Farmhouse Buttermilk Cake is just the sort of old-fashioned cake that your grandma might have relied on, but its simple brown sugar flavor and irresistibly sweet crunchy pecan topping cement its place in the modern day kitchen as well. It’s a simple-to-make rustic cake with a praline-like topping that gets you out of dealing with frosting but won’t have you missing it one bit.

It’s a from-scratch endeavor that even the most beginning of bakers can handle, even though it looks a little more complicated. But rest assured, it’s not. You just cream together brown sugar and butter – brown sugar is the only sugar used here – and then mix in eggs, vanilla, flour… you know, the usual. Buttermilk lends a really moist bite to the cake itself, a cake which is on the less-sweet side of things to compensate for the sticky-sweet topping.

You bake the cake first, and while it’s in the oven turn to your stovetop to bubble up some butter, brown sugar, milk, and pecans into a thick and sticky (but pourable) glaze.

That gets poured over the whole cake and then it heads back into the oven just long enough to set. You can slice and serve right away if you prefer a runnier topping, but if you let the cake cool a while you’ll end up with something closer to a praline texture.

While the topping on its own would be enough to make your teeth hurt, the basic brown sugar cake below it balances out the sweetness perfectly. It’s the kind of cake that’s as perfect for company as it is for a run-of-the-mill family dessert. Totally homey and heartwarming.