1900 to 1916 Cake #1

Woohoo, I have entered the next century! Huge changes happened in baking at the beginning of the 20th century. New technology such as the gas cookstove and the electric stand mixer made baking easier and more consistent, new food products like Crisco made baking more affordable, celebrity cooking teachers spread more knowledge and fun, and 15 million new immigrants from around the world brought new wonderful flavors and techniques.

Burnt Leather Cake

Caramel is one of the oldest candies and is one of the most universally popular flavors. Caramel is burnt sugar. This cake was called either the Burnt Leather or the Burnt Sugar Cake and appeared in in cookbooks and news articles around 1906.

*Interesting factoid I pulled directly from the book:

Making caramel is an old European tradition, and it came to America with the immigrants who knew how to cook down white sugar into an amber syrup. Caramel cakes, syrups. candies, and icings were alive and well before the 20th century. But something called penuche commanded everyone's attention in the early 1900's. It was similar to a caramel icing but thicker, and often contained pecans or walnuts. the frosting was named for the Mexican brown sugar fudge candy called panocha, and it would inspire a quick penuche fudge mix of the 1940's. Today much of the Midwest still calls a caramel frosting "Penuche".

My experience:

This cake has multiple steps. Each step is not that difficult but it takes a lot of time and a lot of cleaning. This cake looked and tasted really good. My husband said it was his favorite by far and the teachers at his school gobbled it up. I put an ear-mark on this page as a possible future cake that I could make in my bakery:)