Yellow Cake & Mom's Caramel Icing

My great grandmother and my mother were wonderful bakers. Lately I've been remembering the wonderful cakes that my great grandmother made. I quickly decided I wanted to make a good yellow cake from scratch and ice it with Mom's caramel icing. This is by far my favorite icing. I found an interesting cake recipe and got busy.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups King Arthur cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup butter
• 1 & 1/2 cups sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup of whole milk

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two, 8 inch cake pans. In a medium size bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set the bowl of dry ingredients aside. 

Use your mixing bowl to cream together the butter and sugar well. Then beat in all of the egg yolks, 1 yolk at a time. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the dry ingredients and milk alternately in small amounts until all of the dry ingredients and milk are mixed into the batter.

Pour the cake batter into greased  and floured cake pans and bake the cakes in a preheated 350 degree oven for 24 to 30 minutes. Be very careful not to over bake this cake. When the cakes are golden brown, insert a tooth pick in the center of the cakes and if the toothpick comes out clean the cakes are done. 

In my gas oven, the cakes are done in 24 minutes.  When done, use hot pads to pull each of the cake pans out of the oven and set them on a rack or the top of the stove to cool. In 15 minutes lay a plate on top of one of the cake pans and flip the dish over. The cake should drop easily from the pan onto the plate. Turn the other cake out on a cooling rack. Let both the cakes cool completely before trying to ice them.

Now mix up your icing and when the cakes are cool, ice the top and side of of one cake. Then carefully move the other cake on top of the first layer and complete the icing to the top and sides of the cake. 

Mom's Caramel Icing

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of pure butter
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed (I had dark brown)
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1 and 3/4 to 2 cups confectioner's sugar

Instructions:

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add brown sugar; boil over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add milk; stir until mixture comes to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat; cool. Slowly add confectioner's sugar, beating well with a spoon after each addition, until thick enough to spread.