December 26: Japanese Fruit Cake

Japanese Fruit Cake is the traditional Christmas cake for my mother's side of the family, though it is not a fruitcake.  Come to think of it, I am not even sure why it is claimed to be Japanese.  But I won't question tradition because it is absolutely one of my favorite cakes; spicy, buttery, fruity and rich.  I don't remember celebrating a Christmas without it.  I even have a Japanese Fruit Pie recipe, containing all of the same fruits and flavors, that is nearly as good.

The cake contains two layers of plain butter (1-2-3-4) cake alternated with two layers of spice cake containing allspice, cinnamon, cloves and raisins "chopped fine."  In between the layers is a lemon and coconut filling which requires natural coconut.

Alternating layers with filling

The recipe calls for "1 good-sized cocoanut, grated."  Natural coconut is perfect because it is not pre-sweetened like commercial, flaked coconut, so the filling is not overly sweet.  However, opening a coconut, peeling, then grating the meat is a chore.  There were a couple of years in the 1990s when Mom and I couldn't find nary a coconut in the grocery stores...

One year, we had to buy three coconuts in three different trips to three different stores.  First, we searched several stores, finding no coconuts.  Then, each time we found one that sounded good, i.e. heavy and sounding sloshy-full of coconut water, we took it home, cracked it, and found the meat moldy, smelly or both.  That year we gave up and bought flaked coconut and were able to finish the cake in time for Christmas.  The next year the same thing happened on our first attempt to find a suitable coconut, so we gave-in to the flaked stuff and cut our losses.  Ever since then, the prospect of buying a coconut at Christmas becomes a catalyst for much well-wishing, many prayers, and crossed fingers.

These days, I think that more people cook with natural coconut.  Plus, I live in an area of town with a large Asian community, so I was pretty confident in my ability to find a decent specimen.  I found one at my neighborhood grocery on my first attempt and it turned out to be a winner.  The way Mama Judy cracked a coconut was to drive an ice pick into two or three of the eyes of the coconut to poke holes to the center, and then turn it eyes-down on a glass and leave it to drain.  Keith had his drill in the house for another job, so with a clean drill bit we created the holes.   No stabbing required.  I then placed the drained coconut in a hot oven (about 400 degrees) and checked on it every few minutes.  The heat caused the cocoa-brown hard shell to crack.  After removing the shell, the thin brown inner shell could be removed with a vegetable peeler revealing the gorgeous white nut meat.

In most cases the nut meat cracks along with the outer casing, but this time, it came out whole like a big, sweet, oily pearl.  I stood back and looked at it for a few minutes; it seemed almost a shame to cut it up and grate it.  Although, maybe I was just dreading the grating.

There is nothing more dangerous to the skin on one's knuckles than having to grate coconut.  The grating was always one of my jobs during the cake baking when I was little.  This kid greased the pans with butter, cut the wax paper circles for the bottoms of the pans, dredged the raisins with flour, and grated the coconut.  I grew up with both a respect and a fear of the box grater.  If the cakes hadn't always been such a delicious reward for the dangerous work, I might have been terrified by the grater into adulthood.

It has been years since I have made a Japanese Fruit Cake on my own.  Mom usually makes it at her home and brings it over on Christmas day.  When my mom gave me a copy of Southern Cooking by Mrs. Dull for Christmas 1989, she had written helpful advice on page 231, the Japanese Fruit Cake recipe.  Her notations told me how long to bake the cakes, how much juice a lemon is expected to yield, and how to tell when the filling is the right consistency.  Mom always used the filling as the frosting on the outside of the cake.  I made the filling according to Mrs. Dull, but I ended up with only enough filling to go between the layers.  Mom had forgotten to note in my book that the recipe needed doubling.  I didn't have another coconut prepared to make more filling at the last minute.

Mrs. Dull's recipe instructed to cover the cake with white icing.  Seven minute frosting would be too sweet, and I knew that Autumn liked the spice cake layers with Universal White Frosting.  The Universal White Frosting recipe is from Stressed is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards by Sheryl Meddin and Bennett Frisch (see Myers's Rum Cake, November 7).  It is an amalgam of buttercream and cream cheese frostings and it goes very well with any spice cake.

So, my resulting cake was pretty and delicious, but not exactly the exotic, fruity traditional Christmas cake covered in fruit filling that we always have.  Maybe not a groundbreaking new tradition, but it was a festive Saturday Cake for Boxing Day.  I wrote a note in my cookbook to double the filling recipe and put the grater safely back in the cabinet without incident.

Next Saturday: A Review of a Year of Saturday Cakes

December 21: My Gluten-Free Pound Cake

It continues to be a week of baking here!  We visited Columbia friends and relations over the weekend, so I just got around to baking my Saturday Cake on Monday.  I chose my GF pound cake loaves to give one as a gift and to have a treat for myself.  I deserve a treat or two this time of year because Christmas means cookies, hundreds of cookies, boxes of cookies...

Our family gives boxes of homemade cookies to our neighbors, teachers, friends and coworkers every year.  This tradition evolved out of longstanding practices and fond remembrances of our childhood.  For me, Christmas has always meant time in the kitchen.  Mom and I always made a cake for Christmas Dinner.  On Christmas Eve, my parents and I would have a picnic on the floor under the Christmas tree and we were allowed to open one present at the picnic before heading to midnight mass.  The picnic was usually sandwiches or cold dishes like fruit, cheese and pâté.  Starting in middle school, I was the chef for Christmas Eve supper.  At first, I just selected and prepared the picnic fare.  But then I decided to go "gourmet" and pick a dish that I had never tried before.  I would make a list of ingredients and a game plan for the timing of the dinner, Mom would help me shop and then I did the rest.

Cookies for Teachers, 1981

Before Christmas Eve though, Mom and I baked gingerbread cookies.  We made dozens of gingerbread cookies to give as gifts and we kept some to serve at our picnic.  When I was a freshman in high school, I made ginger-caricatures of my teachers.  Each character cookie was about nine inches tall and was presented in a box on the last day before holiday break.

While in the Secret Service, I made gingerbread and other cookies to share on Christmas day for all of us working at the command post or duty desk.  After my shift on Christmas, I hosted an open house for friends, colleagues and neighbors who couldn't travel.  The open house tradition of sparkling wine, egg nog and finger foods on Christmas afternoon continued until I retired from the USSS.

When we were dating in 2005, I made gingerbread cookies for Keith and the kids.  He loved the cookies and said that the flavor reminded him of some cookies called "fruit bars" from the Eclair Bakery in the Five Points neighborhood of Columbia.  Keith used to make a special trip to that bakery for a box of fruit bars to bring home to Georgia every time he visited Columbia.  He shared the fruit bars with friends and coworkers and eventually he started buying a couple of extra boxes in order to keep some for himself.  The Eclair closed during the 1990s and ever since then, he has been wishing for more of his favorite cookies.

He described the fruit bars to me in comparison to our gingerbread; the spice is the same, but the bars tasted fruitier, and the bars weren't crisp like the gingerbread, they were cookie-like on the outside, but chewy in the center.  There was a color difference between the golden-brown outside (top and bottom) of the bar and the soft, dark inside layer.

I fell in love with Keith and his nostalgia for fruit bars.  So, I was determined to figure out how to make the fruit bars he remembered.  I started with Mom's gingerbread recipe and then added, subtracted, took notes, asked for critiques and practiced through seven iterations until I got it right.

Now, South Carolina Fruit Bars are the foundation of our holiday cookie assortment.  We usually make three or four different types of cookies or small cakes for the boxes.  Fruit bars start the list and get the most compliments from recipients.  We even have a few people every year who beg for the recipe, but Keith says he will never allow me to share it!

We made 55 boxes of cookies this year plus a few dozen extra of each type for ourselves.  Each box is loaded with cookies, tied with a bow and delivered by the family dressed in hats like Santa's elves during Christmas week.  For a friend with a gluten-intolerant spouse, I made the gluten-free pound cake and packed it in a box marked "gluten-free."  Then I put the usual assortment of cookies in a box for her and tagged it, "full-of-gluten."

Yes, there are 40 pounds of flour and 28 pounds of butter in that cart!

This year the boxes contained Shortbread Hearts from The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982),  Christmas Cookies (rich butter cookies with cherries on top from Southern Living), and Bourbon Pecan Balls from The White House Chef Cookbook (1968) by René Verdon.

Verdon was the French chef chosen for the White House by Jacqueline Kennedy, a decision which garnered her much criticism at the time.  Cousin Pat gave me the cookbook as a gift when I was hired by the USSS and the Bourbon Pecan Balls were always a favorite at my open houses.  Some years we make gingerbread boys and girls and Apple Spice Bread.  When Keith worked for Georgia Shakespeare, we made Gingerbards (a silhouette likeness of William, himself, crafted out of gingerbread and royal icing).

But, the most important occupants in every box are the fruit bars that won Keith's heart.

The last cake of the year:  Japanese Fruit Cake

December 13: Sunday Night Cake

My Sunday Night Cake on my newly-acquired, antique Dutch Kitchen (Hoosier)

During the summer, I found Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook (1961) at an antique mall near Concord, North Carolina.  Keith and I had driven Colin to Davidson college for a three-week Duke TIP program.  Duke TIP is a summer program for high-achieving youth in seventh grade and up.  It is essentially a "nerd camp," as any alumnus (including our Ian or Autumn) will proudly tell you.  This was Colin's first year at Duke TIP and he selected a course in architecture.  He had a fantastic time and made friends  with whom he shares common interests.

One of those friends is having her Bat Mitzvah on this Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina and has invited Colin to the big bash.  Keith's parents live in Columbia, so it will be a great chance to visit them for the holidays while giving Colin a chance to party with his TIP-ster chums.  Since we have been watching all of the James Bond films lately Colin is pretty fascinated with how debonair Bond can be.  Colin has elected to strike a James Bond image and will be wearing a white dinner jacket ensemble to the party.

Amy Vanderbilt is best known for her Complete Book of Etiquette (1952).  This cookbook was a great find for a myriad of reasons, not the least being the illustrations by Andy Warhol.  Warhol started out as a commercial illustrator and lived by selling his pen-and-ink illustrations before his first gallery show.  He was well-known for his illustrations, some in ink, some colored, of shoes in advertisements.  He was also known for similar illustrations of cats and there is an urban-art-history legend that he and his mother owned more than forty cats and that every one was named Sam.


In the 1980's, Mom and I visited my grandfather, Blaine, in Cherokee North Carolina. We stayed at one of the classic, kitschy motels on the reservation, The Pink Motel.  In the coffee shop of the lobby hung an original Andy Warhol painting of Mick Jagger.  What was THAT doing THERE?  It is an absolute mystery.  I will never forget the day that Mom and I first saw it just hanging there in a roadside tourist motel.  Blaine made some inquiries to try to satisfy our curiosity and the only explanation he could divine was a story about the owner of the motel being given the painting in payment of a debt.

Less mystifying to me, yet still curious is the name, Sunday Night Cake.  I Googled the term and found that virtually any cake - chocolate, cinnamon, etc. - could bear the label.

Amy Vanderbilt's Sunday Night Cake is two layers of cake flavored with almond extract and sprinkled with cognac after baking.  Between the layers is an almond custard and the frosting is made from almond paste and egg whites.  I suspect that in the style of The Art of Cooking and Serving (see October 10, Molasses Cake), a cake on Sunday night would be for an "informal" dinner, possibly planned and prepared by the man of the house, for the purposes of entertaining drop-in guests.  In Ms.Vanderbilt's recipe for Chicken a la King she even specifies such a gathering.

These time-tested recipes fit into almost any menu from brunch to midnight supper.  I like them especially for Sunday-night supper or for an unplanned Sunday luncheon when I suddenly decide it would be fun to have guests. (pg. 179)

Is this delicious but complicated and time-consuming recipe what constitutes "informal ease" in the Vanderbilt home?  Perhaps it is just rude of me to ask.  I suppose that should consult and etiquette guide to find out.

I think it is a touch of irony that in Warhol's work of the 1960's and 70's that he is best known for elevating the familiar products (Coca-Cola, Campbell's Soup) found in every American home to the status of art.

Perhaps the Vanderbilts did eat canned soup and drink Cokes, too.  But judging from this cake, their Sunday nights were a lot more complicated and elegant than ours.

Next Weekend:  My Gluten-Free Pound Cake

December 5 (well, 7th): The Chocoholic

I have a completely legitimate excuse for postponing my Saturday cake to Monday.

Wednesday, the 9th, was my son, Colin's fourteenth birthday and he chose this cake as his official birthday cake.

The Chocoholic as been on my list of cakes since early in the year.  The recipe is from Let Them Eat Cake: Classic, Decadent Desserts with Vegan, Gluten-Free and Healthy Variations by Gesine Bullock-Prado.  The cookbook was a Christmas present from my mom last year, and it is full of appealing recipes and beautiful photos of the desserts featured.  The best attribute of the book is that it provides a gluten-free version for each recipe; not just ingredient substitutions, but advice and tips to make a GF version turn out the same as the traditional.  I made Colin's Chocoholic using the basic recipe to try it out.  So that if it had turned out to be a disappointment, I could pinpoint the recipe as the problem, not the adjustments to make it GF.


 It was not, even remotely, a disappointment...

Although, the name of the cake has caused some chagrin in our family.  Keith and I have our own (some would say extensive) sets of grammatical pet peeves.  Please don't get me started on less-versus-fewer and why I won't shop at a grocery that has a "10 Items or Less" check-out line.  One of the burrs in Keith's language saddle is the attachment of "-aholic" to any word in a desire to note addiction or obsession.  "There is no such thing as shopahol or chocohol!" he rails. He feels the same way about "-gate" to denote a political scandal.  I love him so much!

Keith had a hard time finding fault with anything else on this cake.  And Colin has practically eaten the whole thing and it is only one day after his birthday.

The cake had three layers of delicious, dark chocolate cake, two layers of perfect chocolate mousse filling and it is covered all over with whipped chocolate ganache.  I am thrilled about how luxurious this cake is, how straightforward the directions in the recipe were and the fabulous potential for all of the gluten-free recipes in the book.

Colin has begged me to make The Chocoholic every week as my Saturday Cake in 2016.  I will take this under advisement, only if I can make the GF version.  The mousse and ganache tasted great, so I can't wait to try the whole thing.

This week, I am in serious-consideration-mode about what to write for Cake on Saturday in the new year; while a GF chocolate cake every week seems like a good idea now, I am afraid that I will become both bored and chubby in the process.


 Next Saturday (actually Sunday):  Sunday Night Cake

November 28: Granna's Nut Cake

My grandmother's Nut Cake recipe is one of the treasures I found as I sorted through her cookbooks and clippings.  I found slips of paper with notes, sometimes written by a stranger's hand, about family tree birth dates, maiden names and death dates.  Granna made lists of flowers she needed to use to make an arrangement for horticulture club.  She made lists of dishes to serve for certain birthdays.  I found lists she made of her planned menus for Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving lunches.

Her neat, tight, level handwriting spelled out her plan of action for entertaining the whole family for the holiday.  Occasionally, her notes featured prices of the items she planned to make, or whether she had a coupon, or notes on which market had the best sale.  On the nut cake recipe, in addition to lots of stains and smudges, were written the price-per-pound for all of the expensive ingredients: Butter $1.67, Candied Cherries 1.29, Pecans $3.75 (now three times the price).

Pricey Ingredients

Did I remember one of those specific Thanksgiving menus on slips of paper used as bookmarks in a recipe book?   Sometimes she dated the notes "Thanksgiving 1985" and I sat, wishing I could remember any specific holiday at her house.  But, they were unremarkable because they all pretty much featured the same menu.  Each planned item was a favorite of one of her children or grandchildren; there was her cornbread dressing, her sweet potato casserole, turkey (sometimes cooked by my grandfather on the grill until it was as dry as sawdust), asparagus casserole, cylindrical cranberry sauce with rings of indentations left by the can, her homemade potato rolls, and her nut cake.

Granna's nut cake was the perfect lovechild of fruitcake and poundcake.  I have never seen another recipe for this cake.  It has a golden crust showing just the slightest nut-shaped hints of the treasures inside.  Candied cherries, candied pineapple and chopped pecans are packed into the buttery cake with none of the crazy cloying citron or bizarrely-colored fruit of fruitcake infamy.  Granna always made the nut cake in advance (it bakes for three hours and has to cool in the pan) and wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil to store in the freezer until the night before we arrived at her house.

Keith likes to take us all out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner so that I don't have to "spend all day in the kitchen" instead of watching the Macy's parade on the couch with him.  But, I always make pies for dessert at home after the feast.  I always make pumpkin pie by Chief Wilma Mankiller's recipe.  Chief Mankiller was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma for many years and she was an honoree at my college commencement.  Her recipe calls for baking pumpkin from scratch and it is Keith's favorite pie.

Everyone loves Mama Judy's pecan pie recipe, so I made a gluten-free version and a gluten-"full" version.  I also made a coconut custard pie on a gluten-free crust.  Mama Judy used to make a coconut custard pie (probably from Mrs. Dull's cookbook) but I found an appealing recipe clipped from a newspaper stashed in one of Granna's cookbooks.  It turned our very well.  I used frozen, prepared pie crust this year to save time.  The pies turned out just fine albeit with soggy bottom crusts, so I won't take the easy way out on pastry next year.

We've been rolling in pie and then cake for days.  It was a great weekend.

Granna's notes were her way to plan, organize and even savor the excitement of our visits.  She probably sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee reviewing the list multiple times in preparation for a holiday.  When I look at the lists, I can see her working on them and her nut cake tastes like thanksgiving to me.

On Saturday:  The Chocoholic

November 21: Peanut Butter Cake Supreme

I've been wanting to try this recipe for months, but other recipes kept taking precedence.  It is from The Carter Family Favorites Cookbook by Ceil Dyer (1977).  Who would know more about peanut butter than a peanut farmer who became president?

I bought the cookbook at an estate sale shortly before Former President Carter announced that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer a few months ago.  I was drawn to the book because I have other White House/presidential themed cookbooks.  As a Georgia native, how could I resist?

When President Carter was in office and this book was published, we lived in Conyers, a suburb of Atlanta.  I had attended Montessori schools since the age of 2 (see January 24: Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake) and then attended Honey Creek Elementary in fourth and fifth grade. My parents' rule was that I was only allowed to watch two hours of television per week.

I had a terrible time deciding between Little House on the Prairie at 8pm on Mondays, The Waltons at 8pm on Thursdays and Wonder Woman, starring Lynda Carter, at 8pm on Saturdays.  I had the daunting task of keeping track which show's reruns to watch during holidays and summer break based on which shows I chose to watch during the regular season.  I would often get to watch whatever I wanted on TV at Mama Judy's and Papa's house when I spent the weekends there.  But, Mama Judy thought that Wonder Woman's costume was a little risqué, so I felt like I couldn't watch Lynda save America there.

This was all taking place during the Energy Crisis and President Carter would preempt broadcast shows for crisis updates and press conferences during the eight o'clock, prime-time hour.  It seemed to only happen on Mondays and Thursdays; the specific days that I was looking to get my precious TV allotment.  I would protest and complain to my Mom who would simply tell me that I would be able to watch the rerun, and to be quiet so that she could hear what the president was saying.

"Doesn't Jimmy Carter know that I only get to watch TWO HOURS of TV a week??!!"

I suppose that my mom got tired of listening to my protestations and told me that if I thought President Carter shouldn't broadcast during my prime-time shows, I should write a letter to the White House.  I did.  I cannot remember exactly what I said in the letter, but I received a form-letter response from the White House Correspondence Office a few weeks later.

Fifteen years after that, I applied to work for the US Secret Service and I remembered my complaint letter to the president.  The background investigation process sent Special Agents to talk to neighbors we had when I was three years old, former teachers, and employers.   It wasn't far-fetched to believe that they would also search some sort of White House database of letter-writers, too.  I was certain that sitting across from three senior agents for my hours-long panel interview, I would be asked about my complaint letter.  Worse yet, what if it would come up during the polygraph exam?  I worried about anything and everything.  The entire hiring process took two years and nine months from the time I applied until the job offer came (during which there was a government hiring freeze, most applications are processed in a year).  I was never asked about my TV letter once.  After being hired, I found out that the USSS only cares about letters that contain threats.

Peanut butter paperweight

The Peanut Butter Cake Supreme was actually pretty Ex-treme.  The recipe says to make it in four layers in 8' cake pans, but it turned out too tall for my cake dome!  It called for smooth peanut butter in the cake, along with self-rising flour.  The icing contains crunchy peanut butter and is cooked in a double-boiler.  I bought real peanut butter from Plains, Georgia at a roadside stand during the summer (re-run season).  But it was not sweetened, not salted and a little too crunchy for cake - not enough crunch for the icing.  I used Skippy instead.

The icing has a creamy, smooth consistency and looks alarmingly like some of my caramel icing fiascos - although here, the lumps are peanuts.  The cake is very soft and tender, but the icing is the very best part.  When I make this cake again, I will make it in 9" layers to make it less imposing and easier to store.  It might make fun cupcakes, too.

I have now acquired the Wonder Woman episodes on DVD, and I have some catching-up to do.
So, please excuse me...  Don't make me write a letter!

Next Saturday:  Granna's Nut Cake

November 14: Lemon Verbena Pound Cake

Saturday was my mother's birthday, but I didn't make her cake on Saturday.
There were more fantastic things than cake happening that day!

Gorgeous Mom, second from right

Saturday was the official opening of Conversations at the Eiteljorg Museum - a show featuring the work of the museum's 2015 Contemporary Art Fellows... of which my mother is one!  Her installation piece called Retracing the Trace, as well as some of her drawings, on display for the show, will become part of the museum's permanent collection.  Keith and I went to Indianapolis on Friday for the celebration and awards ceremony that night and stayed to visit the museum during the opening on Saturday.

Mom's gallery talks were very fine; they ignited many positive comments and interest from the attendees.  Retracing the Trace addresses the subject of sexual assault and specifically those sexual assaults which go unreported every day in the United States.  My mother is a survivor of a sexual assault in 1994; she was dragged off the road by a stranger during her morning jog in Piedmont Park in Atlanta.  Her rape was reported and investigated, but the police never found her attacker.  Mom has created art based on that experience in the past and has been very moved by the people who see her art and say "it happened to me, I was afraid to tell anyone."

The opening of Conversations was a lovely event and Mom has received great press coverage of her work, including an article in ARTnews online magazine.  Keith and I were incredibly impressed with the exhibit and the curatorial choices made.  Mom had a whirlwind week of docent training sessions, interviews, galley talks, catalogue signings, and PARTIES.  To give me a chance to bake, and her a chance to rest up for her birthday celebration, we postponed it until Monday.  I baked a Lemon Verbena Pound Cake on Sunday afternoon after I picked her up at the airport.

This recipe was one that my mother had been holding onto since 1989.  Like the Basil Pound Cake (see June 14), this cake recipe had been clipped from a magazine by my mom, and then passed to me for my Saturday Cakes.  Lemon verbena is my mother's favorite fragrance and the smell of it reminds me of her.  I've been saving this recipe for her birthday.

The recipe specifies "fresh" lemon verbena leaves to flavor the scalded milk for the cake.  I looked high and low for verbena at farmers' markets, gourmet stores, and nurseries, but I found none.  The recipe originally ran in the the August 1989 issue of House Beautiful.  I have to assume that in August 1989, verbena was easier to come-by than in November of 2015!

After some online research I felt confident that dried verbena could be substituted for fresh in a recipe, I just needed to use half as much.  The cake recipe calls for vegetable shortening instead of butter, which I found unusual for a pound cake.  The flavor of the cake comes from a small amount of almond extract in addition to the verbena-fragranced milk.  The cake is iced with a buttercream icing flavored with lemon extract.  The fragrance of the cake, once fully assembled, was rich and citrusy.

After dinner at our favorite neighborhood bistro on Monday night, we returned home for cake and the opening of presents.  Mom, Keith, and the kids loved the cake!  They suggested that the next time I make this recipe I try using butter instead of shortening to see how it turns out.  I will also strive to find fresh verbena next time to see how the cake differs.

I doubt that Mom has fully recovered from her week of celebration.  We need to start working immediately on planning her next birthday to make it top this one!

Tomorrow:  Peanut Butter Cake Supreme

November 7: Myers's Rum Cake

After Halloween's flailing, flying flop of a cake, I needed a great result this weekend.  Either that, or I would need to drown my sorrows.

Rum cake.

I think everyone who was alive in the 1970's and 80's has prepared, or at least eaten, the Bacardi Rum Cake recipe that appeared in Bacardi's magazine ads.  The recipe contains a yellow-cake mix, instant vanilla pudding and Bacardi Dark Rum.  Rich tasting and moist, but a little cloying from the mix+pudding, it was a staple at adult parties when I was growing up.  That recipe was one that I copied (by hand, on college-ruled notebook paper) to take to college in my collection of essential recipes from home.  Recipes for Mom's black raspberry cake, her spinach quiche, her spaghetti sauce, our friend's heavily-guarded-top-secret apple spice bread, Granna's chicken spaghetti, Granna's cornbread dressing, Judy's chess pie, Judy's pecan pie and fruit cobbler all had a place in my folder full of recipes.

During high school in Atlanta, in the 1980's, the ultimate treat was to go to The Dessert Place with friends.  We would order a dessert and coffee to celebrate a birthday or a fun outing at the Virginia-Highland location.  With our moms, would take a ladylike tea-time break from shopping and stop at The Dessert Place on East Paces Ferry in Buckhead.  The cream cheese brownies from The Dessert Place were the ultimate treat for me; the definition of indulgence.  A party with catered desserts from there was a symbol of good taste and luxury for my generation of Atlantans.

In the late 1990's, my mom became friends with Bennett Frisch, one of the two founders of The Dessert Place.  Bennett and her business partner, Sheryl Meddin, had just published a cookbook containing recipes for many of the popular desserts from their restaurant, Stressed Is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards.  I received and inscribed copy of the book as a gift from my mom when I was working for the Secret Service posted in Jackson, Mississippi.

While there is no recipe in the book for those fabulous brownies, there are many recipes that I love to use.  But, I had never made the Myers's Rum Cake.

After I decided to make this recipe, I found a fabulous new Bundt pan for the season.  It's called "Autumn Wreath," so I probably would have bought it anyway just to make cakes for our daughter. I had to buy it as a treat to make up for for last week's debacle.  The best part of the design of the pan, for this recipe, is the acorn-shaped crevices.  This recipe calls for greasing and flouring the pan and then adding toasted, chopped pecans and almonds to the bottom of the pan before filling it with batter.  So that the finished cake comes out with a crown of nut-filled nuts!

The recipe calls for using all purpose flour, and since I know it was written by an Atlanta baker, I chose White Lily All-Purpose because it is a traditional Southern flour.  After baking, the cake gets a sugar-butter-rum glaze while it is still hot in the pan.

This light and silky cake has lifted my mood.  It turned out spectacularly!  The glaze and nuts adorning the outside of the cake made it very attractive, especially in the autumnal-themed pan.  But the silkiness of the tender cake inside made it a real winner.  It had none of the sticky sweetness of its Bacardi & cake mix alter ego.  The rum flavor is subtle and the cake has just enough richness.

Success!

Next Weekend:  Lemon Verbena Pound Cake

October 31: Caramel Cake IV, The Final Chapter

Halloween is supposed to be scary.  So, what better time to embark on my fourth attempt to make a caramel cake.  Right?

Saturday started out with such potential:  I had already found a good recipe for the cake layers that had enough body for the heavy caramel (Nathalie Dupree's from Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking).  I made three lovely, level layers and set them out to cool on wire racks.  So far, so good.

The most promising development, since my last attempt, was an intriguing new recipe for the caramel icing.  I did not want to get my hopes up, especially because there was rain in the forecast for Sunday and the rising humidity could spell disaster for the caramel.

My friend, Ellen, took pity on me after my previous battles with caramel frosting and sent me this recipe.  Ellen is a native of Alabama and has many memories of the homemade caramel cakes served at funerals, church suppers and pot luck dinners over the years.  She has never made a caramel cake, but her family's southern pedigree is solid.  Ellen's parents own a large farm and Ellen inherited a green thumb.  She is the first person of my acquaintance who has successfully grown peonies in Georgia.  She is a career woman who values pragmatism while at the same time revering southern traditions.  A few years ago, after seeing a picture in the local newspaper of the local DAR chapter (picture a bunch of older ladies in hats wearing socks and orthopedic sandals with their dresses), she suggested that we "block rush" the DAR to shake up the establishment a bit, or at least inject a little style.

Ellen found the recipe for caramel icing in her recipe box.  It was one of her grandmother's recipes, handwritten on the back of a piece of paper with an Enfamil (baby formula) logo along with a note to "call Lou."  Ellen's grandmother, Christine Pinson, was known as "Blackie."  Blackie got her nickname in nursing school when nursing candidates were referred to as Miss (surname).  Blackie entered nursing school with her sister, and the confusion caused by two Misses Pinson led to the need for two official nicknames.  Christine with dark hair became "Blackie" and her sister, the blonde, became "Whitey."  Blackie became a public health nurse, hence the Enfamil paper.  Lou, also a nurse, was probably the source for the caramel icing recipe.

The recipe called for browning sugar in a skillet, then adding that to a mixture of evaporated milk, sugar and oleo (margarine).  In spite of my hesitation about using margarine, I tried it.  The recipe called for it, so I figured it was the accurate thing to do.  However, I also set some unsalted butter and a second round of measured ingredients aside to make a butter batch, just in case.

The first batch of sugar, I burnt in the iron skillet.

The next batch of sugar turned out fine and I moved on to bring the full mixture with milk and oleo to "soft ball" stage (240 degrees).  Or so I intended.  The batch never reached soft ball before burning to the bottom of the pan to such an extent, that I felt sure that the pan was ruined.

Results of the second batch, as black as my mood and potentially as dangerous.

So, after working up a sweat scrubbing the pan, I decided to try again.  By this time, the trick-or-treaters were out roaming the streets and I decided to blame goblins for the failure of that second batch.  After adjustments to the burner temperature, checking the accuracy of my candy thermometer and an internal pep talk, I was ready to try again.  Keith, meanwhile, had grown weary of my sighs and wary of my increasing frustration level.  He said "you know, you really don't have to make a caramel cake.  It's not like your Granna made them all of the time, she just said that her mother made them on Saturdays. I might even love you more if you don't make a caramel cake, ever.  I hate to see you like this."

The third batch, let me just be succinct, was another profound failure.  

Despite my attempts to remedy all of the possible errors from the second batch, I ended up scrubbing and scraping burnt sugar-tar from my favorite sauce pan.  There was grumbling, cussing and a welling-up of tears before I reached the zenith of my frustration.  I felt like Anthony Michael Hall's character in The Breakfast Club whose elephant lamp wouldn't light-up when he pulled the trunk.  I should be able to do this.

Why can't I make a caramel cake?  Why won't it light up when I pull the trunk?

Come and get it, opossums and birds!

At that moment of emotional overflow, I walked into the dining room and saw the pretty cake layers anticipating their icing.  Something snapped.  I told Keith to grab a bite of one of the cakes before it was too late, then I scooped up the cakes and marched out the door.  Then, I violently threw the cakes into the back yard watching them smash to bits against the old swing set.  

Let me backtrack briefly to remind you that I come from a proud line of women whose ultimate expression of anger toward an inanimate object is to throw it into the back yard.  My Mama Judy, in a particularly trying season in the 1950s, got so annoyed with an iron, that she hurled it out the back door - narrowly missing poor Papa's head.  The iron lay, rejected, in the backyard until Papa secretly picked it up and disposed of it sight-unseen by Judy.  There have been times in my life, and my mother's life, when throwing that offending toaster,  immersion blender, or computer mouse out the back door and leaving it there is the only alternative.  My cousin, Liz, refers to this state as "having a case of the Allgood Red-Ass."  I am pretty sure, based on the anecdotal evidence, that all of the Allgood girls have succumbed to the condition at some point.

I followed my attack of the "ARA" with a glass of wine as I sat on the couch and promised Keith that I wouldn't be attempting any more caramel cakes.  Besides, on Sunday I visited Granna and asked her why she thought my caramel cakes didn't work.  She admitted that she didn't remember ever making one.  So, I finally got a treat after all my tricky caramel disasters.  

The toothpick comes out clean, and I am done.

Next Saturday: Myers's Rum Cake