 Hey y'all, I'm Tammy and the Cameraman is Chris, my husband and this is Collard Valley Cooks where we cook like our momma's did. Today I made a special cake just for you. It's a southern praline cake and let me tell you it is going to be amazing. So let's get started where we're going to start with a cup of butter and you're just going to put it in your mixer at room temperature. And you're going to beat it until it's nice and fluffy. You really need to beat it until it turns a light color, almost white looking. And beating it about two minutes is a good time. So we're going to beat this for two minutes on a medium speed. We're going to add two cups of sugar, add one at a time. These need to be room temperature, we're going to use four eggs. We're going to put in two teaspoons of vanilla and then I'm going to put in a teaspoon of butter extract. Instead of sifting my flour and my baking powder and salt together, I'm just going to add the baking powder and the salt to the mixer and then add my flour, okay? Because white lily flour I'm using today is all purpose and it's pre-sifted so there's really no need for me to sift it, all right? Now if you've got a cake flour and you want to sift your flour then go ahead or if it seems lumpy then you should. So I'm going to use three teaspoons of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt. And my butter was salted, okay? So now what we're going to do is mix this up really good. Then we're going to start adding our flour, a cup at a time, there's three cups of flour and then we'll add the cup and a quarter of milk in as well together kind of alternating it. Now once you add the rest of the flour you're going to beat it for two minutes, not over and then we're going to get it in the pan. So I got the idea for this recipe off the Dixie Crystals Sugar Bag. It's on the back, it's called the Southern Praline Cake. However, I did change it up a good bit and so I'm not using the recipe exactly so if you want to make the cake like I did you won't be able to go buy the recipe on the bag or the website. You'll have to use my recipe. And I changed it up because they have soda in it. Normally I don't use baking soda when I bake things unless I'm using buttermilk. This cake did not have buttermilk. I added more baking powder and more sugar, okay? So there was reasons and more salt and there was reasons I did that. So just let you know. It just sounded so good and I wanted to make it. Now you can measure these out so that they're identical thicknesses but I usually just eyeball it. So it's a lot of cake batter which is really good so it's going to make a nice tall cake. Now I'm using 8 inch pans and they're sprayed and they have a piece of parchment in the bottom of them. They tell you to use 9 inch pans but I personally love 8 inch pans because it makes the cake look really tall. So pretty cake batter. It looks a lot like my white cake batter. It's in the bottom when cooked good. Looks delish. Now we're going to slide it into the oven and cook it at 350 degrees. Alright we'll see y'all in a little bit when they come out of the oven and we're going to make a delicious pecan frosting. Alright these are ready and they smell really good. Ooh that one's not. That one's not quite ready. The one on the top is the one that's ready I think. It's ready. Looks good. Bounces back when you touch it. Those are a little thicker so it's going to take them a good 5 more minutes or so and then we'll get them out. Alright these two are ready. We're going to get them out and now this one's been out of the oven long enough I could flip it upside down so I'm just going to flip it and then sit it back on my cooling rack. Alright y'all we are going to make a delicious praline type icing and the way I'm going to do that is I'm toasting my pecans and we're going to brown the butter. What gives pralines their delicious flavor is browning the butter. Alright so I'm going to take two sticks of butter and put it in this skillet and let it start melting and we're actually going to cook it until it gets brown and you're not going to want to rush it and burn it or anything. You want it to have just a really brown butter flavor. So you're just going to cook your butter over a medium heat until it begins to brown and I'll show you about how brown you're going to want it before you make your icing. You really need to do this ahead of time so that it can cool down. You don't want to add it to the powdered sugar when it's really hot. Alright it's finally getting a little bit brown but I wanted a nice brown color so I'm going to keep cooking it a little bit longer. See how it's turning? It's going to have a really good flavor and you don't want it to get too brown. Just enough to give it a really good toasty buttery flavor. Almost there y'all. I think that's good. We're going to turn it off and we're going to let it cool and then once it cools down some we're going to make some icing with it. Alright we're going to start making our icing so we're going to take our brown butter and we're going to pour it in the mixer and the mixer will help cool it down some. Our toffee. We're going to start adding icing sugar which is powdered sugar. Now I'll probably use about 5 cups of powdered sugar at least so we're just going to start adding it in here and then if we need to add some extra cream we will of this half in half. Now I'm going to taste it. I think it added dashes. Well the butter was salted. Butter. So good. Oh it is so good. So we wound up adding about a half a cup of cream. You want to just add it until it gets a spreadable consistency because we brown the butter it does make it thicker than if we just used butter and I'm going to tell you it is absolutely delicious. So I am going to take the beaters out of here and we're going to ice our cake. Now I didn't make a ton of icing because we're going to put some caramel on the top and some pecans it's going to be a very, very delicious cake. It tastes just like a praline or toffee. So I am going to go ahead and ice the layers and I'm not going to put a thick, a lot of icing because we're going to put caramel on the top and it's going to be a really sweet cake. I used 8 inch layers. Now you can use 9 and it won't be quite as tall just try to get them as straight up as you can and it don't have to be perfect. Now you're going to want to pretty much put all the rest of it on the top and we're going to put caramel on the top so it don't have to be real thick on the top. Probably even got this a little bit thinner and it worked fine. That fresh layer in the middle is really, won't be getting a little bit of trouble. Now it's going to slide on me. I think this icing is getting a little thicker as it cools down. So I'm going to wet my spatula a little bit just to get it to spread easier. You can always wet your spatula if the icing seems to be a little thick and now I've got to get it around the bottom and the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to grab this and we are going to put pecans around the bottom so it doesn't have to have a lot of icing at the bottom but we need a little cake showed up. That's all right. We're going to cover it up with caramel. Lord, I think I could have used a tiny bit more icing. Yeah, I need it. Oh yeah. Perfect. We got it. Now I'm going to smooth off the sides with my hot water and the top and it doesn't matter that my cake came through because we're going to cover that up with caramel in just a minute and that's all there is to it. Go around it one more time and if you want to use a comb on it, you can see if I've got one. Now make sure you get the edges real smooth so that when you put your caramel on it will flow down the edges good. You don't want to curb on it and if you have a curb and it will stop the caramel from flowing. Now we're going to heat up our caramel but while it's still wet on the bottom, you don't want to wait until it dries up. We're going to put some pecans around it and you can toast your pecans or not. It's totally up to you. There's our beautiful cake. Now we're going to take some caramel and a friend of mine sent me some delicious Sanders Caramel and it says to take it out of the jar, put it in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Now I'm going to make sure it's a good spreadable consistency before I put it on top of the cake and it's delicious. Me and Chris have already tasted it. Now I'm going to put this in the microwave for 10 seconds, 10 seconds. That was 10 seconds and everybody's microwave is a little bit different. No, I think that's good. You don't want to get it so runny that it falls off the cake. All right, here we go. Give me another spatula. I'm going to go around at once first and then I'm going to let it start down the edge a little bit. I'm just going to smooth off the top a little bit. That's going to be good, good, good. All right, we're going to put a few pecans on the top. There you have it. If I spin a little bit, it might run a little bit better. Looks good, don't it? There you have it, my praline cake. Well, that looks good and it smells delicious. Now, y'all, this is going to be absolutely over the top delicious. I promise. It's a southern praline cake. All right, let's cut us a piece, y'all. Now it's fresh. We'll just have to see how it cuts. I warmed up my knife a little bit so that it would go through that caramel pretty easy. See, it's nice and tall and I always put the thickest piece on the bottom because it always seems to get messed up. A big piece of cake. Oh, it's so good. I can guarantee you right now this is going to be one of the best cakes I have ever made. It is absolutely divine. Absolutely. All right, let's get it by it, y'all. Make sure you get some caramel. I'm going to grab a pecan. I want everything in one bite because layers are nice and tall. That is absolutely amazing. If y'all make this cake, you'll be making it again. I can guarantee you that it is delicious and make sure that when you brown that butter, you get it nice and brown because that's what makes it taste so good. And the cake is so moist and it's just delicious. Now that's a winner. Y'all have fun icing it up and putting the caramel on it. Everybody's going to love it. We appreciate you watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook homemade old-fashioned food just like Mama did. Bye, y'all. Love you.