Oatmeal Cake with Caramel Icing

The world has narrowed to four walls and a kitchen. Week three of lockdown and the new normal is establishing itself: Mason at the kitchen table with his laptop, doing third-grade work with the self-direction of a graduate student. Lily at the kitchen table with her laptop, doing first-grade work with the tolerance of a prisoner who has been wrongly convicted. Heather at the clinic in the mornings, at home in the afternoons, everywhere at once and nowhere enough.

Scott's custody weekends are suspended. He's in McCall, we're in Boise, and driving two hours each way during a pandemic feels irresponsible. He calls the kids every Sunday. Mason talks to him for ten minutes. Lily talks to him for three. The pandemic has done what the divorce already did: made Scott more distant. But the distance is physical now, not just emotional, and the kids are handling it the way they handle everything about Scott — with acceptance that is too mature for their ages and too practiced for anyone's comfort.

Tom comes over twice a week. He's tested, I'm tested, we've created our bubble — a small island of normalcy in a sea of restriction. He and Mason built a birdhouse on Saturday, which is the kind of project that pandemic life has made possible: unhurried, collaborative, the luxury of time that normal life never allows. The birdhouse is crooked and overbuilt and Mason is enormously proud of it, and it hangs in the backyard tree where no bird has yet investigated it, but the point was never the bird. The point was the building.

I made banana bread three times this week. Three times. Because the pandemic has produced two universal truths: everyone is baking, and everyone has overripe bananas. The banana bread is Tanya's recipe — the one with walnuts and sour cream — and I've made it so many times now that my hands know the motions without thinking, the way hands know the motions of anything they've done enough. Measure, mix, pour, bake. The banana bread is not for us alone — I leave loaves on Carol's porch, on Jen's porch, on Brett's doorstep. Pandemic bread. The loaves of love left on doorsteps by a woman who expresses everything through food and who cannot hug her friends and so bakes for them instead.

The banana bread kept us going — but it wasn’t the only thing coming out of that oven. When you’re baking as a love language, one loaf leads to another, and eventually you find yourself pulling out the oatmeal cake recipe your grandmother used to make, the one with the broiled caramel icing that hardens into something almost candy-like on top. It felt right for Carol’s porch, for Jen’s doorstep — something a little more celebratory than bread, something that said I see you and I’m thinking of you in a way that a text message never quite manages.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Caramel Icing:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream or evaporated milk
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Instructions

Soak the oats. Combine rolled oats and boiling water in a medium bowl. Stir briefly, then let stand for 20 minutes until the oats have absorbed the water and softened.
Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan and set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then mix in the vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
Mix the batter. Stir the soaked oats into the butter mixture until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir just until no dry streaks remain — do not overmix.
Bake. Pour batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for 30–35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the top is golden brown.
Make the caramel icing. While the cake is in its last few minutes of baking, combine the butter, brown sugar, and cream in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the coconut and nuts.
Ice and broil. Spread the caramel icing evenly over the hot cake straight from the oven. Place under the broiler for 2–3 minutes, watching closely, until the topping is bubbling and lightly caramelized. Cool at least 15 minutes before slicing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Oatmeal Cake with Caramel Icing — The Pandemic Baker’s Other Love Language