Grandma Lucy's Blackberry Cake

Renee sent me an e-mail with a couple of pictures and a story about how she was able to re-create one of Grandma Lucy's most famous cakes. The recipe she started with had ingredients, but no instructions!

Well, Renee tried it for the first time as a 13-year-old, and it turned out poorly. The cake was dry and the frosting was uninteresting. Something had gone wrong, but she wasn't sure what. Years later, Renee tried the recipe again, and got this delectable beauty:

Finished product of perfected cake 

How did she do it? Here is her story in her own words:

"Since Grandma Lucy owned her own restaurant, I felt that I wasn't doing justice to her cake. Granted I made the recipe as a 13 year old, and didn't have much baking experience.  

I received this recipe from Grandma Kathleen (Lucy's daughter). I received it on a visit to Florida in 2014.  

The way you make this cake is as follows: 

Make sure that you purchase heavy whipping cream for the cream. I also like to add a quarter teaspoon salt to the caramel sauce. Totally optional. 

For the cake, I found that it is best if it is baked in thin layers. So instead of baking and typical baking pans, bake it in four circular pans instead of two circular pants. You can bake them in thicker layers too, but you'll have leftover batter, and the cake may turn out dry, since it will need to be baked longer. 

Also, I line each pan with aluminum foil, spray with Pam, and dust with flour. You should do this step if you plan on making a layer cake. 

To make the cake, mix wet ingredients (except jam) in one bowl and dry ingredients in a bowl. I made my own sour milk. I placed 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar into a glass measuring cup. Then I poured in whole milk to the one cup line. Then I let it sit for a few minutes while I mixed together the dry ingredients, to let the milk sour. By the way, do not add blackberry jam until the very end. I am not sure exactly the best way to incorporate the jam. I put the jam into the cake batter by small spoonfuls and gently stirred the batter. Also, as in cake mixes, whisk the batter for two and a half minutes,. I did this before adding the jam. When the batter is ready, place into pans, and bake at 350 in a preheated oven. For the thin layers, you can get away with baking them for only 15 minutes. Bake them until done though, testing with a toothpick until it comes out clean. If you bake too long, it will make the cake dry. Sometimes very dry.

While the cake was baking, I heated up the cream on my stovetop. I added the cup of white sugar and packed cup of brown sugar and whisked it at high temperature, stirring occasionally until it was no longer grainy. After that point, I believe I only cooked it for three minutes. You want to have something similar to the consistency of caramel, but a little thinner. You want it to be thin enough that it can soak down into the cake. At this point, I have put the cake with bamboo skewers to make shish kabobs, and let the caramel ooze down into the cake. This cake is decadent, and delicious! Make sure that you pull the cake gently out of the foil soon after it is done baking. This is because the blackberry jam makes it stick to the pan, if you let it cool that for a very long time. The foil makes this much much easier. Feel free to simplify these directions. I have made this cake before, and made the caramel topping very thick. I don't believe that's how Grandma Lucy made it. I do like very much the consistency of the caramel topping oozing down into the cake."

What a treasure! I don't have very much experience with making cakes (box mix, anyone?), but it did occur to me that maybe the blackberry jam could be incorporated as something between layers. What do you cake-making people think? Would it ruin the effect of the runny frosting?

Also, anyone that tries out this recipe, feel free to let us know what you did and how the cake turned out. Happy baking!

EDIT: I asked Grandma Kathleen about mixing the jam in and the consistency of the frosting. Here's what she said:

"Mom's blackberry cake - yummy!

Yes, the jam gets mixed in with the cake batter.

Consistency of the frosting? Just like you are making candy (fudge). It gets sugary all too quickly. As I remember, it could be sort of saved by a spoonful of milk or cream at a time, stirred in. Good luck. It is certainly worth working for."

Ellen Eve Rowe's furniture

I remember this lovely old chair from when I was a kid. It sat in our storage room, unused. There was a large hole in the cane work of the seat. These pictures were taken after Renee had it restored.

This picture shows the chair with what I believe is the original cane work:

And this couch has a similar design at the top. This couch came from England with Ellen Eve Rowe around 1850, so we are guessing that the chair may have come over at the same time. However, there is no way of knowing for sure.