Apr 20, 2011
I don't know why, but I expected a lot more from a commercially sponsored recipe. One would assume their recipes would be tested and retested before attaching the company name to them. The cake didn't impress me for a number of reasons. First, this was moist, I'll give it that, but the allspice was strangely odd to me. Cinnamon or a little nutmeg would have been a better choice. For that matter, NO spice and a little vanilla would have been better. The flavor of the cake itself was flat, and not sweet enough. The jam filling, which I didn't care for at all, did not compensate for that. The topping wasn't particularly tasty, and wasn't the best looking topping either. I used a 9x9" pan and, in hindsight, should have used the 8x8" option. The first layer of cake batter was so thin that, once baked, the filling pretty much sank to the bottom. As for the filling, preserves was not the best option - pie filling, canned or homemade, would have been so much better. In order to pretty this up a little I sprinkled it with powdered sugar, but that did little to change my overall opinion. My three star rating, which I consider to be "good, but average," is very generous.
—naples34102
