Description
I know, I know – nice name! – but it’s directly from one of Ree Drummond’s books, ‘The Pioneer Woman Cooks’, and she suggests not telling anyone about the prunes…ever (this same book also contains the exact recipe for Chocolate Sheet Cake!). Looking at the recipe reminded me a lot of Mandarin Orange Cake so I felt safe with replacing half of the oil in the original recipe with ‘prune juice’ (below is what I did) – everyone loved it – enjoy!
Ingredients
Spiced Prune Cake
Cake
1 c. prunes
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 t. allspice
1 t. EACH baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg
1 c. sugar AND 3 eggs
1/2 c. EACH canola oil and reserved ‘prune water’
1 t. vanilla
1 c. buttermilk
Put the prunes in a small pot, cover them with water and and allow them to simmer for about 10 minutes until soft. Pour off the ‘prune water’, reserving 1/2 cup for the cake and then mash the prunes with a fork on a plate – chunky is just fine – set them aside.
Preheat the oven to 300 (yes, 300) and grease a 9 x 13 cake pan. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and spices and in a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, canola oil, prune water and vanilla. Add the wet to the dry and stir until just combined, it might be lumpy, then stir in the buttermilk. Add in the prunes, give it another stir and then scrape the batter into your prepared pan. Bake for about 35 minutes until the middle springs back to a light touch – as it’s baking, prepare the icing.
Icing
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. buttermilk
4 T. butter
1/2 t. baking soda
1 T. corn syrup
1/2 t. vanilla
Instructions
Stir everything together in a good-sized pot (it’s going to foam, so a bigger pot is better) and then bring the mixture to a slow boil. Watch it! it will puff and foam and get very large very quickly! – you need to let it boil until it turns a light caramel color. This was difficult for me to discern so I think it’s easiest to say, you want it caramel in color, definitely thicker than the mixture you started with, but pourable – not gooey/sticky. This process will take 10-15 minutes.
As soon as the cake is out of the oven, pour the icing evenly over the warm cake and do your best to spread it around – it should soak in a fair bit. Serve it straight away or as you wish, it will still be wonderfully moist and gooey the next day.
- Category: Cakes, 9x13