Caramel-Topped Semolina Cake

I think Dorie and I are destined to have a love/it’s OK relationship. It really does seem that one week I love the dish we make, the other, the dish is fine but nothing I would make again.  (Maybe our relationship will change since I am picking the order this month – see my post on my thoughts about that).  The Caramel topped Semolina cake was fine – edible, not bad, not good but nothing memorable that I would choose to make again.  I think it was largely a texture thing.  Too mushy and I have never been a fan of raisin that show up in baked goods all soggy and soft (dead spider bodies a friend once referred to them as reminding her of).

Beside the cake itself there were some really good things that came out of this baking experience.

• Cream of Wheat was a breakfast item that I ate many a morning as a child and somehow it had vanished from my memory.  I was so thrilled to see it again that on Sunday morning I made myself a bowl to eat for breakfast – in my memories it came in a red box.
• I made caramel for the first time.  It took a long time for mine to turn amber colored.  And the tip to warm the pan in the over the caramel will spread smoothly is a great tip and one I know I will use again.
• We had an excuse to open and drink one of our favorite bottles of dessert wine.  Domaine de la Pigeade Beaumes de Venise.  My dear friend and I came across this vineyard while on a bike ride and we have consumed many of their bottles since that day in 2000.  It’s a sweet wine with ‘hints of pear, rose water and exotic fruits’.  It was a great pairing with the cake, and while there was leftover cake, there was no left over Beaumes de Venise.

I won’t make the cake again but I will finish the box of Cream of Wheat.