ever, I am far too uninteresting to be paid for these reviews, and I do not receive any perks or anything for promoting recipe books. Although, you know. I’m a teacher. I’m a little poor. Jocelyn, if you are reading this, I am accepting both money and gift cards for Disney World.)
Back to business.
I flipped through this cookbook and almost settled on an easy sheetcake, but having the entirety of my Sunday stretching before me, I decided it was a better idea to challenge myself a little. I asked my man-friend to choose between the caramel cake or the red velvet. He advised the red velvet. Predictably, I went with the caramel cake because I’m a little difficult.
There was nothing subtle about this particular recipe. The thing was rich. I’m going to put a picture here of the amount of brown sugar in the sponge. Prepare yourself before scrolling down.
That’s two and a half cups of brown sugar. The recipe also called for a fairly obscene amount of butter and seven (!) eggs. It also called for cake flour, one of my favorite things… cake flour is so underrated. Want your bakes to taste better? Try some cake flour. I really took my time mixing this batter because I wanted it to be nice and smooth. I had high hopes, and I think it really worked.
When I first started baking as a kid, I was very bad at getting things out of tins, but, as an older and wiser semi-adult, I have discovered the joy that is parchment paper, and my life has been changed forever. I have a slightly strange way of lining cake pans:
I tear off a sheet of parchment paper, and then keep folding towards one edge until I have a little wedge. I then trim the wide edge of the wedge so that it will fit in one half of the tin, and voila! Unfold a perfect little circle. The internet says that I should just use a pencil to trace the bottom of the pan and then cut it out with scissors, but this is more fun. It’s like a satisfying little art project. I always spray under the paper and over the paper with cooking spray, and I rarely have trouble turning things out now. I recommend this fun little artsy method.
Confession time: this recipe called for buttermilk, and I forgot to put it in. Oops. I considered not blogging about that because I want you all to think I know what I’m doing, but hey, the cake still turned out really yummy, so whatever.
While the cakes were baking, I started working on my caramel. Based on my experiences with chocolate, I was convinced that this was going to be a disaster. The recipe called for sugar, sweetened condensed milk, salt, and a stick of butter. I was so pessimistic about my odds of making this sauce successfully that I bought three cans of the condensed milk so that I could try more than once if I had to. However, Jocelyn didn’t let me down and the recipe worked perfectly. The book had excellent directions for managing the caramel and included several helpful notes like “at this point you will think that the caramel will never come together, but be patient.”, and “a strange-looking yellow film will develop at this stage, but don’t worry, that is supposed to happen,”. These upfront reassurances were soothing.
Here it is about halfway through the 45 minute cooking process:
The worst part of this bake was cleaning that pan.
I whipped half of the caramel into a buttercream that I was working on and saved half for pouring over the top. Then: assembly.
I knew this cake was going to be photographed for this blog, so I tried to be really careful during assembly, and I managed to create the first layer cake that didn’t tilt drunkenly that I’ve ever made. Look it’s straight!
This cake tasted pretty durn good. The brown sugar in the sponge made the whole cake taste like caramel. I do wish I had put more seasalt in the caramel sauce, but that can be adjusted. I highly recommend this book and will be revisiting it in the future!
Sidenote: My friends Josh and Jordan came over for the partay, and they brought this beautiful barbecue chicken biscuit ring thing:
It was the bomb. Dot. Com. Josh and Jordan, I’m going to require one of those at every party that I host from here on in. I mad a taco bar for dinner for everyone else, but for myself I just carried the loaf over to the table, set it at my place, and used the serving dish as my plate. Listen, it’s show choir season. I have no shame.
