Black-Eyed Pea Cake

Ever since I saw the picture of this cake on Jessica's blog, I'd been wanting to try it. Of course, when I decorated it, I was too lazy to check the photo and cut my apricot slices too thin, resulting in the limpy-withered-petal look. The taste was great though, and very unique.

I followed the cake recipe almost exactly (but changed the icing), except instead of boiled apricot, I spread apricot jam in between the layers. I also sliced it into four layers because I thought it might be dry with only one layer of jam. It turned out to be entirely unnecessary however, because the cake was surprisingly moist. The batter looked so pretty and tasted heavenly (in fact I think I might even prefer the raw batter to the baked cake!) but since I was using my butterfly shaped silicone pan for the first time, I burned the cake a little bit. Nothing a little trimming wouldn’t solve though.

I took the cake to my friend Anna's surprise birthday party and it received good reviews. I think the unusual taste and texture might have thrown some off, but a number of people told me they really liked it. Even Jason said it was good. I do have this really strange thing where sometimes when I eat food containing beans and corn, my forehead goes numb. I had the same reaction to the cake today but it’s not a bad sensation, so I didn’t mind at all. I did think it was maybe just a little too apricotish, however, that’s probably because I added the two extra layers of apricot jam.

Oh, and I'm particularly proud of the icing because after researching for something that won’t give you instant cavity, I decided to combine a couple of recipes and make my own version. So I mixed together 3oz of cream cheese, 2 tbsp of butter, 3.5 oz of mascarpone cheese, and about 3/4 cups of honey. It was the perfect sweetness and spreading consistency. I even have some leftovers to use on another batch of ginger cupcakes.

Thanks for sharing the recipe, Jessica. I am definitely going to make this cake again, maybe in cupcake forms with individual black-eyed susans on top. I bet those would look so cute!