Caramel cake: a simplified recipe for an old fashioned Mississippi dessert

Anne Byrn is the New York Times bestselling food writer and author of "Baking in the American South" (out Sept. 3). She writes this baking column twice a week for SouthernKitchen.com.

Only in the South do gas stations sell caramel cake. 

Let me rephrase that. Only in Mississippi do gas stations sell caramel cake and people drive for miles in search of the elusive golden beauty of this cake. 

I did that once. I was driving north on Interstate 55 on the way from Jackson to Memphis when I exited toward Calhoun City and Buck’s One Stop convenience store where I joined the line of folks coming in for cake, beer and a lottery ticket. 

At Buck’s there are actually professional bakers who make the cakes, and it was just before Thanksgiving when I arrived. Those caramel cake orders packed in white boxes were stacked tall in one corner. I was too late to buy a whole cake, but thankfully Buck’s sells the cake by the slice and I bought a slice to go.

According to Mississippi author John T. Edge, caramel cake speaks to the second income that baking cake has provided in the poor state of Mississippi. Here, caramel cake is talked about on society pages, but it is mostly entrepreneurial. And plenty of that caramel cake starts with a doctored cake mix and a frosting that just might cheat a bit. 

A quicker path to caramel icing

This grand Southern cake sprang out of New Orleans with its love of caramelizing sugar into pralines and spread up into the Delta where cooks have opined for years about the labor and love of making caramel cake. 

It is the cake you ship in a cardboard box to someone you love or someone who will pay good money for it. Dense and moist, it was meant to travel and withstands heat and humidity. 

The icing needs two pans — one cast iron in which you caramelize the smaller amount of sugar, and another saucepan in which you simmer the icing. You’d best make this cake on a clear day when it’s not raining, which is hard to find in the Deep South, another reason perhaps this cake is so special.

Or, you can shortcut the OG version of caramel icing with the quicker version my mother learned one summer at the bridge table. 

Her friend shared a recipe that calls for brown sugar and powdered sugar and is more forgiving to those of us who crave caramel cake without the stress of burning sugar as well as our fingers.

And when you pair the shortcut caramel icing with a doctored up cake mix cake, you’ve got the perfect summer cake. No stress, full of flavor and feeds a crowd.

How I became the Cake Mix Doctor

I was a young mom with three young children writing part time for The Tennessean in Nashville when my life was about to change. I had always written about food, and most of my years were in Atlanta writing about gourmet cooking and restaurants.

But I knew as a newspaper food writer that people still baked with cake mixes, and the idea of using a cake mix appealed to me as a busy mom. I could bake cake at night when my kids were asleep.

My newspaper article sharing recipes for doctoring up cake mixes turned into a best-selling cookbook, and I traveled coast to coast as the Cake Mix Doctor, being interviewed by newspapers and radio stations and appearing on TV. Some food writers looked down their noses on me as if I was trying to ruin American baking, but all I was trying to do was connect with busy cooks — like myself — who wanted to bake but didn’t have a lot of time. I wanted to help them get baking back into their busy lives.

Cake mixes arrived after World War II and were marketed to women for the same reason. Many of them had worked through the war and, with families and more leisure time or a job they continued to hold, were drawn to the ease of cake mix.

My mother saw cake mixes not so much as liberation from the apron strings of the kitchen as just good fun. She didn’t have to measure flour. She dumped a cake mix into a bowl and got creative. I learned through experimentation that orange juice is the most clever ingredient to add to a cake mix in lieu of water. If you add buttermilk to a chocolate cake mix, everyone will think the cake is from scratch.

To a lot of people the flavor of cake mix is nostalgic. They think the flavor of artificial vanilla is warm and fuzzy. But I spent a lot of time creating recipes that made the mix cakes taste from scratch. We all have our own preferences!

And you will love this easy chocolate sheet cake and the caramel icing on top. Remember to toast your pecans, and salt them a little, too, before sprinkling on top of the warm caramel icing. This is a great cake to take to picnics, reunions, office parties and birthdays.

Chocolate Slab Cake with Caramel Icing

My friend Bette calls this her go-to party cake. When people come over to her house for dinner, she wants to serve them a little something sweet to end the evening but not too much. So she began baking my chocolate cake in a half sheet pan and smothering it in my caramel icing. Caramel not only marries well with chocolate, but it creates a cake that is rich, sweet, salty and interesting. Sprinkle a handful of salted chopped toasted pecans on the frosting while it’s still a little warm.

Makes 16 to 24 servings

Prep: 25 to 30 minutes

Bake: 16 to 21 minutes

Cake

• Vegetable oil spray, for misting the pan
• Parchment or wax paper, for lining the pan (see Cook Notes)
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 package (15.25 ounces) chocolate cake mix
• 5 tablespoons (half a 3.9-ounce package) chocolate instant pudding mix
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups whole fat buttermilk 
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Quick Caramel Frosting (see recipe below)
• Garnish: 1/2 cup toasted and lightly salted finely chopped pecans

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 F. Mist an 18- by 13-inch half sheet pan (shallow rimmed metal pan) with vegetable oil spray, and line the pan with parchment or wax paper. Set the pan aside. (If you want to toast the chopped pecans for the garnish, place them on a small baking pan in the preheating oven until they take on a little color, 3 to 4 minutes. Set the pecans aside.)
2. Place the chocolate chips in a glass bowl in the microwave on high power to melt, 30 to 40 seconds, stirring until the chocolate has completely melted. Set aside to cool 10 minutes.
3. Place the cake mix and pudding mix in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. Add the melted chocolate, eggs, buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until blended, 30 seconds. Stop the machine, and scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for 1 minute longer until the batter is smooth. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula, and place the pan in the oven.
4. Bake the cake until the top springs back when lightly pressed with a finger, 16 to 21 minutes. Make the frosting while the cake bakes.
5. When the cake is done, place the pan on a wire rack. Pour the warm frosting over the top of the cake, smoothing it out quickly with a long metal spatula, spreading it nearly to the edges of the cake. Sprinkle on the toasted chopped pecans, if desired. Let the cake rest at least 30 minutes more before slicing and serving.

Cook Notes: You can frost this cake right in the pan and cut into squares or bars. Or, for show, you can turn this cake out onto a long platter and then pour the warm caramel frosting over while it’s on the platter. Your choice. But if you choose to turn this cake out, make your life easier and line the pan with parchment or wax paper after misting with oil. Remove the paper before pouring the frosting over.

Quick Caramel Icing

This is a lot easier than caramelizing white sugar. It has great flavor, dirties few pans in the kitchen and is ready in a snap.

Makes 3 to 4 cups icing

Prep: 10 to 15 minutes

• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1. Place the butter and brown sugars in a medium-size saucepan over medium heat, and stir until the butter melts and the mixture begins to boil, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the milk, stir, and let the mixture come back to a boil. 

2. Remove the pan from the heat, and whisk in 2 1/2 cups of the sugar, vanilla and salt. Whisk until smooth, and if the icing is too runny, add another 1/2 cup sugar. Do not add so much sugar that the frosting thickens and hardens. It needs to be smooth enough to spread over the cake. It will set as it cools.

Anne Byrn lives in Nashville, was the former food editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and writes the weekly newsletter Between the Layers on Substack.