PRINTEat This: Fried Buttermilk Cake
44 Stone's dessert creation is a contemporary American take on late-night British Isle fare
Grant Hindsley
March 22, 2012 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The Fried Buttermilk Cake at 44 Stone Public House is not for the health freak, dieter or lover of all things savory.
It is, however, for the connoisseur of delicacies that are sweet, fried and potentially detrimental to your waistline.
Where: 44 Stone Public House
When: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tues. to Thurs., 11 a.m. to 12 a.m. Fri. to Sat., 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sun.
Cost: $6
Call: 443-2726
Website: 44stonepub.com
The scone-shaped cake impresses as soon as it arrives on a large white plate with a spatter of Irish whiskey toffee sauce that seems to burst from the cake and an ample scoop of vanilla bean ice cream in the middle.
The exterior is a perfect caramel color only achieved in good fried food, and this perfection is confirmed in the first entry of fork-to-cake, wherein a satisfying crunch reveals the hot, sweet cake inside.
The toffee sauce, which is 44 Stone’s recipe, is a sweet-salty caramel confection that is pleasantly grainy, in contrast to the smoothness of the flecked vanilla bean ice cream.
Dave Faron, co-owner of 44 Stone, credits his co-owner Mark Sulltrop for the unusual confection. Both owners were chefs before opening their gastro pub, and they emphasize that their menu, including the cake, is a contemporary American interpretation of traditional British Isle fare.
“You would never find a fried buttermilk cake at a pub in England,” Faron says. “But a lot of late nights, people go out drinking and the fish and chip places tend to stay open late. People will bring Snickers bars or whatever and ask them to be fried.”
Faron says the batter is, obviously, not what they use for their fish and chips at 44 Stone. Rather, it’s a light tempura-type batter.
“We didn’t want to give people a piece of cake,” Faron says. “We wanted to do something different.”
The Fried Buttermilk Cake is, in its simplest form, big-kid funnel cake, but it’s a lot more than that. And at $6, it is definitely worth breaking the diet.
