This is a traditional chocolate cake and it has never failed me. It’s so moist and delectable, I often don’t even frost it. I bake it in a large rectangular pan or as cupcakes then sprinkle some powdered sugar on top. A bite is like a warm hug, a sweet kiss, and a trip to grandma’s all rolled into one. Bake it in cake rounds and frost it-and you might as well stick some candles in it and call it your birthday. You know, one where you get to pick the number and everything.
It’s a made-from-scratch cake with the most basic of ingredients that are easy to keep on hand as staples, so go ahead, make it today. You probably have the stuff. As with all of my recipes, special flour isn’t required. This isn’t because I believe there is no purpose in this world for cake flour, but it simply doesn’t fit my culinary perspective. I totally stole that term from the Next Food Network Star series, in which they are constantly asking the contestants to define their culinary perspective. (And some of them have a lot of trouble doing it.) Culinary perspective is a somewhat pretentious term, so I use it slightly tongue-in-cheek, though I do have one. I’m interested in old-fashioned, traditional country cooking. There is a reason food is better in the country. It’s homegrown and homemade, created from scratch using the simplest of ingredients. Most of our great-grandmas didn’t have access to gourmet ingredients or even many of the ingredients that might be considered almost basic today. And yet they baked better cakes and pies and bread than we ever will with our fancy store-bought specialty ingredients. Self-sustaining and frugal, they practiced the art of making delicious food from pantry staples along with the milk they drew into the pail that morning, the eggs they tucked into their aprons from the hen house, and the butter they churned with their own hand. In other words, they weren’t running to the supercenter for cake flour. They knew how to make cake without it. We can, too. And so why isn’t the Food Network knocking at my door? Don’t they know I have a culinary perspective? It takes some of those contestants halfway through the season before they figure theirs out and by then they’re getting booted off! I already have mine! I’m ready!
Oh, yeah, this was a post about cake……
This cake recipe is my own. You won’t find it anywhere else on the internet. It’s based on an old-fashioned chocolate cake recipe from a cookbook long ago then adjusted to make a more satisfying cake, to me. I don’t like skimpy cake layers. (I don’t like skimpy icing, either. I don’t like skimpy anything!) It makes a moist, rich, light and high cake. We love it. I hope you will, too. (Please do not be afraid of scratch cakes. You haven’t had cake until you’ve had a scratch cake! Cake mixes….aren’t cake. Homemade….. Try it; you’ll like it.)
How to make Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cake:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla
1 2/3 cups milk
Heat oven to 350-degrees. Grease and flour two round cake pans. In a medium-size bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In another, larger bowl, combine butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Beat well. Add flour mixture and milk; beat again. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. These are tall layers and may take a bit longer to bake than you are accustomed to. However, ovens are different. For me and my oven and my cake pans, it takes the full 35 minutes. Your mileage may vary depending on your oven and whether your cake pans are 8-inch or 9-inch. Please watch your cake carefully. Do not open the oven during the first 15 minutes of baking-it may make your cake fall. At 30 minutes (or even 25 if your oven bakes quickly), check your cake with the toothpick test until done. Do not overbake! Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes then invert to cool completely.
If baking as cupcakes, cupcakes will be done in about 15-20 minutes. In a large rectangular baking pan, cake will be done in approximately 30 minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, or (especially if baking in cake rounds), ice with Fluffy White Frosting.
How to make Fluffy White Frosting:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
3 egg whites
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a pan on the stove. Cook till bubbly and sugar is dissolved. In a bowl, combine egg whites and vanilla. Add sugar mixture to egg whites, a little at a time, beating constantly. Continue beating until stiff peaks form. Easily frosts a two-layer cake. I can’t stand it when a recipe doesn’t make enough frosting. This one makes plenty. When you first make the frosting, it will be a bit warm from cooking the sugar-water mixture. It spreads easier if you refrigerate it for 30 minutes before frosting the cake. Make the icing while the cake is baking.
This is icing like nothing that comes in a plastic can at the store. It’s heaven in a bowl. This cake is great with vanilla ice cream-but with this icing, you won’t even want it. The icing is enough. It’s that good.
P.S. If you’re baking this cake with farm-fresh milk and eggs, it’s even better.
P.P.S. That’s how our great-grandmas made it.
P.P.P.S. Food Network producers? If you’re reading? Don’t forget that I have a culinary perspective.
P.P.P.P.S. Can I do the show from here? Cuz I have chores.
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This is not a cake; it’s an adventure.
I’m fascinated by old-fashioned recipes, and Burnt Sugar Cake has been on my must-try list for awhile. If you don’t recognize the name of the cake, you would most likely recognize the flavor. It’s a cake you had sometime in your childhood, while visiting older family members or at a church supper somewhere. Burnt Sugar Cake has a unique taste that just spells home and country roads and a day when people spent more time in the kitchen. But there’s a reason Burnt Sugar Cake isn’t so popular anymore-it does take time. There is no cake mix that will give you the flavor of burnt sugar. You have to “burn” the sugar yourself, and make the cake from scratch.
But let me tell you-it’s worth it.
I started out with a recipe from an elderly church lady who has since passed away. The recipe included the list of ingredients, with some measurements (but not all), and directions that were incredibly lacking. (In which she instructs about ingredients that aren’t even mentioned in the list of ingredients and measurements.) You know, it’s one of those recipes-the type where they all knew what they were doing and only halfway wrote it down because you were supposed to know, too. It gave absolutely no instructions about burning the sugar.
Lost, I turned to the internet and studied burnt sugar cake recipes I found online. I chose one and made it…. It was quite different from the “authentic” recipe I had from the elderly lady, but hey, at least it had directions. Unfortunately, the cake was terrible. It baked up dry and dense and just utterly unacceptable.
Not to be deterred, I took what I’d learned from the online recipe and went back to the “authentic” one. Armed with at least a sense of how burnt sugar is created and the process of this cake, I tackled the old-time recipe again, filling in the gaps with my own experience. You know, the experience the incomplete recipe assumed I had to begin with. The two recipes were different in several ways, and by and large my second attempt was based on the old-time recipe. However, where measurements were incomplete in the old-time recipe, I filled in with my own guesses from my baking background, and what I ended up with was a delicious, moist, light cake that fulfilled all my Burnt Sugar Cake dreams.
How to make Old-Time Burnt Sugar Cake:
Making Burnt Sugar Syrup-
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 1/3 cups water
Dump the sugar in a skillet on the stove. Turn the heat to medium-low.
You don’t actually “burn” the sugar-you melt it. The sugar will just…melt. Seriously. Who knew? (Stop laughing. I’m from the suburbs.)
Stir only occasionally. The less you stir, the better. If you can’t restrain yourself, walk away for five to ten minutes and come back. It will look like this.
Now add the hot water, continuing with your heat on medium-low. (The online recipe instructed me to boil the water before adding it. This was not in sync with the old-time recipe and it’s not necessary. (Old church ladies know this stuff!) I made the burnt sugar twice, with each recipe, and I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to boil the water. Just use it hot right out of your tap. That’s good enough.
The melted sugar gets all excited when you add the water and it will bubble up.
Then it will calm down and after another five to ten minutes (again, it doesn’t like to be stirred too much), it will look like this.
Turn off the heat and set it aside to cool to room temperature while you start preparing the cake. The syrup is thin while it’s hot, but as it cools, it thickens. By the way, if you’re ever snowed in and have to have pancakes, this makes a pancake syrup in a pinch. Add a bit of maple flavoring if you have some on hand and it’s make-do maple syrup. Just remember, however much you want to make, use equal parts sugar and water. You know, if you’re snowed in and have to have pancakes. I wouldn’t want anyone to go without pancakes ever again. It’s an unnecessary tragedy. (Never run out of pancake mix again, either-try my Quick Mix.)
Note: Using 1 1/3 cups sugar and 1 1/3 cups water, you’re going to end up with approximately 1 1/4 cups Burnt Sugar Syrup after it cooks down in the process. Your exact mileage may vary.
Making Burnt Sugar Cake-
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs (yolks/whites divided)
1/2 cup Burnt Sugar Syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup water (minus one teaspoon)
3/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In another bowl, combine room temperature butter and the sugar. Cream. Add two egg yolks and beat again.
In a small bowl, beat egg whites till fluffy.
Pour or spoon 1/2 cup of the Burnt Sugar Syrup in a one-cup measuring cup. Add the teaspoon of vanilla then add enough water (cool to lukewarm) to add up to a cup combined with the Burnt Sugar Syrup and the vanilla. To the bowl with flour, add the creamed butter/sugar/egg yolks, the Burnt Sugar Syrup mixture, and the milk. Beat well. Gently fold in the egg whites. (Do not beat again.) The online recipe didn’t call for the eggs to be separated with the whites beaten then folded in. This is an extra step, but it makes a difference. Trust me.
Divide into two round, greased cake pans.
Bake at 350-degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. (Don’t overbake!)
Cool and frost with Burnt Sugar Icing.
Making Burnt Sugar Icing-
16 ounces powdered sugar
2/3 cup to 3/4 cup Burnt Sugar Syrup (however much you have left in the skillet! as noted above, your mileage will vary after your syrup cooks down)
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine and beat till smooth and spreadable. If your icing is too stiff because you found yourself on the low side with your remaining Burnt Sugar Syrup, add a bit of milk or water. Frost cake and decorate with pecan halves. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
Excuse me while I inhale this cake….
P.S. I don’t use cake flour. Ever. If a cake recipe can’t be made with regular flour, it’s just a bad recipe in my book. When I post a cake recipe, I’m using regular flour and it’s a recipe that works.
P.P.S. I don’t use bread flour, either. Ever. If a bread recipe can’t be made with regular flour, it’s just a bad recipe in my book. When I post a bread recipe, I’m using regular flour and it’s a recipe that works.
P.P.P.S. I’m too frugal for that special cake and bread flour nonsense.
P.P.P.P.S. I just wanted to use another P. The extra P’s are free!
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