The Great Caramel Cake Challange, Part 1

For three years I lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama while I went to  graduate school and I was miserable. A mountain girl by nature, I felt profoundly out of place in the extreme heat and the endlessly expanding flatness of the place, its impenetrable forests, its ever present mold and insects, the vague undertone of violence simmering just under the surface of the place. I missed the company of the mountains and the austere generosity of mountain people. I am glad to be back in a landscape where I feel at home. But for the short while I lived in Alabama I was persistently just a little bit sad; the place seemed to make space for that sadness in the heat and humidity. There was a remedy too, and that remedy was called caramel cake.

The Smitten Kitchen Caramel Cake. Awesome Sourdough Starter in Mason Jar

Southern food is famous and for good reason. It does what all great food does in some way: it makes something wonderful out of very little. It is not fussy. It is simple and good even in Alabama. When I was the saddest in Tuscaloosa, I would go across the tracks to a little dilapidated-looking place beside the railroad track, called Maggie's Diner where the first thing you encountered upon walking through the front door was a solid wooden butcher block table covered in great, golden slabs of caramel cake.

It's hard to imagine that any place is bad when there are spots like Maggie's Diner and food like caramel cake is readily available. Maggie's caramel cake, in my book, is the gold standard: a moist, dense cake with a slightly salty, creamy caramel frosting. A single dense layer took me all day to finish. (But, then again, I am a nibbler. Emmy calls me "2 Bite Chuck").Since leaving Tuscaloosa I have tried caramel cake at any number of diners, I watched Paula Dean construct a fussy two layer cake decorated with pecans (of course!) and, while they were all delicious, none of these cakes ran even a close second to Maggie's cake.

Maybe it's the little bit of humidity that has returned to the air this weekend or the cherry blossoms, but I woke up this morning and knew that it was caramel cake weather. I googled caramel cake recipes and found this one on my favorite cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen.

The Smitten Kitchen Caramel Cake

I like this recipe OK. I really like the caramel glaze, though it is just that, a glaze, not a frosting. It's beautiful and glossy but lacking the creaminess of Maggie's frosting. I'm not crazy about the cake, which is a little bit too light and a little too thin. I suppose this is to be expected; god love the baker at Smitten Kitchen but she is a Yankee (I am too...) and the caramel cake is, to me, a deeply Southern dessert and the right recipe will come from a Southerner.

So, I'm opening this challenge to you, dear readers, dear customers. Do you have a good caramel cake recipe?  If so post it below and we'll try it out here at the Merc. If we like your recipe the best, we'll name our cake after you and you will be famous in our little town. Want to be a taste tester for our caramel cake challenge? Come on down to the Merc, taste the cake and let us know what you think!We're looking forward to hearing from you!

-Kirsten