Posts Tagged ‘Spice Cake’

Jam and Spice Cake

Friday, May 6th, 2011

 
My friend Peter from New York and Massachusetts came to visit my mother and me in Virginia this week. His dogs Lucca and Marco enjoyed a joyous reunion with my own Truffle.
 
We wanted to celebrate the visit—and to mark Peter’s birthday, which took place last week.
 
We tried barbecue from not one but two different local venues here in Fairfax County. It left a sweet and tangy taste in our mouths, the perfect preview for the cake I whipped up for the occasion.
 
Peter is NOT a standard birthday-cake boy. He eschews your basic chocolate and yellow cakes.
 
In the past, I have made him other recipes on this blog, including Teri’s Pumpkin Cake (probably his all-time favorite in my repertoire) and Rhubarb Baked Alaska.
 
So I thought this spicy jam cake would suite him well—and it did. The spices predominate. The jam barely makes a statement, but it does keep the cake moist.
 
I adapted the recipe from the Treasury of Tennessee Treats, an elderly but useful community cookbook sent to me recently by my friend Kelly Boyd, a native of Athens, Tennessee.
 
Jam and Spice Cake
 
Ingredients:
 
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) sweet butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in 1/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups flour
13 ounces (weight—1 very generous cup in volume) jam (I used raspberry)
 
Instructions:
 
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.
 
Cream together the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, followed by the spices and dissolved baking soda.
 
Stir in the flour, followed by the jam.
 
Pour the batter into the prepared pan (the batter will be a rather sad-looking color—sort of a grayish mud–but it will turn a lovely brown in the oven) and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. In my so-so electric oven this took 30 to 35 minutes.
 
Let the cake cool in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes; then invert and remove it and let it finish cooling. Ice with cream-cheese frosting. 

Serves 12.