I don’t know about you, but my grandma is not much of a baker. Or a cook. In fact, if it can’t be cooked in a microwave, she’s really not that interested. However, someone at Simply Delicious must have had a grandma who liked to bake, since they included 17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake.
I suppose they called it Grandma’s Spice Cake because it’s “old-fashioned”. Regardless of if an actual grandma baked/created this, it’s actually pretty good.
My mom probably never made this, but she’s into carrot muffins and chocolate zucchini muffins right now–she’d probably be into it these days.
Ingredients. I subbed out cranberry jam for a tart cherry/apricot one I got from the CSA service, fresh ginger for dried, and LF half-and-half for whipping cream. I didn’t have cardamom at the time, so I used allspice instead.
Melting butter in my trusty butter melter. I’m usually not one for one-use tools, but this thing is pretty nice to have when you need it.
Mixing it up in my stand mixer. Why do it by hand if I can do it with a machine? I miss having machines at work–I have to do everything by hand now.
Nice and light. This helps to make your cake more airy and less heavy.
Everything else–it’s kind of pretty in a simplistic way.
Adding in the jam after mixing the rest of the ingredients. This jam was pretty liquidy, but it seemed to work out in the end.
Greased and floured my pan. DON’T touch it after you do this or it’ll never be even–you can see where I messed it up on the left hand side of this pic.
All integrated–looks like spice cake batter to me. Smells like gingerbread.
Ready for the oven. If you put it in the toaster oven like I did, move the rack down or you’ll get peaking/burning on the top, which you don’t want.
Final product–you can see the peaked/burned top from being too close to the heat. I don’t have a good slice shot of this one–I made it along with 1-22: Onion-Potato Diamonds for a get-together I went to that evening. The ladies there did LOVE it though, so as long as you don’t burn the top, it’s a hit.
Grade: A
