Chocolatetown Special Cake

Awww... I had high expectations for this cake with such an awesome name! When I saw that that the recipe called for buttermilk, I was sure that Chocolatetown Special Cake would be especially delicious!

I decided to make it for my friend Sarah's belated birthday dinner, and even though nobody said anything, I could tell by the lack of "mmmm's" that the cake failed to make much of an impression. At least it looked pretty!

 

It was not a bad-tasting cake; it was just kind of blah. The texture was fine, not too dry or dense. The flavor is what was lacking. It was not a very chocolatey chocolate cake. The best part by far was the frosting, which was easy to find via a Google search even though it wasn't included on the recipe card.

Now, I have to wonder if it would have turned out differently if I hadn't substituted butter for shortening. Though I usually stick to the recipes as-is for this project, I couldn't help but think that butter would make a better-tasting cake. Am I wrong? But Crisco is so unnatural!

It would probably end up a waste of time, ingredients, and calories, but I kind of want to try this again with shortening, just because I'm curious. I'll post an update if I do.
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Chocolatetown Special Cake
½ cup Hershey Cocoa
½ cup boiling water
⅔ cup shortening
1¾ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2¼ cups unsifted flour
1½ tsp. baking soda
½tsp. salt
1⅓ cup buttermilk or sour milk

Stir cocoa and boiling water until smooth -- set aside. Cream shortening, sugar, and vanilla in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs, beat well. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt; add alternately with buttermilk to creamed mixture. Blen in coca mixture. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9" layer pans.
Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pans. Cool completely. Frost with Hershey's One-Bowl Buttercream Frosting (on back of cocoa can*).

To sour milk: use 4 tsp. vinegar plus milk to equal 1⅓ cups.
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*if your cocoa can is from 1986

Pralines (butterscotch)

If you're a fan of butterscotch, you'll love this recipe.
That being said....

Butterscotch was probably my favorite flavor when I was a kid. Butterscotch candies, butterscotch pudding, butterscotch pudding pops (anyone remember those?). Up until a few years ago, I would have been all over this recipe, since the first ingredient is a package of butterscotch pudding mix. But now I'm wary of processed foods like this, especially with artificial colorings and flavorings, which make my kid sick. I've become one of those people who dislikes the idea of all those unnatural chemicals circulating through my system. It's gotten to the point where I don't care for the taste of things I used to love, like the butterscotch candies I adored as a little girl.

I'm not a die-hard about it, though. If I'm invited out for dinner, I won't turn down food just because it came out of a box. My pantry stock includes crackers, chocolate chips, and Clif Bars. And of all the unnaturally-flavored and -colored, chemical- and preservative-laden processed foods out there, the worst one is my greatest weakness: Velveeta, in the form of hot cheese dip. I can't help myself.

In any case, for the sake of this baking project, I didn't hesitate to make this recipe along with the Pralines de Mexico, because taste tests are fun!

The list of ingredients is different, but the directions are identical: melt ingredients together, boil, add nuts, boil, stir, drop onto waxed paper, cool. The cooking part was easy, as long as I kept an eye on my candy thermometer so I didn't overcook the syrup.

 

Making the other recipe first, I learned that if I stirred the syrup too long before spooning it out onto the baking sheet, it hardened in the pot before I could finish. With this recipe, I learned that if you drop the syrup onto the baking sheet too soon, you end up with blobs of sticky goo.

Sadly, of the three dozen pralines I portioned out, the first two dozen never set up, so I had to trash them. The moral of this story is that the syrup needs to be stirred and cooled to a certain point (about a minute) so that it will crystallize properly on the baking sheet.

At least I had enough good ones to do the taste test with the other recipe. The butterscotch praline is on the left:

I don't know how much my bias against the pudding mix is getting in the way, but I prefer the Pralines de Mexico. That doesn't mean I dislike the butterscotch pralines, though. In fact, I thought they were good, too. I may have liked them more if I hadn't known about the pudding mix. I took the two batches over to a friend's house to share with her family, and they loved both kinds.

The butterscotch batch actually produced nicer-looking patties than the other pralines, so aesthetically, at least, this recipe wins.
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Pralines
1 pkg butterscotch pudding mix [not instant]
1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup evaporated milk
1 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 cup pecans [whole or chopped]

Combine all ingredients but nuts. Cook over low heat, stirring all the time. Add pecans and cook slowly until it forms a soft ball in cold water [about 236F]. Remove from fire and beat [about 1 minute]. Mixture thickens rapidly. Drop quickly be teaspoon on waxed paper [use a second spoon to scrape mixture off the dipping spoon].
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Pralines de Mexico

I found two recipes for Pralines in the yellow box, so I decided it was time for another taste test. "Test" isn't an accurate term, though, because I'd already picked out the winner just by reading the ingredients. I'm generally against anything that includes pre-packaged processed foods, so the Praline recipe that called for a box of butterscotch pudding and evaporated milk was automatically #2 against this simple combination of butter, sugars, and nuts. I can't say the other recipe tasted bad, but I prefer this one.

Candy-making is tricky, though. My grandmother (along with the rest of her generation) tested the readiness of her fudge, divinity, etc., by drizzling a sample into cold water to check the firmness. I'm sure with a LOT of trial and error, I would eventually get the hang of the old-fashioned way, but I'm very much a novice, and very much reliant on my candy thermometer. Even so, I overcooked my first batch by stepping away from the stove for two minutes. The syrup hardened faster than I could spoon it out of the pot, so all I could do was dump the rest of it into a sad pile at the end of the baking sheet:

The clumps that I did manage to form ended up too hard and grainy for a proper praline patty. The good news is that they still tasted good, and were perfect for crumbling into a praline topping for ice cream! I even stirred some crumbles along with cooled caramel sauce into homemade vanilla ice cream, and oh-my-yumness, it was one of the most delicious desserts I've ever made.

I still wanted to make this recipe correctly, so I tried again the next day, with much better (though not perfect) results.

Everything but the nuts goes in the pan. Easy!

Stir occasionally until boiling (I used a wooden spoon), then add the nuts and bring to a boil again. Still easy!

I kept a close eye on the candy thermometer, and turned off the heat when the temperature hit 238F.

The next part of the instructions says to stir rapidly until mixture just begins to lose its gloss. That's a little vague, so I wasn't entirely sure if I stopped stirring at the right moment, but I at least managed to get the whole batch spooned out into individual portions, even if they weren't exactly pretty.

Between this batch and the second Praline recipe I made afterwards, I learned that the main trick is stirring prior to portioning out the mixture. If you spoon it out too soon, it stays glossy and sticky without ever setting up firm. If you stir too much, it turns opaque and hardens in the pot. The largest portion in the photo above (lowest row, second from left) was the last scrapings of the pan that I barely managed to clump together. Most of the rest of them oozed into nice little patties before setting up, and even though they aren't the pretty rounds you can find in Southern candy counters, I was really pleased with the flavor and texture (firm, but soft to bite into).

I'll have to work on my portioning technique before I go giving them out as part of my holiday goody box, but I am definitely adding this recipe to my sweet-treat repertoire.
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Pralines de Mexico
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tbsp. light corn syrup
1 tbsp. butter or margarine
5 tbsp. water
1½ cups chopped pecans or 2 cups whole pecans

Combine all ingredients except nuts in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to boil. Add nuts and continue mixing over medium heat until mixture reaches soft ball stage of 238F. Remove from heat and stir rapidly until mixture just begins to lose its gloss. Quickly* drop candy from teaspoon onto waxed paper. Allow to cool and harden.
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* Recruit a buddy to help spoon out the portions double-time.
   Also, use a second spoon to scrape the syrup off the dipping spoon.

Caramel Sauce

 
I don't have time to go back and reread all my recipe posts, but if I have ever claimed that any confection other than caramel is my favorite, I was lying. Actually, it can be almost anything in the general family of cooked sugars, with an overwhelming preference for recipes that include butter and cream. Pralines, toffee, and brittle are definitely in this category (except peanut brittle, because the legumes don't do it for me). Probably, though, if you set out a buffet of all possible sweets, I would grab a spoon and dig in for a warm slurp of buttery, smooth caramel sauce.

 
This one is perfect. I don't even have any other comments about it. Just follow the directions.
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Caramel Sauce
½ cup sugar
½ cup white corn syrup
¼ cup butter or margarine
1 cup half & half
1 tsp vanilla
 
In a saucepan, place sugar, syrup, butter, and ½ cup cream. Cook slowly, stirring frequently, until a little mixture dropped in cold water forms a hard ball [about 260F on a candy thermometer]. Add ½ cup cream and cook until a little mixture forms a thread when dropped from a spoon [about 230F]. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Serve warm. [Yield: approx. 1-½ cups]
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**BONUS TIP**

Sprinkle a tiny pinch of coarse salt (fleur de sel if you wanna get really fancy) over the caramel before serving.

**EXTRA BONUS TIP**
 Make homemade vanilla ice cream, then lightly stir in crumbled pralines and cooled caramel sauce. Mmmmmmm! (I'd share a photo, but I already ate it.)

 

***EXTRA BONUS TIP UPDATE***

Even though I ate the praline-caramel-swirl ice cream, I recreated the delicious results by spooning caramel and praline crumbles on top of plain vanilla ice cream. This time, I remembered to take a photo. How yummy does this look??