When Jamie Moranz and her husband were dating, her now-mother-in-law made her a special cake for her birthday that was gooey, decadent and surprisingly simple: Whipping Cream Cake.
Moranz, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, loved the cake so much, it became her go-to birthday cake.
"I was smitten," Moranz told me. "Since then, she makes it for my birthday almost every year. She's an excellent cook and I have so many fond memories centered around that cake and my in-laws."
The recipe for the cake is similar to most cake recipes, with the addition of one ultra-rich ingredient: whipping cream.
Moranz recently shared her beloved cake recipe on the Old_Recipes subreddit, where it became an instant hit, explaining it came from a cookbook her husband's grandmother acquired while living in Iowa many years ago. Moranz says although the recipe originated there, it's her mother-in-law who latched onto it and makes it frequently.
I tried the recipe for myself and was also smitten, especially with the simplicity of preparing it.
The recipe calls for flour, sugar, eggs, butter, vanilla and a half pint of whipping cream. After creaming the butter and sugar together thoroughly, the recipe says to be sure to beat the batter after adding each of the six required eggs.
That's lots of batter-beating, but when it was finished, I followed the next instructions and alternated hand-stirring ("Do NOT whip!") the flour and whipping cream into the mixture.
What followed was also unique to me: The cake gets placed into a cold oven, then after setting the oven to 325 F, gets baked for an hour and 15 minutes. After about 15 minutes, I heard my oven beep signaling it had reached 325 F. An hour later, I was rewarded with a beautiful bundt cake, smelling like buttery heaven.
My only fault may have been not greasing the pan well enough, as the top of my cake stuck to the pan and didn't come out looking as gorgeous as I'd hoped.
Let's just say, it tasted way better than it looked. The cake was perfectly crisp on the outside and slightly gooey in some parts, which is how Moranz says she likes it best.
"The cake itself is heavy, but not in an overly decadent way," said Moranz. "The bottom layer always seems to be just slightly undercooked, leaving the the last few bites perfectly gooey."
Since sharing her cake on Reddit, Moranz has seen many of her fellow Redditors re-create the dish with unique spins, like icing it with cream cheese frosting or adding strawberry jam and fresh strawberries.
"It weighs about 47 pounds," joked one Redditor who made it — and I must say, I agree.
But when it's 47 pounds of decadent buttery goodness, how can you go wrong?
