Burnt Sugar Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Make the burnt sugar
In a granite pan, melt 1 cup of sugar over medium heat, stirring constantly.
Allow the sugar to burn until it smokes, then remove from heat.
Carefully add 1 cup of boiling water and return to heat, boiling until it forms a syrup.
Bake the cake
In a mixing bowl, combine 4 tablespoons of the burnt sugar syrup with your cake batter.
Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until done.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Browns and caramelizes into burnt sugar, giving the cake its deep, bitter-sweet flavor and color.
- Burnt sugar
- Adds a dark color and toasted, slightly bitter flavor to the cake batter.
The step that matters
Allowing the sugar to burn until it smokes. Sugar darkens and changes flavor quickly as it caramelizes. Too little burning gives a pale, sweet syrup, while overburning turns it acrid and bitter. Removing it from heat at the right moment sets the flavor.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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