Thanks, Martha

I love the fall. It’s the season of colors, my birthday, my wedding anniversary, and lovely things like spice cake. For Thanksgiving last year, I decided to try my hand at a recipe I found on Martha Stewart’s website. It was called “Caramelized Apple Spice Cake with Brown Sugar Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and garnished with marzipan leaves, pumpkins and acorns”. If you just clicked on the link, you’ll probably laugh at the pictures you are about to see. Yes, yes, it was my first and only attempt at Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I prefer Italian Meringue these days, but I didn’t know any better at the time. “Apples caramelized in butter and an array of fall spices…”. It sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? Well, it was.

As you can barely get a glimpse of, by the time I whipped up this creation, I had finally purchased a real apron from a real kitchen store to replace the Americana snowman one I’ve had since I was 10. The batter for the cake was to be hand-mixed, and based on the next picture, you will understand why.

Yes, this was a gooooooooood cake. In fact, I highly recommend you try making it sometime, even if you top it with a spiced cream cheese icing. Only don’t do what I did, and agree to make it along with the turkey, green beans, cranberries, and sweet potatoes. E-X-H-A-U-S-T-I-O-N! By now, you’re probably picking up the subtle nuances of my personality (i.e. the go big or go home tendencies).

This is what the caramelizing apples looked like as they simmered on the stove with a couple of vanilla beans before I mixed them into the cake batter, but I wanted to show you the picture of the actual cake first, because let’s face it- YUM!

This was the beginning of the icing. It took me somewhere in the vicinity of an hour to finish this. Somewhere in the mixing of the 2 cups of butter, nearly 2 cups of brown sugar, and some egg whites I think I thought to myself, “Carrie, there’s a good chance you will not survive an entire piece of this cake,” which I promptly ignored and finally came to the end of the unbelievable sticky mess, semi-victorious.

I say “semi victorious” because this is what went on when I began icing. Yikes and yikes. When you look at the picture good old Martha posts on what the cake should look like, you think you’re going to have an easy time getting it to set up just right. Go ahead, take another gander at the pic. I’ll wait. See? Yikes. The consistency is something I’ll be attempting again in the future, but after eating this cake, I vowed I would only attempt to make it once a year so I can make it to 30 without a heart attack.

This was truly the fun part, but let me tell you something about marzipan- it’s basically like fondant. If you can make it from scratch, it will make a world of difference in both flavor and texture. This marzipan was just a product I found at my local grocer, and ew. I vowed I would never buy it again. It tasted fine when I ate a bit of it with a bit of the cake, but on its own it was terrible. I believe “sick” was the word that came to mind. Thankfully, a little luster dust made it look pretty.

A few edible pearls later, I was finally done with my four day project, and the turkey was taking a hot butter bath, waiting to be dressed.

So what did we learn? 1) Never take on too many projects at one time, 2) make your own marzipan, 3) Martha Stewart is perfect, 4) when all is said and done, as long as the overall product tastes great, your guests will forgive you if it’s a little messy- that’s what mine did anyway.

…and yes, I am only showing you the most flattering pictures I have of this cake.

YUM!