Oatmeal Cake

Ah oatmeal...... it has such a homey and breakfast-y image that when I first read (in a 1950 Midwestern Junior League cookbook) about oatmeal cake, I was kind of confused. Who would make a cake out of oatmeal? I mean, I get cookies.... but at first a cake seemed different. Then I thought about oat cakes or scones and thought that I'd update (ie switch out the lard, etc) recipe and change the topping and try it myself - here is how it goes....

Oatmeal Cake
1 cup oats
1 cup boiling water
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar (I used my vanilla sugar)
2 eggs
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1 t baking soda
1/2 t kosher salt
1 t cinnamon
1 1/2 cups flour

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Pour the boiling water over the oats and let sit for 20 minutes. In the meantime, cream the butter and sugars. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring well between each. Add the salt, baking soda and cinnamon, then when the oatmeal is ready, stir it in. Finally, incorporate the flour. Mix well.

Pour batter into a well greased (buttered) baking dish (2 9" rounds or a 9x13 cake pan) and bake ~40 minutes at 350F.

Topping
I preferred the idea of a jam topping, so I used sour cherry jam with a little bit of pear jam to sweeten it up a bit on one cake, and apricot on the other cake. Essentially, all you need to do is cover the top of the cooked cake with the jam of your choosing (and i sprinkled walnuts on the cherry topping and pistachio on the apricot) and bake for an additional 10 minutes at 350F. Beautiful.