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| Boiling up the brown sugar, water and butter. |
The recipe was quite unusual, which added to the intrigue. I had never encountered this technique: boil up some brown sugar, butter and water, and then add dollops of cake batter atop the liquid and bake in the oven.
As I prepared this oddity, I had the sinking feeling it wouldn't work. But you know when you're positive you failed a test, and then engage in magical thinking, i.e., praying that some miracle occurred and you passed with flying colors? That's what happened to me. Although the further I got into the recipe, and less confident I became, once it was in the oven, magical thinking took over. I was hoping for some radical, pastry world rocket science physics-defying transformation in my oven.
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| The cake batter looked normal enough. |
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| Ready for the oven. |
This recipe card is from a filled-to-the brim recipe box that DH bought on ETSY and gave to me for Christmas. It was full of promise, and nearly 150 recipes. But now I'm a bit suspect, for the first recipe I made from the box also failed. Sweet Chocolate Cupcakes did taste good, but the batter cemented itself to the paper liners, making it impossible to eat the cakes without ingesting a bit of paper too. That's the kind of fiber you don't want.
My sister-in-law Margaret (and A Cake Bakes enthusiast) who was visiting and witnessed these two disasters, put forth this theory: As soon as the owner of this recipe box died, her family all said: Quick, let's get rid of Granny's recipes, she was such a horrible baker.
The failed Sweet Chocolate Cupcakes, above.
Or maybe this stash was the baker's intentional archive of disasters, to never be tried again, but only she knew that. I think you need to try at least one more before giving up on the whole lot.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: Thanks. I took your advice and tried something from the box called Dixie White Cake and it was a winner! Will post that recipe soon.
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