February 28: Mace Cake

My Saturday Cake resolution has been an opportunity to chip away at procrastination by preparing some recipes that had interested me, but had languished in a vintage book or in a file folder of magazine clippings.  Today's mace cake recipe comes from the April 2005 issue of Gourmet and was a submission to the magazine by Cynthia Knauer from Pennsylvania.

Betty, Jackie and Pat with my mother

The recipe appealed to me for two reasons.  The first reason is that I had never heard of anyone but my cousin Betty baking with mace.  Betty was one of three sister cousins who grew up across the street from my mother in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta.  These three sisters were much like older sisters to my mother who was an only child.  As such, they were always more like aunts to me than the type of distant cousins most people have.

Betty was pretty and blonde and always seemed sophisticated in her tastes; she was a career woman, she smoked cigarettes like a movie star, she had italian marble lamps in her living room, she collected perfume bottles on a curio shelf in her bathroom, she painted china, and traveled around the world with her china painting club.  When I was in middle school, she would invite me over to spend the night on Thanksgiving and the two of us would get up before daybreak to shop the after-Thanksgiving sales (something my mother would never do).

Betty often flavored her pound cakes with mace.  In the 1980's, my only knowledge of mace was as a spray repellant to muggers on television.  So, the first time she offered me some, I was a little apprehensive.  But the cake was as fragrant, elegant and unique as Betty herself.  She passed away five years ago last month and I was unable to attend her funeral because I was in the hospital for my first hip replacement.  I thought of her instantly when I pulled this recipe from my folder of clippings.

Elizabeth "Betty" Babb Cook

I was interested to learn that mace is actually part of the nutmeg fruit, from which both mace and nutmeg are made,  The fruit itself is about the size of a golf ball. Nutmeg, which is ground and used at our house for potato gratin and for crowning bourbon-spiked eggnog, is the woody seed at the core of the nutmeg.  Surrounding the seed, is a dark red web of fibers which is dried and ground to produce mace.  While mace does taste and smell similar to nutmeg, I think it is mild and has a more woodsy, balsam-like undertone like cardamom.

A little heavy-handed with the sprinkling lower right side!

The other reason this recipe caught my eye was its bizarre technique.  Instead of creaming the butter and sugar as the base of the batter, the eggs and sugar are beaten to triple their volume.  The milk and butter are brought to a boil as the mixer works on the eggs and sugar.  To the egg mixture, the dry ingredients are added.  Then, the hot milk and butter are poured into the batter.  I have never made a cake like this!  I always feared adding hot liquid to any mixture containing eggs lest I end up with a bowl of scrambled eggs.

No scramble resulted, of course, this is a Gourmet tested recipe. The batter was very thin, like pancake batter and it was topped before baking by a sprinkling of sugar and mace.

The sugar mixture created a golden crust as the cake baked and the kitchen was filled with buttery-rich exotic fragrance.  Daughter Autumn proclaims it the best Saturday Cake, to date.  I love the crunchy crust and the fantastic ease of the recipe - it came together in a snap and baked for 30 minutes.


I kept half of the cake for my family (and folks who visit).  The other half I plated up and took to Betty's sister, Pat.  Pat had been in the hospital for three weeks rehabilitating from a terrible fall.  She is now at home and recuperating very well.  Her daughter Liz is just about the closest thing I have to a sister as we are both only-children.  It has been a very stressful few weeks for Liz.  So after many days of relieving her for spells at the hospital, I was able to make a purely social call to Pat's house today bearing cake for the family.

Next Saturday:  Lemon Cheese Cake