By Kevin Williams
I was going to call this quarantine cake. It's really a delicious creation and it only has six ingredients. This recipe is a classic example of a "bare cupboard" cake. Amish cooks are terribly talented at whipping something tasty up out of almost nothing. And six ingredients is almost nothing. I've seen this recipe in many Amish cookbooks over the years so I thought the girls and I would try making it. With a 3 and a 6-year-old, six ingredients is about right for us. Aster, who is six, can pretty much do anything in the kitchen, so I could try something more complicated with her, but with Beatrice in the mix, we pretty much have to stick with "stir and bake" recipes.
Let's look at it in photos first:
This is the cake "naked" some out of the oven...it is definitely not the prettiest cake and I thought I had done something wrong with the pock-marks in it, but once the topping was added, all was fine.
Stirring up the nut topping....
A dollop of whipped cream makes this cake outstanding.
One step that tripped me up - and always trips me up - is how much to soften the butter. Melted butter is easier to work with but doesn't always conform with the science of baking. Neither, though, does a solid stick. I'd just make sure you use very soft, room temperature butter. Mine was still too cool and that let to more lumps of butter than I would have liked in the cake.
- ½ cup butter softened
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Nut Topping:
- 6 tablespoons butter softened
- 4 tablespoons milk
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- ½ cup chopped walnuts
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
- Add the buttermilk and baking soda. Mix well.
- Add in the flour and vanilla. Mix until combined.
- Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until the center bounces back when you touch it.
- While the cake is baking, make the topping. In a bowl, combine the butter, milk, brown sugar and nuts. Mix well.
- Spread this mixture all over the top of the warm cake.
- Place under the broiler (turned to low) and bake for 1-3 minutes or until the nut topping is bubbling.
- Remove from the oven and allow the cake to cool.
What size pan did you use for this?
9 X 13, sorry for the omission!
9X13 pan I guess?
Yes, sorry for the omission! 9 X 13 is what I used.
What size of pan did you use? sounds like a yummy cake!
Gosh, I am sorry, that was an omission on my part 9 X 13 pan, enjoy!
Have you tried grating the hard stick of butter on a box grater? It makes shreds which very quickly soften when stirred into batter.
Thank you, Nana, that is a REALLY good idea...ingenious, I will use that idea all the time when I have unsoftened butter in a recipe!
Did you grease the pan before adding the batter?
Yes, lightly grease. Enjoy, that is a GOOD cake!