A Tale of Two Cakes

It all started so innocently.  It always does.  
My Mother-in-laws  birthday was last week and the only thing she wanted from us was a caramel cake.
Done!  Like anyone needs to twist my arm to make a dessert.
I had been eyeing the recipe for Commitment Caramel Cake in Screen Doors and Sweet Tea for quite some time.  The picture in the book is so lovely and I love how cheeky Miss. Martha is in the sidebar: Caramel icing can sense fear.  Do not psych yourself out and it will be perfect.
Maybe that should've been my first clue that perhaps I was getting in over my head.
But, as I so oft tend to do, I just plowed right ahead.
I gathered my ingredients.  Butter (lots of butter), many many eggs,  vanilla extract, almond extract--ah, the batter smelled so divine!!  I carefully poured it into my cake pans and gently set them into the oven.  20 minutes passed.

Wow, this batter seems awfully, well, batter-y.  Lemme give it another 5 minutes...10 minutes...30 minutes.  By this time I was getting a little irked.  WHY IS MY CAKE NOT BAKING???
I turned to the Internet, and looked up other peoples blogs who had made this cake.  HUZZAH!  I was not the only who had cakes that wouldn't bake!  Maybe Miss. Martha used a convection oven and forgot to add that into the directions?  Who knows.  I was a little irritated.  And Jake was done watching Tinkerbell and wanted to play.  I threw the cakes on the counter and said to heck with it.  After the cakes and I cooled down, I took stock of my ingredients and realized I was not going to be able to make another Commitment Caramel Cake.  So I bid adieu to Miss Martha and turned to my other obsession, The Southern Foodways Alliance Cookbook. In it, is a recipe for Revelatory Caramel Cake, and lo and behold I had just enough eggs left to make the recipe.  I did not, however, have any cake flour left.  So I did a little all-purpose flour + cornstarch magic.  I also recruited my sous chef who makes anything an adventure. I took some liberty and added a little almond extract to the batter since it smelled so good.  Popped the cakes in the oven.  30 minutes later, perfectly done cake.  A perfectly white moist cake (no yolks in this recipe).


Hallelujah!


Now, since I abandoned Miss. Martha once she did me wrong with the cake, I decided to go ahead and make the caramel icing that went along with the SFA recipe.   Easy enough, it's caramel right?  I'd made Cracker Crack a million times--how much more difficult could it be?  Well...
pouring caramel on a cracker is a lot, A LOT different than trying to frost a cake with it.  It hardened almost instantly as I poured it on.  Then I dropped the bowl I was using ONTO THE CAKE.


Many expletives.

By this time I had been making cake (or cursing making cake) for about 4 hours.  We were to meet the family for a birthday dinner in approximately 15 minutes.  PLENTY of time to make another batch of caramel, right?  Despite the fact that you are supposed to let the caramel rest for 15 minutes before you whip it into icing.  I hurried through the steps and just poured the whole thing over the cake.  Resulting in the cake plate running over with caramel.

I said a little prayer that it would harden into a beautiful shell, and we ran out the door.

After dinner we headed back to the house for cake and presents.  The cake was...

Not photogenic.

I cut into the cake, or rather sawed through a relatively thick layer of caramel into a fluffy white cake.  Despite the homely appearance of the cake, it tasted pretty good.  

My ever-gracious father-in-law (who honestly declares everything I cook as the best thing he's ever put in his mouth) declared it the best caramel cake he ever put in his mouth.  

For me, the icing was a little thick and maybe diabetes-inducing sweet.  But the cake was moist and perfumed with vanilla and almond.

I'm of the opinion that it's going to take me a few more tries to perfect my caramel cake technique.  And I'm sure I'll adjust and tinker, that's just what I like to do.  I'm definitely going to try Miss. Martha's icing recipe, as she incorporates marshmallows and I imagine that helps keep the icing fluffy and smooth.

Ultimately, the cake ended up in the trash the next day.  

But PattyCake (my son's nickname for my Mother-in-law) arrives home from Charleston today, and there just might be a Caramel Cake waiting on the kitchen counter for her.

Here's a link to the recipe for Revelatory Caramel Cake.

Cheese Straws Vs. Cheese Wafers

There are some things that are quintessentially southern:
Sweet Tea
Fried Chicken
Greens
Country Ham
Pimento Cheese
Chicken Salad
And
Cheese Straws.  Or Wafers.
The debate rages on.
Cheese straws are one of those snacks you come to expect upon arrival below the Mason-Dixon line.  They are expected at cocktail parties and dinner parties.  At picnics  and black tie events.
Cheese straws are basically elevated cheese-its.
(I hope saying that didn't just put me on some foodie black-list.)
They are cheesy, crisp, should have a nice spicy bite, and usually leave you with a slight buttery sheen on your fingertips.
I love cheese.  Oooey gooey cheese, stinky cheese, cheese so sharp it makes your cheeks hurt.
And I do love cheese straws, be they in wafer form or not. In fact, I think I prefer them in wafer form.
(Foodie black list.)
I've been putting off making them for awhile, because literally, every southern cookbook has a recipe for them.  And they are all slightly different.  I was knee-deep in recipes.
Finally I just combined The Lee Bros.  and Miss Martha Hall Foose.  That is like some sort of southern super-hero.
I also discovered the joy of shredding cheese in the food processor. I may never go back to a cheese grater again.  Jake thought it was pretty cool too.
We rolled out the dough and used a pretty copper cookie cutter we found in the kitchen.  Made the perfect size wafer for me!
I added extra hot-sauce and red pepper, but they still weren't quite spicy enough for me.  Oh well, guess I'll have to make some more!  And they are super easy to make, so don't put it off!
I made 64 cheese wafers (and I still had some dough left over), which might sound excessive, but I ate about 10 straight out of the oven, and my husband had 7 when he got home, Jake ate about 4--so you can see how quickly these things disappear.
Get rolling!

Cheese Wafers (as inspired by Screen Doors and Sweet Tea)
Makes about 70

1 pound super sharp cheddar cheese shredded (The food processor is a big helper here)
2 sticks of butter softened and cut into pieces
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
2 or 3 dashes of hot pepper sauce
3 cups all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Line cookie sheets with parchment or foil.

Fit your food processor with the grater blade.  Cut the cheddar cheese into blocks that will fit into the food processor feeder tube.  Let the kiddo put his hand on yours while you feed the cheese through the grater.  Go ahead and marvel at how easy that was.

Change out the blade on the food processor to the metal blade.  Add the butter, salt, red pepper and hot sauce.  Pulse a few time to combine with the cheese.  Add the flour and pulse until a soft dough forms.  It'll gather itself into a ball.

Take the dough out of the processor and onto a lightly floured surface.  Roll out into a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick.  Cut out wafers with the cookie cutter.  Let the kid help.  Place wafers onto cookies sheets about 1/2 inch apart.

Bake in oven for about 10-15 minutes until lightly golden.  I kept checking them after 10 minutes.  I also like to check the bottoms to make sure they are not getting too brown.

Try to let them cool a bit before shoving into your mouth.

Sally Lunn Bread

Sally who?  It's a bread (as you might have gathered from the post title. duh.).  I've never made bread.  That seemed weird to me.  Why hadn't I ever made bread?  And who-the-who is Sally Lunn?
Lately whenever I run across a recipe that I've never- in-my-life heard of before, I'm pretty much guaranteed that if I holler over to my Mother-in-law, "Have you heard of ...?"  There's a pretty good chance that she has.
Sally Lunn is a classic southern bread that allegedly came from across the pond (ENGLAND).  There are a few different ideas about who (or what) Sally Lunn was.  Some stories say that Sally was the daughter of a pastry chef from Bath, England.  While yet other legends say it wasn't named after a person at all, rather it was a bastardization of a french phrase "soliel et lune" (sun and moon), which makes reference to the breads round shape.  Yet another myth says it springs from a type of brioche called "solilemme".  This is one of the greatest things about recipes to me--all the stories that go along with them and the history. Whenever I come across old cookbooks, I go a little ga-ga like some sort of epicurian nerd.  Ahem.
So you see the confusion. In any case, what we are talking about is a dense, yet light and slightly sweet yeasty bread.  Delicious.  Especially while piping hot schmeared with butter and strawberry preserves.  Which explains why I don't have any pretty fresh-out-of-the-oven pictures to share with you.  We descended upon it like vultures on fresh carrion.
I had three different Sally Lunn recipes staring at me, but I chose to go with The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook.  Why?  Because they are from Charleston, SC and I have been known to covet all things Charlestonian.
I also chose this recipe because the rising time was something like a total of 45 minutes.  Which seemed weird to me because all the other recipes were like 4 hours.  But hey.
Turns out the correct rising time probably is closer to somewhere in the 2 hour range. Of course my in-laws house is  freezing most of the time, and so after about 40 minutes of no-rise action, I got  smart and put the dough under the heat lamp on the stove.  Voila.  Magic rising dough.
And 35 minutes later amazingly beautiful bread.
Now go bake a loaf.

Sally Lunn Bread from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

1 cup whole milk
1 package (1/4 ounce, or 2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast, at room temperature
8 tablespoons butter, softened
1/3 cup sorghum molasses, cane syrup, or honey  (I used sorghum molasses.)
3 large eggs at room temperature
4 cups sifted unbleached all purpose flour, at room temperature
1 teaspoon salt

In a small saucepan, heat the milk over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the temperature read 105 degrees on a candy thermometer.  Turn off the heat.  Pour the yeast into the milk, whisk gently with a fork to dissolve (some of the yeast may not dissolve immediately), and let stand until tiny bubbles form on the surface of the milk, 5 to 10 minutes.

With an electric mixer, cream 7 tablespoon butter with the molasses in a large bowl until smooth, glossy, and slightly fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Add the eggs, 1 at a time and beat until cafe-au-lait in color (if you use honey, it will creamy light yellow).

In a medium bowl, sift the flour with the salt.  Add the flour mixture and the milk and yeast mixture to the egg mixture, about a 1/4 at a time, mixing well with wooden spoon after each addition, until all the flour is incorporated and the dough comes together.  Stir for a few minutes to ensure a smooth consistency.

Mark the level of the top of the dough on the outside of the bowl with a dab of butter or flour.  Cover the dough with a  clean dish towel and let it rest in a warm place.  When the dough has doubled in size, about 35 minutes (or in my case 1.5 hours), transfer it to a clean flat surface and punch it down.  Beat it with your fist 30 times.

Okay, my dough was super super super sticky.  Which I think was from the wonky time I had with it rising.

Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan with the remaining 1 tablespoon butter.  Transfer the dough to the loaf pan and pat it evenly into place.  Set in a warm place to rest.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  When the dough has doubled in size again (about 12 minutes--or in my case 30), bake on the middle rack for 35 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.  Cool the bread in the pan for 10 minutes.

Slice.  Butter.  Eat. Repeat.