A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [210]
Knoxville, Tennessee, hosts the World’s Fair with pavilions from around the world. Its theme: energy. Its symbol: the 266-foot Sunsphere with a revolving restaurant on top.
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BLACKBERRY JAM CAKE WITH BROWNED BUTTER FROSTING
MAKES ONE 9-INCH, 2-LAYER CAKE
Blackberries grow wild over much of the South and from early childhood on my brother and I would head into the brambles to fill our buckets. Daddy made a competition of the picking and rewarded the owner of the first filled bucket with a dollar—a fortune in those days. My Illinois mother turned the berries into jams and jellies, pies and cobblers. But never this spicy cake; I obtained the recipe while on assignment in Kentucky several years after she died. I have since eaten similar cakes in that swath of Appalachia that meanders through Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina before dipping into northernmost Georgia and South Carolina. Some cooks frost their jam cakes with chocolate icing but I think this browned butter frosting is a better choice.
Cake
1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) butter
2 large eggs
¾ cup sieved blackberry jam
1½ teaspoons baking soda
1½ cups buttermilk
22/3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Filling
1 cup sieved blackberry jam
Frosting
4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, chilled
2½ cups unsifted confectioners’ (10X) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
3 to 5 tablespoons half-and-half, milk, or evaporated milk
1. For the cake: Preheat the oven to 350° F. Coat two 9-inch layer cake pans with nonstick oil-and-flour baking spray and set aside.
2. Combine the sugar, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and salt in a large electric mixer bowl. Add the butter and beat at moderately high speed for about 2 minutes or until light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in one by one, then mix in the jam.
3. Quickly dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk (it will fizz), then, with the mixer at low speed, add the flour alternately with the buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Do not overbeat or your cake will be tough.
4. Divide the batter among the two pans and bake in the lower third of the oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until the layers pull from the sides of the pans and are springy to the touch.
5. Cool the cake layers in their upright pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, then loosen around the edge and turn out on the racks. Cool to room temperature.
6. To assemble the cake, place one layer upside down on a large round plate, spread with the jam filling, and set the second layer on top, this time right side up.
7. For the frosting: Melt the butter in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat, then allow it to brown slowly for 10 to 12 minutes or until the color of amber. Pour into a ramekin and set in the freezer for a few minutes or just until the butter begins to harden.
8. Using a hand electric mixer, cream the chilled butter, the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and salt until smooth, then beat in the half-and-half, tablespoon by tablespoon, until the frosting is a good spreading consistency. Note: You can make the frosting in a food processor fitted with the metal chopping blade. Simply whiz the butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt for several seconds until creamy, then pulse in the half-and-half 1 tablespoon at a time.
9. Swirl the frosting over the top and sides of the cake, then allow to dry for at least an hour before cutting. Make the pieces small; this cake is rich. Just what Southerners like.
If you drop a dish cloth while you’re cooking, company will come and go hungry.
—OLD SMOKIES SUPERSTITION
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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1983
Former Vanderbilt football hero Christie Hauck re-creates a beloved childhood cookie, then