Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Stop 19: Michigan Sauerkraut Cake

Remember how in the last post I vowed I was going to make the Lane cake next?  Well, it seems I lied.  I made the chocolate sauerkraut cake instead.  Oh yes, you heard me right, sauerkraut.  In a cake.  And you know what?  It wasn't half bad...

A few weeks ago I did the first recipe from Michigan, the Rice Krispies treats.  They were harmless and delicious.  This weekend, I was on the Cape, enjoying Memorial Day Weekend in beach-style when we (my mother and I) were challenged to a Scrabble game.  This is not an infrequent occasion with my mother and myself, nor the people who made the challenge.  It did seem to call for something exotic though, and since one of our challengers hasn't seemed to be able to get enough of sauerkraut recently, I decided to whip this little doozy up.  Of course, she hasn't been able to get enough of sauerkraut on hot dogs.  And sandwiches.  And other places where sauerkraut normally belongs.  And isn't disgusting.

In the book, Brown said that when looking for cakes that represent Michigan, he, unsurprisingly, came across a lot of recipes with German and Polish roots.   One that came up a lot was paczki, which is something like a doughnut.  Since it wasn't really a cake (and he knew I would never be able to deep fry anything), he kept looking, and eventually came across this cake.  

Brown's explanation for why sauerkraut makes sense in a cake is that it, "provides bulk in the batter and reacts with the baking soda to give more height to the cake.  Once it's baked into the cake, the texture of sauerkraut mimics that of shredded coconut..."  I found the first part of that reasoning to be untrue. though I did use a square pan that was larger than the round pan called for because we didn't have any round pans (what you'll find at the Cape house is always a bit of a mystery), and the second part to be completely true.  Not only did it take on the consistency of coconut, but it even tasted like it once you convinced yourself that was what was in it.

Brown's recipe called for the chocolate whole egg buttercream, but I didn't have it in me to make a meringue and deal with a hot stove, so I made the same old fashioned chocolate buttercream as I used on the Coca-Cola cake.  It never set up enough to make me happy, which probably had to do with the humidity (which was high).  

As far as how it tasted went, well, it tasted good.  I mean, for one thing, it was a cake filled with butter, eggs, sugar and sour cream, so really, how bad could it be.  As for the sauerkraut itself, you certainly couldn't taste that it was pickled cabbage.  There was no vinegar or cabbage flavor to it at all.  The consistency was a but like stringy coconut, which I didn't love, but everyone who tried it thought it was outstanding.  And the cake itself was dense and moist and everything a cake should be.  We didn't tell anyone what the secret ingredient was and made them guess.  One assumption was carrots, which I think was a good guess.  The best part was that my nine-year-old nephew, who normally won't touch anything that isn't "normal," asked if there was really cabbage in it and when discovered that there was, continued to eat it and even allowed that he liked it.  Though that might have had to do with the cake and it might just have had to do with him growing up.  Either way, I'll take it...

Here are some pics of it all dressed up.  There are still some pieces in the freezer if anyone wants to try it...




Next we're going off-book and taking a trip back in time to my New England youth...

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