Black Cake of Laurie Colwin St. Lucia recipe Christmas Weddings fruit cake

Laurie Colwin's Black Cake PDF Print E-mail


"When my daughter was a year old," wrote the late Laurie Colwin in Home Cooking (Knopf, 1988), "she acquired a babysitter from the island of St. Vincent." The baby sitter, one Betty Chambers introduced Colwin to Black cake, served in the West Indies at Christmastime. Colwin in turn introduced the world to this singularly dark and mysterious dessert. Baffling in its complexity and sheer darkness, the cake should not be confused with ordinary fruitcake; instead, think of it as something-in-itself, a dessert like no other. The recipe makes two large cakes and may be cut in half, so it can be cut in half, but since it keeps forever, it makes sense to make the whole enormous batch. The cake contains one hard-to-find ingredient, "burnt sugar essence" which can be replaced with -- you guessed it -- burnt sugar. A note at the bottom of the recipe explains how to make it.
For the fruit:
1 pound raisins
1 pound prunes
1 pound currants
1 pound glacé cherries (or Chukar cherries)
1 pound mixed glacé citrus fruits (or candied orange peel)
1 (750-liter) bottle kosher concord grape wine
1 (750-liter) bottle dark rum
For the Cake:
1 pound butter
1 pound dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 dozen eggs
1 pound (about four cups) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup burnt sugar essence (see note)
For the Icing:
1 pound powdered sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup cream

1.) Chop the fruits fine, cover them with the Kosher wine and the rum and let them marinate for at least a week. (Betty Chambers advised six months.)
2.) When it's time to bake the cake, preheat the oven to 350. Butter two nine-inch spring-form cake pans and line them with baker's parchment.
3.) Beat the butter and brown sugar, then, one at a time, stir in the eggs. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour with the baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the dry ingredients all at once to the butter and egg mixture and stir until the batter is smooth. Stir in the fruit mixture and the burnt sugar essence and fold everything together thoroughly.
4.) Put the batter in the cake pans and bake until the cake is firm, about an hour. Cool the cakes in the pan on a rack.
5.) When the cake is completely cooled, combine the ingredients for the frosting and spread the frosting evenly over the sides and tops of the cakes.

Burnt Sugar Essence
(Makes about 1 cup)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
Put the sugar in a cast iron skillet over high heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar is melted and deep caramel colored on the spoon. Stand back and add the water; it will foam up angrily. When it settles down stir again until the syrup is smooth. Transfer the syrup to a heatproof canning jar and use it to add color and flavor to sweet or savory dishes.

Copyright, Greg Atkinson, 2004