June 6: Spice Islands (?) Cake

Last week, while shopping for vintage books at a thrift store, our son, Colin, found a treat for me.  He found a set of activity books from the American Girls Collection for their character named Samantha who lived at the turn of the twentieth century.  Apparently, American Girls' Samantha also enjoys cooking, making crafts, trying-on new outfits and producing plays.  Sadly, there was only one cake recipe in the cook book from the set.  The recipe is for gingerbread, which reminded me of my Spice Islands Cake.

The Spice Islands Cake is one of my signature cakes.  I developed the recipe in order to replicate the delicious taste of the Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with whipped cream on top.  It was one of the recipes I created and tested when I was living in Washington, DC.  Whenever I had a difficult day (or week) at work, I would cook to relax.  I would take the resulting cookies, cakes, etc. to my office the next day.  I made many versions of this cake trying to get the spices, texture and appearance right.  I was a regular reader of Southern Living magazine and in 2004, I decided I was ready to submit this recipe to their annual recipe contest.

At that time, I called this "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake."  I obsessed over getting the written instructions simple and foolproof.  I even gave the recipe to a tester or two to see if they could follow the instructions I had written and arrive at an appropriate result.

The recipe uses three different types of sugar (brown, light brown and confectioners) and that year the contest was sponsored by Domino Sugar.  I figured that by specifying "Domino" sugars in my recipe, I would be a shoe-in for a brand-sponsored prize, if not a grand prize.

I did not win.

After I moved back home to Atlanta, I submitted this recipe again to the Southern Living contest.  But this was after my trip to Indonesia, my diagnosis of gluten intolerance, and a couple of years of sour grapes reading the "winning" recipes in issues of the magazine.  I decided that "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake"  was a boring name and that the name had cost me dearly in the judges' assessment.  For my second submission, in an attempt to take back some power from Indonesia, I named the cake Spice Islands.  I thought that it was clever.

Layers showing filling

I still did not win.

Everyone loves the cake, so the name must be my impediment to recipe contest glory.  Keith believes that my mistake in renaming the cake was two-fold; I named it after a place where I suffered terribly, and it could be confused with the Spice Island brand of herbs and spices.  I am now thinking of calling it Equator Cake since pineapples, cinnamon, ginger and cloves originated and a principally grown there.

Close-up of frosting

This (insert name here) cake consists of three layers of cake, with pineapple filling that is like a pineapple curd.  It is covered with a thick layer of stabilized whipped cream that contains even more pineapple.

Whether I submit this recipe to a contest again, or not, it is absolutely a winner.  The cake is moist and tender.  The filling is tangy with loads of pineapple flavor.  The whipped cream frosting has the creaminess to balance the spice and fruity tang of the cake and filling.  I wish all of my "pastimes" worked out this well.

Next Saturday:  Basil Pound Cake