
It was one of those I-have-to-bake-this moments.
Does this ever happen to you?
I was paging through Saveur, my food magazine of choice, and there it was: A magnificent caramel cake, from a cover story on the glories of Southern layer cakes. It reminded me of a treat my made-in-Minnesota mom baked when I was a kid, although Judy is strictly a 9x13-pan kind of gal.
Like mother, like son. I discovered, once again, that the layer cake is no friend to this klutz-prone baker. I took a stab at the recipe this morning, and man, that was one sad-looking cake. An embarrassment, really, so much so that I couldn't bring myself to photograph it. In the magazine, it was of course beautiful, mouth-wateringly so. Mine bears a passing familiarity to that food-porn version, in the way that Bradley Cooper and Jonah Hill are both movie stars.
My issues began when I discovered that our kitchen is equipped with just two 9-inch round baking pans, not the three that the recipe requires (at this point I should have trusted my instincts and gone the 9x13 route). Still, the cake baked up like a dream, light and spongy and fragrant, but with just two layers it was never going to be the towering confection depicted in the magazine. But still, cake is cake, right?
Preparing the caramel icing was a bit trickier, and that's not a comment on directions, which turned out to be exacting. It is one of those recipes that requires constant attention -- as in, standing at the stove, stirring, for more than a half an hour -- and author Ben Mims isn't just whistling "Dixie" when he suggests a candy thermometer, fixed to the side of the pan.
I couldn't find mine -- our kitchen's gadget drawer is as messy as my office cubicle -- so I relied upon an instant-read thermometer instead, and by the time the bubbling, getting-browner-by-the-second caramel icing had reached the proper temperature, it was too late. I'd burned it. Not enough to chuck it and start over (like that was going to happen; who keeps three cans of evaporated milk on hand?), but still. The curse was on.
Remember that part about yours truly and layer cakes? Because I'd planned on taking the finished product to the office, I skipped the cake pedestal idea (I once learned the hard way that they don't survive the drive downtown when resting on the wobbling floor of the car). Instead, I edged a large plate with skinny pieces of waxed paper -- which were going to catch the excess icing and prevent it from spilling onto the table -- and assembled the cake as instructed.