Dutch oven spider cake

I was over at the Everyday Dutch Oven blog and came across New England Spider Cake.  It looked good, so I decided to give it a shot.  Apparently a cast iron skillet with legs was called a spider.  This is the traditional pan used to bake this cake, hence the name.

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole milk
• 4 tsp white vinegar
• 1 cup AP flour
• 3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup heavy cream

Combine the milk and vinegar in a mixing bowl and set aside.

Combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl.  Whisk the eggs into the milk mixture.  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

Cake started

Set the 10″ dutch oven over a full spread of coals.  Add the butter to the dutch oven.

When the butter is fully melted and starting to bubble, add the batter to the dutch oven.  Gently pour the heavy cream over the top of the batter.

Done

The top of the cake browns nicely.  My understanding is that the heavy cream should create a custard on top of the cream.  Unfortunately, I must have been too rough when I poured the cream onto the cake.  The heavy cream did not sit on top of the cake as intended, but sank into the batter.

Sliced

It would be easy to over cook this cake.  The cake jiggles a bit even when done.  This is because of that custard in it.  Once it sat for about 10 minutes, it firmed up and was ready to serve with some honey drizzled over it.

This was pretty good, but it isn’t one that I’m going to crave.  If I make it again, that would be fine, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make it.  If I make it again, I’ll make sure that I pour the cream onto a spoon or something else that will keep it on top of the batter.