Sugar Cake

Last week I was working out at the fitness club and watching Paula Deen on the FoodNetwork.  She was cooking with her son and going to make the gooiest cake ever for their meal.  I missed most of the episode when I switched during a commercial to the American Movie Classics channel.  When I returned to watching Paula, her son was just taking a small bite of the cake and said that in eating the one piece, he felt that he had developed a cavity.  I thought, that sounds really good!

We were having company over for dinner last night so I looked up the recipe for Paula Deen’s Toffee Gooey Butter Cake on the internet then figured out what I would  need to purchase at the store:  a yellow cake mix, toffee bits.  I found it incredibly hard to find toffee candy or toffee bits at the store.  Finally, I found the toffee bits at a smaller store in the baking area.  Strangely enough, I found toffee candy at the Home Depot hardware store when I was picking up some moss killer for my yard.  Too bad that my grocery store doesn’t sell moss killer.

I decided to make the cake the day before (Friday) so that it would be cool and ready for company on Saturday night.  It was very easy to make the cookie bottom using the cake mix, egg and one stick of (yes, you guessed it) butter.  After mixing in our stand mixer, I used my hands to pat the dough flat into the Pyrex 9x13 inch glass baking pan.  It covered the entire bottom of the pan and was about half an inch thick.

Then I made the filling, I was very careful to slowly mix the one pound of powered sugar into the two eggs and package of cream cheese.  I added the vanilla and then another stick of - butter.  The toffee bits are folded in to the filling just before spreading it into the pan.

I spread the filling over the bottom cookie, and placed it to cook for 50 minutes in the smaller bottom oven of our range.  After 40 minutes, it was smelling good, but was very runny in the middle of the pan, so I cooked it for the full 50 minutes.

Not good!  I could smell the burning odor even before I entered the room.  The top was just to the correct gooey consistence, but most of the bottom of the pan was burned.  Next time I cook something like that, I will use the larger oven. 

I did manage to salvage a little and took a bite.  I felt like I was going into insulin shock.  This cake was so sweet, really too sweet.  It was not a loss that we were not going to serve it to our company.  For desert, we ended up picking up an All American Chocolate Cake from Costco about 15 minutes before our guests arrived.  The burned portion was so bad that I just threw away all most all the cake.

I will not be making this recipe again, though I have a couple of small pieces saved in the pantry for later.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell