Kentucky Butter Cake

It all started when Cooks Catalog went out of business last fall.  My friend Barb and I had gone to a Cooks Catalog warehouse sale in Dallas many years ago and we share a love of cooking and good food.  So when the catalog announced its going out of business sale, Barb sent me lovely box of spices, which included a jar of culinary lavendar. Without realizing it, Barb had presented me with a culinary challenge. Many years ago she's made a batch of butter cookies using lavendar and they were stunning. I've cooked with lavendar before, but it was so long ago that I can't remember what recipe I used it in. The gauntlet had been thrown.

I started rummaging through my cookbooks to see if any recipes caught my attention. I considered ice cream, shortbread, even a plain pound cake, but was still searching for the perfect lavendar vehicle when my social media struck gold. I saw an add for a Kentucky butter cake recipe that sounded perfect. Its a moist, dense and buttery cake made in a bundt pan with a butter sauce poured over the cake when its still hot. The sauce sets up as a crust on the surface of the cake, which becomes the bottom of the cake when its turned out of the pan. It also seeps into the cake and makes it very moist. Now that's a great starting point for lavendar. I got to work.

KENTUCKY BUTTER CAKE:

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup butter
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
2 tbsp culinary lavendar

BUTTER SAUCE:
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
3 tbs water
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon zest and 1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)

This is a pretty easy recipe with great results, but there are a few tips that will make all the difference. You absolutely need a bundt pan for this recipe and I suggest nothing smaller than a 10 inch pan. Even if you have a nonstick bundt pan, grease the hell out of it and dust it with flour. This cake needs to stay in the pan until its completely cooled and it will stick if you don't take every precaution. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

I always like to sift my dry ingredients together before I get started. Put the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda through a sieve and set it aside. Beat the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and lavendar and mix it well. I went a little overboard and scraped the seeds out of half a vanilla bean, which went directly into the batter. I love vanilla, what can I say! Once your mixture is blended, add the dry ingredients slowly with the mixer on low just until everything is incorporated.

Pour the batter into your greased and floured bundt pan and bake it for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. While the cake is baking, make your butter sauce. Put the sugar, butter, water and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium heat. Of cource, I couldn't just leave this alone either, I added a little lemon zest and lemon juice for a touch of brightness. Don't let this butter sauce boil, keep an eye on it and take it off the heat when it just starts to bubble slightly. While the cake is still hot, use a skewer to poke holes all over the surface and pour that butter sauce all over it, letting is seep into the pan and into the holes you made. A lot of the sauce will sit on top, which is fine. When the cake cools, it adds a pleasant crunch to the whole experience. Let that cake cool completely before you turn it out of the pan. When you turn it out, the sugar crust will be on the bottom. Dust the top with powdered sugar for a professional looking finish.

I served this cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was an excellent compliment. The cake was moist and springy and lavendar came through nicely and didn't taste too floral. The lemon zest in the topping gave a counterpoint to the lavendar and vanilla. And of course, my coworkers benefited because I brought half the cake to work the next day. This is a good basic recipe to let your imagination run wild. Have fun with it.