Butterscotch Pecan Cake

The first year I lived in this apartment, my then-roommate and I decided to have people over for dinner about once a month. This way, we could save a little money by not going out, but we'd still get a chance to see our friends. We both decided it was a great idea, but it never really happened.

Fast forward three years, and two roommates later. I brought up the idea of monthly dinner parties with Joelf and he was 100% on board. We began to assess what it would take for us to host dinner parties: rearranging the apartment so that we could expand the table and have up to 10 people over at once, place settings for 10, serving platters and bowls (neither of us owned any), a few more wine glasses, low ball glasses for cocktails, candles, table linens, more utensils, appropriate dinner party music and centerpieces.

It was a major undertaking.

We made our list of all the people we know that we would want to have over for dinner, selected our first round of ten, and sent out invites.

We settled on a slightly traditional Sunday supper menu of a pork roast with roasted potatoes, braised red cabbage, and salad.

Everyone expected me to bake a cake, which I didn't. I had planned on making a pear-frangipane tart but the crust didn't work, so I baked little individual pear-frangipane things in little ramekins, but I didn't bake them in a ban-marie so they dried out and were not so great. But the pears! They were poached in rum and a vanilla bean and were SO YUMMY. Thanks, RLB (you can find the recipe in the Pie and Pastry Bible, under Pear and Almond Cream Tart).

So for November's dinner party, I felt obligated to bake a cake.

Butterscotch Pecan Cake

Nov 23, 2008
Name of Cake: Martha's Butterscotch Pecan Cake
Occasion: November Dinner Party
Constituents: 3 layers of brown sugar butter cake soaked with butterscotch sauce, filled and frosted with butterscotch cream cheese frosting, chopped toasted pecans for garnish

This cake is a little over the top.

But if you are a caramel fan, you will LOVE IT.

The first thing I did was make the frosting, as it benefits from an overnight in the refrigerator. This is because the frosting consists of a brown butter butterscotch that you cook first, then blend into an already nice and sweet cream cheese mixture. The overnight gives the butterscotch and the cream cheese time to sort out their differences and come to a harmonious agreement of sweet, tangy, caramel goodness.

experimentin'

The next day I baked the three cake layers, which are essentially yellow buttermilk cakes made with dark brown sugar. I used dark muscovado sugar for the dark brown sugar, which has a deeper, rounder, more full molassesy sugary flavor. I highly recommend substituting muscovado sugar in place of all your brown sugar needs. Especially in the butterscotch, mmmm. So much better.

Anyway, the cakes baked up without much mishap. They had that big, open crumb typical of an all-purpose cake and they were actually a bit dry and coarse. I guess that's why they needed a serious lathering of butterscotch sauce? Or did I do something wrong?

I made another round of butterscotch sauce, this time substituting Lyle's Golden Syrup for the corn syrup. This is the sauce that each cake layer soaks up before being filled and frosted. It all seemed like way too much to me--what was wrong with making a delicious and tasty butterscotch cake to go with the frosting, or making a simple brown sugar cake and going to town with a butterscotch buttercream, or covering the cake in butterscotch, skipping the frosting altogether and serving with whipped cream or ice cream on the side?

Anyhoots, I played along with the directions and basted each cake layer with butterscotch and stacked the cake. The middle layer threatened to slide right off the plate so I used a couple of straws to stake the cake, frosted the whole thing as much as I could bear, and covered the sides in pecans. Then the cake went back into the refrigerator for another overnight, in order for all that hoohah to sort themselves out, as well as to solidify everything so the cake didn't fall apart.

Butterscotch Pecan Cake

Dinner the next night went fairly smoothly; the conversation was good, if not unusual, and the roasted chicken and vegetable in a pumpkin thing turned out pretty darn good.

The cake was still a little chilled from the refrigerator and thus not as flavorful as it was later on at room temperature. It was very rich. And we all passed out from insulin shock. Just (barely) kidding about that last part.

Butterscotch Pecan Cake

At room temperature, the cake had a very pronounced caramel flavor, and was moist and very very sweet. Between all the sugar in the cake, butterscotch, and frosting we really did kill ourselves, just a little, with each slice we ate. I really enjoyed it, but I don't know if I will ever be making it again. Perhaps components of the cake--the extra butterscotch sauce warmed over vanilla ice cream is pretty damn good. Perhaps exploring other ways to celebrate butterscotch in cake form would be best.

November's Martha Stewart Living: Pecan Butterscotch Cake

Comments

  1. Anonymous2/12/08 00:05

    Oh a cake post! Yippee! It looks yummy.
    But it does sound very sweet with all the layers of butterscotch. (I think I have lost my extra sweet tooth I used to have 20 years ago. This wouldn't have bothered me at all back then. These days, I am a wimp.)
    Maybe deconstructed with just whipped cream between the layers, then the frosting with swirls of the butterscotch on the top of the cake?
    The frosting looks delicious!
    I love the idea of dinner parties to see your friends. But it still can be lots of work. When I lived in USA and was working nights, I used to meet up with everyone for Sunday brunch. Those were the good old days! I always had French toast and was very happy.
    Thanks for the wonderful cake post. Loved it, but as always, I wish we could have sampled it together!

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  2. Melinda, a deconstructed btterscotch cake is exactly what this recipe needs. Maybe someday I'll try it again!
    Our first dinner party was a bit of work, but the November one was much easier, and I have hope that the more dinner parties we throw, the easier it will become. They are fun!
    One of these days, I'll figure out how to send you a layered, frosted cake!!

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  3. Anonymous4/12/08 07:02

    This looks to die for! Congratulations on throwing a fantastic dinner party :)

    Is the recipe in any of Martha's books or better yet, on her website?

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  4. eatbehappy, the link is right up there, at the end of the post. I originally found it in the November issue of Martha Stewart Living (it's the dessert of the month). Thanks for stopping by!

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  5. ECL,
    It looks incredible! But why no pictures of the pear-frangipane thing? That sounds even better (well, except for the being dried out part).
    BBC

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  6. Wow, you are so ambitious with your dinner parties! With serving platters and everything...fancy pants! I become too stressed out over that type of thing. But I"m glad it's working out well for you! And the cake looks yummy, of course.

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  7. BBC, I think I have a few photos of the almond cream and the pears poaching, but that's about it. Not enough to post, I thought. Have you tried RLB's Pear and Almond Cream Tart? The pear part was really amazingly delicious.

    Amanda, well welcome back from Hawaii! I hope it was everything you hoped it to be and more. Dinner parties aren't so stressful when you're doing it with someone else, especially when that someone else is my roommate!

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  8. That must be the key...having someone else to help! My husband is fairly useless in those sorts of situations. You're lucky your roomie is on the same page as you are! Hawaii was great until it was cut short by a death in the family. :( Guess we'll just have to go back again next year...

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  9. Amanda, I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you can get back to Hawaii to finish that vacation soon.

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  10. uh, Amanda, I didn't mean that the vacation was the loss...

    sorry about that.

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  11. I just made this cake yesterday night, from 9:30 to midnight for my husband's birthday that is today. The cake is waiting for us in the fridge. Thanks for the tip on the room temperature.
    As I baked last night, I just couldn't believe the amount of butter and brown sugar that kept disappearing from my fridge! Amazing! I will probably make sure to eat a really thin slice tonight... I love your idea to serve the sauce with ice-cream! I also ended up with left over frosting. Do you have an idea on how I can use it up!
    Love your photos!
    Akiko

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  12. Akiko, thanks for stopping by! Do come back and let us know what you thought of the cake. I too ended up with leftover frosting. I freeze all leftover buttercreams for future cupcakes or sandwich cookies. You can defrost them on the counter and then give it a re-beat to come back to consistency. Technically frozen buttercream is good for 6 months or so, but I've used some that were in my freezer for a year or so, and they were perfectly fine.
    Take care,
    ECL

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