On a Saturday
in early December I met up with friends for some holiday baking. Each
person brought a few recipes. In addition, my friend Theresa brought a
few bottles of prosecco. Nothing says Christmas like booze in the
kitchen.
She also came
with a pistachio cookie recipe and with the hope that it tasted like the kind
she had at Modern Pastry, in Boston. (It didn’t. But it still
would have made a Sicilian grandmother proud.)
She had
cornflake wreaths on her list for her midwestern boyfriend, as well.
Which—if you are unfamiliar—are like rice crispy treats, except that you use
cornflakes and add enough almond extract and green food coloring to give you a
migraine and possibly rupture a few blood vessels. The coloring also
taints your tongue in a way that would make the Hulk proud. Not that any
of this prevents you from eating the suspicious emerald green batter.
My friends,
Justin and David, had visions of cocoa thumbprints and vanilla bean
shortbread. Plus sugar cookies destined to be cut into the silhouettes of
candy canes, snowflakes, and … dinosaurs. The dinos conquered. All
the cookies delivered.
And I came with
a recipe for chocolate caramels gilded with cinnamon fleur de sel and
the promise of Earl’s cake. The caramels were a disaster. In kind,
I treated them like a failed relationship, obsessing about what I could have
done differently and eating my feelings by way of leftover chocolate, plus
anything else within arm’s reach.
Heartbreaks
(and headaches) are the occasional byproducts of baking. Sometimes you
are just disappointed. But when a recipe really works, the stories around
it get baked into what you make. Memories are created. Sometimes these
memories can linger for a very long time. For a lifetime even.
Which brings me to Earl’s cake.
I have wanted
to bake Earl’s cake since I first read about it over a year ago. It’s a
recipe that a fellow blogger found while rummaging through her great
grandmother’s recipe box. In the box was an index card with the title “Earl’s favorite cake.” And in that cake was a memory. It was a cake that Earl, her
great grandfather, used to have as a child. His favorite cake.
The original
recipe called for shortening and was missing a set of instructions.
Earl’s only stipulation was that it had to be a square (!) cake with white
icing. The rest was pieced together. In short, it was a great story set
around cake. And when I sent it to Justin it made him cry.
Which is the
beauty of baking. There’s love, and hope, and the promise of something
like Earl’s cake folded into the batter. Whatever recipe you use becomes
your own; it gets mixed with new memories before being passed on again.
And so we sat
around a dining room table eating the cake we simply started to refer to as
“Earl.” Which, of course, made us giggle like a bunch of schoolgirls,
mouths full of frosted cake filled with cherries and candied fruit. A few
glasses of bubbles deep.
It’s a
childlike cake. The kind that makes you feel like you are ten years old
again. It tastes like a marriage of eggnog and fruitcake. Lighter
than both, but still fairly sweet. It’s an American-style cake tamed by
lemon peel in the frosting and bits of citrus in the crumb. It’s perfect for
the holidays. Or for any old time.
It’s an old
recipe. A new memory. It’s a favorite cake of a man I’ve never
met. Earl.
Earl’s Cake
Adapted from Julie Takes Photos (formerly
Always with Butter)
Ingredients:
for the cake
2 cups flour
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup low fat buttermilk
½ cup raisins
½ cup candied citrus, finely chopped
(reserve a few pieces for garnish, I used candied citron for this: see notes)
¼ cup booze-soaked sour cherries (or you
could try maraschino, either way: see the notes)
for the frosting
½ cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 tsp vanilla
2-4 tbsp milk
zest of 1 lemon
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 8 x 8 baking dish (we only had a rectangular dish, sorry Earl). Sift
together the flour, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In
the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter together until light and
fluffy. Slowly add in the buttermilk
while the mixer is still running.
Then add in the flour mixture in three separate parts until just
combined. Stop the mixer and fold
in the raisins, candied fruit, and cherries; all of the flour should be
incorporated at this stage, but do not overmix.
Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for
30-45 minutes or until the center is set and comes out clean when you insert a
toothpick into it.
When the cake has completely cooled, beat
all the frosting ingredients together; add additional milk, as needed. Spread the frosting over the cake and
top with the reserved candied fruit. (Candied citron is pictured on top.)
Notes:
-I might decrease the powdered sugar in the
frosting to make it less sweet next time, as this is how I tend to prefer my frosting. Feel free to play with the amount.
Not to change “Earl” too much, but I imagine a sour cream frosting would be lovely here too.
-I used some cherries that I had previously frozen from this recipe, which I adapted this summer by using cherries instead of cranberries. I also added vanilla bean and took out the wintry spices. You could also try making your own maraschinos, see here. Or buy them.
-I used a combination of candied citron and candied citrus peel for the candied citrus. Both of the recipes are available using the links provided, though you could also just buy some.
