Right after I made Treebeards' Praline Cake, a post from King Arthur Flour popped up in my Facebook feed featuring a cake with a similar concept. The "Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake" is a brown sugar-buttermilk cake with a sweet pecan topping. The headnote explained that the recipe comes from Tanyard Farm in West Hartford, Vermont, which is "right down the road" from King Arthur Flour. The farm used to have a bakery that served this "locally famous" cake.
It's a simple recipe. To make the cake, you beat butter with brown sugar; add eggs; stir in buttermilk and vanilla; and incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and salt). I poured the batter into a parchment-lined 9-inch by 13-inch pan and put it in the oven. Shortly before the specified baking time was up, I made the topping by combining melted butter, brown sugar, milk, salt, and chopped pecans. I poured the pecan mixture on top of the hot cake and put the pan back in the oven to bake for another ten minutes. I never tested the cake for doneness and simply relied on the baking times provided in the recipe. I let the cake cool completely in the pan before slicing.
In contrast to the Treebeards Praline Cake, this topping was liquid and most of it got absorbed into the cake. However, there was a thin visible shiny layer of glaze holding the pecans in place. The interior of the cake was a dark golden color that matched its very caramel-y brown sugar flavor. The texture was delightfully soft and springy and I enjoyed this cake immensely. It's difficult to say which cake I like better between this one and the Praline Cake -- they are actually quite different so I can't rank them without tasting them side by side. But I would absolutely make this comforting buttermilk cake again.
I had printed out a copy of the recipe from the King Arthur website a few weeks ago and I referenced the hard copy while I made the cake. But as I was writing this post I looked for online version so that I could copy and paste the recipe URL into a hyperlink; what I found was very strange. The King Arthur Flour website no longer has a recipe for "Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake." But the same recipe is still on the site under the name "Farmhouse Buttermilk Cake," with absolutely no reference to Tanyard Farm. I'm sure there's an interesting story behind the name switcheroo -- but the name doesn't really matter to me so much as the delicious results.
Recipe: "Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake,'" aka "Farmhouse Buttermilk Cake" from King Arthur Flour.
It's a simple recipe. To make the cake, you beat butter with brown sugar; add eggs; stir in buttermilk and vanilla; and incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and salt). I poured the batter into a parchment-lined 9-inch by 13-inch pan and put it in the oven. Shortly before the specified baking time was up, I made the topping by combining melted butter, brown sugar, milk, salt, and chopped pecans. I poured the pecan mixture on top of the hot cake and put the pan back in the oven to bake for another ten minutes. I never tested the cake for doneness and simply relied on the baking times provided in the recipe. I let the cake cool completely in the pan before slicing.
I had printed out a copy of the recipe from the King Arthur website a few weeks ago and I referenced the hard copy while I made the cake. But as I was writing this post I looked for online version so that I could copy and paste the recipe URL into a hyperlink; what I found was very strange. The King Arthur Flour website no longer has a recipe for "Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake." But the same recipe is still on the site under the name "Farmhouse Buttermilk Cake," with absolutely no reference to Tanyard Farm. I'm sure there's an interesting story behind the name switcheroo -- but the name doesn't really matter to me so much as the delicious results.
Recipe: "Tanyard Farm Buttermilk Cake,'" aka "Farmhouse Buttermilk Cake" from King Arthur Flour.
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