All Fo Food: Butter Pecan Cake...Trying out some Southern Living on a Cold Winter Sunday

The baked good of the week is a butter pecan cake from a recipe I found on Southern Living. What's a girl from New England doing scouting for recipes on Southern Living? Perhaps, I was trying to live vicariously through my food. It did after all snow over a foot a few days ago!

This cake is fantastic. I mean really, really fantastic. I have made a few cakes that follow this same style of recipe with amazing results each time. The cake starts the same way as typical, with creaming butter and sugar. But then, the eggs are separated and only the yokes are beaten into the batter at this stage. The recipe uses cake flour and buttermilk, which are added alternately as usual. But, there are two major differences in this method of cake. The first is that before the flour and buttermilk are added, melted white chocolate is added to the batter. The other variation is that the egg whites that were separated earlier are beaten to stiff peaks and folded in just before the batter is poured into the cake pans. These two simple steps really make for a superior cake. It's moister and lighter than your average cake. A good note here is that although it's a lot of arm work I whisk the egg whites to peaks rather than moving the batter to another bowl, cleaning the kitchenaid bowl and then beating the eggs. If you have a spare kitchenaid bowl or a hand mixer, go ahead and save your arms.

The frosting on this cake starts with toasting chopped pecans in butter.

Toasting the pecans...

This is added to cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar that has been beaten together. Don't skip the chilling of this frosting. Its very important, because otherwise frosting the cake will be very difficult and likely rip the cake. I thought the frosting was very good, but a part of me thought it could be better. In fact, I think I'll make this cake again, but instead substitute a caramel pecan frosting. I just think it'll suit the cake better.