Blackberry Cake

Today is my DH birthday and I wanted to make something special for him.  So I went to my Grandmother's recipe box and found this one that was always a favorite around her house.  I was pretty excited about it since I was getting to use up some of the blackberries I had picked last year with my Godson at a U-Pick farm and I remembered it being a pretty darn good cake.

"Aunt Edie's Blackberry Cake"
Cream together:
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup lard (I substituted butter flavored Crisco)

Add :
4 eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Then Add:
3 cups flour (no more)
2 teaspoons nutmeg
2 teaspoons allspice
2 teaspoon Cinnamonm
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda

Finally Add:
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 cups blackberries --  juice and all

Makes 3 pans    350 degrees
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OK....so notice anything missing from this recipe that I copied verbatim from her notes?  Yes...the length of time to cook it!  After 35 minutes, I put a toothpick in it and it came out clean so I removed it from the oven.  After letting it cool, I started to put icing on it and realized it was doing a slow wave with every stroke.  After checking again with another toothpick and it was still clean I decided to cut it open since it was either not done or it was possessed.

Well all I can saw is thank goodness I decided to do a 9 x 13 cake vs a layer cake.  It was definitely not done and had to go back in the oven for another 30-45 minutes.  I removed as much of the icing as possible prior to the rebaking but worried that it would turn extremely nasty while cooking.  Thankfully it just made the cake absorb the Cream Cheese Icing that I was using.

Also, my Grandmother (Annie) had always served this with a caramel icing but I was out of granulated sugar to make one from scratch.  Of course being the creative one.....I got a brilliant idea of using the caramel apple wraps I had left over from last fall.  Bad news I had already put them on since I wanted a layer of caramel between the icing and the cake.  Good news is while some of it melted into the blackberry cake along with the cream cheese icing the rest got more like toffee and formed a hard crust on top of it. 

Final result was good but was definitely a chore to get there and it was not the pretty birthday cake I had hoped for (hence the small pieces in the photo).  Next time I highly recommend cooking for at least an hour or longer and checking by cutting it open with a knife.  Also, make sure your opening can easily be covered with icing.  It is a rich cake so I would recommend doing a less sweet icing or even just sprinkling with powdered sugar.