Burnt Sugar Icing

From Lost Recipes by Marion Cunningham

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons Burnt Sugar Syrup
About 1/2 cup heavy cream

Put the butter, confectioners' sugar, salt, and syrup in a mixing bowl. Beat until mixed - it will be very stiff at this point, Slowly add enough of the cream to make a spreadable icing.

(If you add too much cream as I did, add more confectioners' sugar! Powdered sugar saves the day again.)

Brownstone Front Cake

From Lost Recipes by Marion Cunningham

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs, separated
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
Burnt Sugar Syrup
Burnt Sugar Icing

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and lightly flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

Put the butter in a mixing bowl and beat for a few seconds; add the brown sugar and beat until mixed (the mixture will be dry at this point). Add the egg yolks and mix well. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add half the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mixture, then add 1/2 cup of the burnt sugar syrup mixed with the 1/2 cup water (reserve the remaining syrup for the icing). Repeat and beat until smooth. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Using the electric mixer*, fold the whites into the batter on the lowest speed. Fold only until barely blended.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared plans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center of a layer comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let the layers cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto racks to cool completely. Frost with Burnt Sugar Icing.

*I folded it by hand, call me crazy.

Burnt Sugar Syrup

From Lost Recipes by Marion Cunningham

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup boiling water

Put the sugar in a skillet over medium heat and cook, stirring often, until the sugar has melted and turns a clear, rich brown. Slowly add the boiling water, stirring constantly. Continue to stir the syrup until it is smooth. It will be lumpy and sticky until stirring and cooking melts and smoothes the sugar. When the syrup is ready, pour it into a jar and set aside to cool.

My notes:
This does take a while, so be patient. Very carefully add the boiling water because it will bubble up a lot and spit a bit. Nothing hurts worse than molten sugar on bare flesh. When I made it, the syrup never got lumpy, but it turned out fine. I used a pickle jar to contain the syrup and that worked perfectly.

The Lost Files

As I was pawing through my mother's rather extensive cookbook collection, of which she rarely uses, I find one that pops out. It is a pretty little hardback called Lost Recipes by Marion Cunningham. As with most cookbooks, I flipped to the back to look over the dessert section. Two recipes stopped me with their utter bizarreness. One is the Brownstone Front Cake whose flavor comes from Burnt Sugar Syrup and the second is the Hoosier Cake with Gravy Icing. Gravy and icing in one recipe, how could I resist.

I made the Hoosier Cake first. It is a very basic chocolate cake that yields a nice, light texture and very moist. The recipe needs a bit of tweaking, such as the complete lack of salt in it. The cake definitely needs some and is missing that depth.

I am in love with the Gravy Icing. Flour and milk are cooked down together and the mass is added to creamed butter and sugar with a bit of vanilla. This recipe also did not have any salt, and would have benefitted from a bit. The end result is a light, billowy, smooth icing that is a joy to work with. The taste is unique and not overly sweet with a very soft mouthfeel, but not as greasy as buttercream. The recipe on its own makes a fairly good icing, but I think with some work, this could become one of my favorites. Perhaps some Grand Marnier and orange zest, or melted chocolate could perk it up and add depth.

After the sucess of those recipes, I moved on to the Brownstone Cake. Ms. Cunningham mentions that cake is also known as Caramel Cake and Burnt Leather Cake among others, and I find both fitting. Sugar is cooked down and water added to make a thick, honey-like caramel syrup. The syrup is then used to flavor both the cake and its frosting. The cake is very straight forward and simple to make. The recipe says to use two 8 or 9 inch pans, but I only have one of each, so I used the entire batch in my 8 x 3 pan. The oven was only set to 350, but the cake still almost burned on the outside and took ages to cook. This made for a very crispy outside which is far from the ideal. Next time I will definitely use two pans, and that might fix the problem. The cake was also very dense, bricklike if you will. Also not my ideal. I am uncertain if this is because of the pan issue, or a brand new one.

The frosting is made by blending butter, confectioner's sugar, and the rest of the burnt sugar syrup. Heavy cream is added to thin just enough to be spreadable. The icing is very sweet and is too sweet for my taste. It is a very interesting taste, though and could have other applications. The icing with the cake was too much in my opinion. Near nauseatingly sweet icing and very dense super sweet cake do not pair well for me.