Canning Cakes, Sweetbreads, Brownies and such

Yep! I canned cake! And brownies!

I was told you can't do it, but I did anyway.

**Disclaimer** The USDA and the Ag Extension people say there is no proven method for safely canning cakes and sweetbreads. Grannies have been doing it for decades, maybe even centuries so this Granny decided to give it a try. And, in all honesty, cakes aren't technically canned... they're bottled, the difference being in canning you use a pressure canner or a boiling water bath... you don't use either when you can (or bottle) cakes. Having said that... try this at your own risk, I did!

The method is the same for any cake and you can't really can a cake that is decorated or anything like that... brownies work great, banana bread, zucchini bread would be good, pound cakes are ideal... my DH loves an apricot pound cake that his mom used to make and it has a glaze on it using powdered sugar and lemon juice... I even canned that one with great success.

Why would I want to can cake? Two reasons...

One... with food prices beginning to soar out of sight and possible shortages in the future, I'm convinced that one day (maybe soon) something as simple as cake will be too expensive to make or I won't be able to find the ingredients... who knows!?

Two... and this is a biggie... a full-sized pound cake is pretty big. When my kids were home (especially my son as a teenager who could eat a whole cake and drink a gallon of milk in one sitting... I kid you not, he's done it and stayed skinny as a rail the little stinker!) I had no problem getting a cake eaten before it went stale. Now with just DH and myself and the kids a few hours away so they don't drop by often, if we get a hankering for some homemade pound cake and bake one, a lot of the time half the cake goes to waste before we can eat it all. Canning in large mouth pint jars divides a full sized pound cake into 7 or 8 jars, making mini-cakes for us to enjoy when we want... a box of brownie mix will fill about 4 jars.

My own beloved Mama made a sour cream pound cake that was "to die for!" So that's the recipe and pictures I will share today. This is a delicious, moist pound cake that my youngest brother requested every year for his birthday and Mama made for many special occasions. Mama is no longer with us, she's been gone for going on three years and I miss her so much, she was more than my Mama, she was my dear friend. Her recipe for sour cream pound cake...

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 pound butter or margarine
8 oz. sour cream
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
1/2 cup milk
3 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. lemon extract
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Sift together flour, baking powder, and soda. Cream shortening with butter, beat until very light, adding sugar gradually. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each. Blend in flour and milk. Add extracts. Fold in sour cream slowly.

Now here's where the "canning" part takes over... in the original recipe you grease and flour a tube pan and bake at 325 degrees for an hour and a half.

To can (or bottle) this yummy goodness of a cake, here's what I did...

First I mixed up my batter... I doubled the recipe and don't recommend it unless you have a REALLY big bowl, it was a challenge keeping all the batter in the bowl, won't be doing that again!

Next I sprayed the inside of my wide mouth pint jars with cooking spray. **I used wide mouth jars because they have straight sides, it would be pretty much impossible to get the cake out of a small mouth jar** I could have greased the inside of the jars with shortening or butter instead but cooking spray is easier and easy is a good thing sometimes. **DON'T flour the jars like you would a pan, it just doesn't work with this baking/canning combo.**

I filled the jar half way with the cake batter to allow room for it to rise. I wiped away any batter that might have dripped onto the rim with a damp cloth. Then I put the jars on a baking pan and slid them into my preheated 325 degree oven. I set the timer for an hour and a half, but checked on them after about an hour. They're done when a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. This batch of little cakes was done in about an hour and 15 minutes.

While the cake jars were baking, I brought my lids and rims to a boil in water and left them simmering so they'd stay hot until needed.

When my cakes were done and golden brown and smelling fabulous, I turned the oven off and opened the oven door, leaving the cakes sitting on the oven rack to stay warm while I took them out and sealed them one at a time.

If the cake had risen above the jar rim, I took a serrated knife and trimmed it down to the edge of the rim. **There's no need to be concerned about headspace with cakes**

I wiped the hot jars again with a damp cloth to remove any crumbs or baked on cake batter. **Care should be taken with this step, the jars are HOT!!!*

I removed the lids, one at a time with my trusty magnetic wand thingy (a FANTASTIC gadget for getting hot lids out of hot water). I gave the lid a little shake to remove as much water as possible, then I tightened them onto the jars.

I then set my sealed up jars of cake onto a folded dish towel on the counter and waited for that magical "Ping!" of a successfully sealed jar... it's a beautiful sound!

To enjoy this treat, just open up the jar, run a knife around the inside between the cake and the jar...

And slide it right out onto a plate.

Sour cream pound cake from a jar! Yum!

I'm told by some older "grannies" that these "canned cakes" will still be good when opened after months or even years... they probably won't get a chance to wait that long to be enjoyed around here!

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