Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake
Tanyard Farm, right down the road from us in West Hartford, Vermont, is a wonderful example of an old-fashioned, diversified family farm. The farm includes Jersey cows, chickens, and pigs, greenhouses for starting vegetable and bedding plants, fields for growing flowers and organic vegetables, bunnies and bantam chickens for visiting children to pet, and last, but not least, a bakery. Tanyard bakery specialties include sticky buns and coffeecakes, a variety of old-fashioned cookies, and this locally famous buttermilk cake.
Ingredients
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter
2 cups (15 ounces) brown sugar, packed
2 cups (1 pint, 16 ounces) buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups (12 3/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Topping
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) melted butter
1/4 cup (2 ounces) milk
1 cup (7 1/2 ounces) brown sugar
1/2 cup (2 ounces) pecans
pinch of salt
Lightly greaser a 9'' x 13'' cake pan. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream the butter and the brown sugar together. Stir in the buttermilk and vanilla extract. Add the baking soda, salt, and flour to the wet ingredients. Stir well and pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for 35 minutes. Towards the end of the baking time, prepare the topping.
Topping: Stir the butter and the sugar together. Add the milk, pecans, and salt. The glaze will be runny. Top the baked cake with the topping, and return to the oven for another 5 minutes. When you take the cake out of the oven, the topping will look very runny. You can eat the cake hot, with the glaze still gooey; or let the cake sit at room temperature for a few hours, by which time the glaze will have set. Yield: two dozen 2" squares.
Nutrition information per serving (1 piece, 78 g): 241 cal, 9 g fat, 3 g protein, 12 g complex carbohydrates, 26 g sugar, 1 g dietary fiber, 20 mg cholesterol, 105 mg sodium, 158 mg potassium, 1 mg iron, 78 mg calcium, 49 mg phosphorus.
This recipe reprinted from The Baking Sheet Newsletter, Vol. XII, No. 4, Spring 2001 issue.
Reviews
02/01/2010
Instead of the AP flour, I used white whole-wheat flour; it was a little too wheaty against the rest of the ingredients, so I'll try half-and-half next time. Also, I turned the cake in the middle of the baking time, and the disturbance came at a point which caused the center of the cake to collapse. It wasn't pretty, but it tasted fine. Problem was, the glaze pooled there, despite my efforts to distribute it right to the pan's edges. Oh, also -- my glaze didn't look like the photo, and I'm sure it's because I stirred the brown sugar right into freshly-melted butter. If I'd let the butter cool substantially, I'm sure it would have set up more. And because I was out of pecans, I used peanuts and walnuts. All in all, this cake is a smart, simple way to use up sour milk (which I did) or buttermilk, and I'll make it again.
01/31/2009
This recipe is a keeper. The brown sugar and buttermilk make for a moist and yummy cake.
Bookmark/share
this recipe