August 1: Caramel Cake III, The Revenge of Caramel Cake

I had originally planned to make a cake called "Hat-in-the-Ring" cake from Betty Talmadge's Lovejoy Plantation Cookbook for this weekend.  My mother was friends with Betty Talmadge back in the late 1970's and 1980's. The book is full of great recipes and menus for entertaining; it includes instructions on roasting a pig and making Brunswick Stew for a crowd of 100+.  Betty spent a lot of time entertaining at Lovejoy Plantation as the wife of the governor and U.S. Senator, Herman Talmadge.  Lovejoy Plantation was located in the same area as the fictional Tara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, and Betty bought the facade of Tara used for the movie of GWTW and later donated it to the Margaret Mitchell Museum here in Atlanta.

The cake recipe is one that I had chosen back in January.  As I find recipes, I place an index card with the name of the recipe into an envelope and then choose from that envelope each week.  I thought that a "Hat -in-the-Ring" cake would be a perfect choice for this week of the first Republican debate since so many Republicans have thrown their "hats into the ring."  However, when I looked over the recipe this week, I noticed that it was Betty's own version of a Lane Cake - with raisins, bourbon, and pecans, just like I recently made on July 19.


What to do?


Luckily, during our trip last week to scout-out colleges, I found a great cookbook, Rumford Complete Cook Book (1941), at an antique store in Thomasville, North Carolina.  Thomasville is the birthplace of Thomasville Furniture and they have a large chair sculpture (about two stories tall) right in the middle of downtown.

The cookbook was formerly owned by Mrs. William Bowman of Greensboro, North Carolina.  It was published by the Rumford Chemical Works of Rumford, Rhode Island, a manufacturer of baking powder.  Rumford chemical issued pamphlets with recipes and cooking tips starting in the 1850's.  They published those recipes in a Complete Cook Book starting in 1908.

There are many pages in the cookbook which got much use and attention from Mrs. Bowman.  Inside, there are newspaper clippings of recipes "to stretch meat points" during the war years.  The best parts of the book are the recipes that she wrote on the end papers and inside covers of the book.  One, for her gingerbread, seemed to get the most use, but there are great-looking ones for ice box rolls, yeast bread, and apple sauce cake.

One recipe, that Mrs. Bowman clipped from the newspaper and cellophane-taped to the back cover was for a caramel cake.  It is a recipe for Easy Mix Cake and Caramel Frosting from Mary Lee Taylor. Mrs. Taylor (a pseudonym for an advertising copywriter named Erma Proetz) had a radio program on NBC called "Story of the Week" which always contained a "Recipe of the Week" sponsored by Pet Milk.  Mrs. Taylor was billed as a "home economist" and "nutritionist" for Pet Milk.  Sounds almost like the plot of the movie, Christmas in Connecticut, to me.  This recipe was originally broadcast on March 13, 1948.

The recipe, as written, is for a single layer cake and contains Pet Milk, of course.  I multiplied the recipe and made mine in three layers in my quest for a perfect caramel layer cake.  I used Pet Milk and stuck to the rest of the recipe.  A recipe by an ad copywriter?  Wow, it shows.  The proportion of baking powder to flour was alarmingly high.  The instructions to mix all the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and shortening all at once then add the eggs is contrary to everything I know about assembling a cake.  The cake was full of large air bubble pockets, and rose too quickly, caused by the baking powder and by not creaming the fat and sugar together, first.  The texture was very fragile with a large crumb and it fell apart removing it from the pan.  Dreadful!

The ugliest slice of cake.  Ever.

The frosting, on the other hand, turned out pretty well.  It has a smooth texture, not gritty and a very light color.  It doesn't have a strong enough flavor of burnt sugar and it is exceedingly sweet.  But, all caramel frostings are super sweet, to me.  I looked back at the clipping taped to the book cover and noticed that Mrs. Bowman had taped  it on top of her handwritten recipe for chocolate cake filling, so I am now thinking that she saved this recipe for the frosting, not the crazy cake.

My quest for a successful caramel cake recipe must continue, although I am not sure how much more effort I have the fortitude to invest; I feel like I am throwing good sugar after bad.  Maybe just one more attempt at a caramel cake?

So (without claiming to be a nutritionist or home economist) that is my "Story of the Week."


Next Saturday: Orange Cake