It's called a December Cake, but you can make it any time
Yesterday was Jessica, our youngest daughter's, 19th birthday...I'm not sure when that happened, but here we were celebrating it.
I figured that as a full-fledged adult (not a just-turned-adult as she was last year, she might appreciate a cake that was not a sugary sweet kid's cake. When you're a kid, the cake is all about the icing...it doesn't matter what the cake looks or tastes like as long as it's blanketed beneath a layer of fluffy sugar laden icing.
I was searching through some old recipes my grandmother had clipped from newspapers and magazines from the 1920s through the 1970s when I came across a spice cake recipe called a "December Cake". I have no idea when this was popular, but I'm bringing it back.
What could be more appropriate for our December Birthday Girl than a December Cake? So off to the kitchen pantry to dig out the spices and set to work.
The result was a delicious sweet, but not too sweet, cake that was free of the extra fluff of a child's celebration. You could make this for holiday parties or for any other time of year and it will be a hit.
December Cake
1 1/2 cups of sifted flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
6 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of sour cream
1 cup raspberry jam
- Preheat oven to 350. Butter a cake pan. Sift together the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, the cloves, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg.
- Cream butter and brown sugar until light. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Beat in the sour cream. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until barely blended.
- Stir in jam. Pour into buttered pan. Bake for 30 minutes.
Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian
