December 13: Sunday Night Cake

My Sunday Night Cake on my newly-acquired, antique Dutch Kitchen (Hoosier)

During the summer, I found Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook (1961) at an antique mall near Concord, North Carolina.  Keith and I had driven Colin to Davidson college for a three-week Duke TIP program.  Duke TIP is a summer program for high-achieving youth in seventh grade and up.  It is essentially a "nerd camp," as any alumnus (including our Ian or Autumn) will proudly tell you.  This was Colin's first year at Duke TIP and he selected a course in architecture.  He had a fantastic time and made friends  with whom he shares common interests.

One of those friends is having her Bat Mitzvah on this Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina and has invited Colin to the big bash.  Keith's parents live in Columbia, so it will be a great chance to visit them for the holidays while giving Colin a chance to party with his TIP-ster chums.  Since we have been watching all of the James Bond films lately Colin is pretty fascinated with how debonair Bond can be.  Colin has elected to strike a James Bond image and will be wearing a white dinner jacket ensemble to the party.

Amy Vanderbilt is best known for her Complete Book of Etiquette (1952).  This cookbook was a great find for a myriad of reasons, not the least being the illustrations by Andy Warhol.  Warhol started out as a commercial illustrator and lived by selling his pen-and-ink illustrations before his first gallery show.  He was well-known for his illustrations, some in ink, some colored, of shoes in advertisements.  He was also known for similar illustrations of cats and there is an urban-art-history legend that he and his mother owned more than forty cats and that every one was named Sam.


In the 1980's, Mom and I visited my grandfather, Blaine, in Cherokee North Carolina. We stayed at one of the classic, kitschy motels on the reservation, The Pink Motel.  In the coffee shop of the lobby hung an original Andy Warhol painting of Mick Jagger.  What was THAT doing THERE?  It is an absolute mystery.  I will never forget the day that Mom and I first saw it just hanging there in a roadside tourist motel.  Blaine made some inquiries to try to satisfy our curiosity and the only explanation he could divine was a story about the owner of the motel being given the painting in payment of a debt.

Less mystifying to me, yet still curious is the name, Sunday Night Cake.  I Googled the term and found that virtually any cake - chocolate, cinnamon, etc. - could bear the label.

Amy Vanderbilt's Sunday Night Cake is two layers of cake flavored with almond extract and sprinkled with cognac after baking.  Between the layers is an almond custard and the frosting is made from almond paste and egg whites.  I suspect that in the style of The Art of Cooking and Serving (see October 10, Molasses Cake), a cake on Sunday night would be for an "informal" dinner, possibly planned and prepared by the man of the house, for the purposes of entertaining drop-in guests.  In Ms.Vanderbilt's recipe for Chicken a la King she even specifies such a gathering.

These time-tested recipes fit into almost any menu from brunch to midnight supper.  I like them especially for Sunday-night supper or for an unplanned Sunday luncheon when I suddenly decide it would be fun to have guests. (pg. 179)

Is this delicious but complicated and time-consuming recipe what constitutes "informal ease" in the Vanderbilt home?  Perhaps it is just rude of me to ask.  I suppose that should consult and etiquette guide to find out.

I think it is a touch of irony that in Warhol's work of the 1960's and 70's that he is best known for elevating the familiar products (Coca-Cola, Campbell's Soup) found in every American home to the status of art.

Perhaps the Vanderbilts did eat canned soup and drink Cokes, too.  But judging from this cake, their Sunday nights were a lot more complicated and elegant than ours.

Next Weekend:  My Gluten-Free Pound Cake

November 7: Myers's Rum Cake

After Halloween's flailing, flying flop of a cake, I needed a great result this weekend.  Either that, or I would need to drown my sorrows.

Rum cake.

I think everyone who was alive in the 1970's and 80's has prepared, or at least eaten, the Bacardi Rum Cake recipe that appeared in Bacardi's magazine ads.  The recipe contains a yellow-cake mix, instant vanilla pudding and Bacardi Dark Rum.  Rich tasting and moist, but a little cloying from the mix+pudding, it was a staple at adult parties when I was growing up.  That recipe was one that I copied (by hand, on college-ruled notebook paper) to take to college in my collection of essential recipes from home.  Recipes for Mom's black raspberry cake, her spinach quiche, her spaghetti sauce, our friend's heavily-guarded-top-secret apple spice bread, Granna's chicken spaghetti, Granna's cornbread dressing, Judy's chess pie, Judy's pecan pie and fruit cobbler all had a place in my folder full of recipes.

During high school in Atlanta, in the 1980's, the ultimate treat was to go to The Dessert Place with friends.  We would order a dessert and coffee to celebrate a birthday or a fun outing at the Virginia-Highland location.  With our moms, would take a ladylike tea-time break from shopping and stop at The Dessert Place on East Paces Ferry in Buckhead.  The cream cheese brownies from The Dessert Place were the ultimate treat for me; the definition of indulgence.  A party with catered desserts from there was a symbol of good taste and luxury for my generation of Atlantans.

In the late 1990's, my mom became friends with Bennett Frisch, one of the two founders of The Dessert Place.  Bennett and her business partner, Sheryl Meddin, had just published a cookbook containing recipes for many of the popular desserts from their restaurant, Stressed Is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards.  I received and inscribed copy of the book as a gift from my mom when I was working for the Secret Service posted in Jackson, Mississippi.

While there is no recipe in the book for those fabulous brownies, there are many recipes that I love to use.  But, I had never made the Myers's Rum Cake.

After I decided to make this recipe, I found a fabulous new Bundt pan for the season.  It's called "Autumn Wreath," so I probably would have bought it anyway just to make cakes for our daughter. I had to buy it as a treat to make up for for last week's debacle.  The best part of the design of the pan, for this recipe, is the acorn-shaped crevices.  This recipe calls for greasing and flouring the pan and then adding toasted, chopped pecans and almonds to the bottom of the pan before filling it with batter.  So that the finished cake comes out with a crown of nut-filled nuts!

The recipe calls for using all purpose flour, and since I know it was written by an Atlanta baker, I chose White Lily All-Purpose because it is a traditional Southern flour.  After baking, the cake gets a sugar-butter-rum glaze while it is still hot in the pan.

This light and silky cake has lifted my mood.  It turned out spectacularly!  The glaze and nuts adorning the outside of the cake made it very attractive, especially in the autumnal-themed pan.  But the silkiness of the tender cake inside made it a real winner.  It had none of the sticky sweetness of its Bacardi & cake mix alter ego.  The rum flavor is subtle and the cake has just enough richness.

Success!

Next Weekend:  Lemon Verbena Pound Cake

October 24: Sweet Autumn Cake

I got double the cake duty last weekend.

Saturday was our Autumn's 18th birthday.  In honor of the big occasion, I chose the possibly-eponymous Sweet Autumn Cake from The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook by Alexe Van Beuren.  B.T.C. is a grocery on the town square in Water Valley, Mississippi.  It was started by Van Beuren (a Virginia native) to bring back the old-school general store; they serve breakfast and lunch and fresh baked goods in addition to selling grocery staples and produce.  B.T.C. stands for "Be The Change" after a quote from Ghandi that says "you must be the change you wish to see in the world." The cookbook was a gift from Keith because he liked the concept of re-creating a small-town general store and serving creative classic foods.  But, he also likes to joke that B.T.C. stands for Bind-Torture-Cook, like the B.T.K. serial killer claimed to Bind-Torture-Kill.

This cake seemed like an inspired match for Autumn's birthday because she loves sweet potatoes, plus, cream cheese frosting is a favorite.  Autumn also requested that I make my Lemon Buttercream Cupcakes for her to take to school on Friday.  As a high school senior it wasn't important to take cupcakes to her class.  But, Autumn has an internship at a preschool near her high school.  All of her pre-K students bring cupcakes for the class on their birthdays and she didn't want to let them down.

I went ahead and made extras for her to take to her classmates in the International Baccalaureate program, too.  Some of the pre-K kids didn't care for the lemon cake and brightly-tangy lemon buttercream, but the teachers and high-schoolers loved them.  Each cupcake was decorated with "Autumn Sprinkles" hand-applied by Autumn, herself.

Graham-Pecan Crust

The Sweet Autumn Cake didn't need any decorations.  it was quite complex, elaborate and rich with sweet potato and spices in the cake and pecans and caramel drizzles to decorate the top.  There was an added layer of texture and flavor because the recipe calls for pressing a graham cracker crumb/pecan crust into the bottom of each cake pan before adding the cake batter.  This crumbly mixture made it difficult to handle the layers without crumbs flying all over the kitchen.  The crumbs also made for trouble when trying to frost the cake.

Overall, we judged the sweet potato and spice cake layers to be winners.  However, the effect of the cake layers, cracker crust, frosting, caramel and nuts was too, too rich.  The cake is a killer!  I love the idea of making the sweet potato batter, adding pecans (pineapple too?) and then spreading-on cream cheese frosting.

Excited about Furman, and not just the sassy shirt, either!

After a dinner at Fogo de Chao, Brazilian Steakhouse, the family returned home for Sweet Autumn Cake and watched our sweet Autumn open her presents.

This weekend will be another big one for Autumn.  Saturday is Halloween (a favorite), and Sunday is the deadline for her Early-Decision application to Furman University.  Furman has great opportunities for undergraduate scientific research and Autumn wants to go to medical school to eventually become a Medical Examiner.
Perhaps she will help catch the B.T.C. killer?

Next Saturday:  Caramel Cake IV

September 7: Five-Flavor Cake

It has been Calendar Girls tech week for me so my Saturday Cake has spilled over to a Monday Cake instead.  Although, it IS a three-day weekend, so I think I can get away with it on a "tech-nicality."

Tech week is the final week in the production period of a play when all of the elements come together on stage for the first time.  For weeks, the actors have been working in rehearsals, the scenic crew has been building the set in the shop, lighting and sound crews were plotting instruments and running cable, the properties designer has been shopping for the perfect thingamajig to sit on the perfect table in that one scene, etc...  The costume designer has been shopping for the perfect costume pieces, altering them to fit, building them when an (insert name, color, texture of piece here) doesn't already exist and has finally had a short break from dress rehearsals to bake a cake.

Sign at gelateria, Greenville

A time of bringing together different elements to make a cohesive whole seemed like the right time to try the Five-Flavor Cake.  In April, I took Autumn on a college visit to Furman University and afterward, she wanted to investigate downtown Greenville.  Greenville has a charming downtown with a nice variety of shops and restaurants.  We took a break for gelato and coffee before hitting the road back to Atlanta, and that is how I first laid eyes on a Five-Flavor Cake.  I thought it was so unusual that I took a picture of the sign to keep for future reference.

About a week after the Greenville trip, Keith and I attended a sale at the estate of Mary Nell and Dante Santacroce.  Mary Nell Santacroce was an award-winning, Atlanta actress best remembered for her portrayal of Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy by Atlanta playwright, Alfred Uhry.  Mary Nell Santacroce taught theatre and speech at Georgia Tech and was a longtime leader and mentor for DramaTech theatre there.  Uhry is an alumnus of Druid Hills High School where our Autumn is a senior, taking theatre class in the Alfred Uhry Theatre.  This tech week has been especially busy for our family, because Keith has begun rehearsals for Othello, which he is directing at Dramatech.

At the estate sale, along with some drama books and vintage buttons, we bought Ramblin' Chefs from Georgia Tech a recipe book published by the Georgia Tech Women's Forum in 1985.  Lo, and behold, what recipe did I find, but one for a Five-Flavor Cake!  The recipe calls for one teaspoon each of coconut, vanilla, butter, rum and lemon extracts.  It seems the Greenville cake used almond instead of butter flavoring, but I decided to follow the recipe in the Tech cookbook.  There is also a glaze added after baking that requires another teaspoon of each flavor.

The cake went together easily and the batter was very fluffy and "frosting-like" according to Keith.  That fluffiness is probably due to the use of both butter and vegetable shortening in the cake.  There was a light, cookie-like crust around the edges of the top of the pan (I was tired and slightly over-filled the bundt pan).  Those little crunchy bits were scarfed-up in a hurry by Keith and Colin.   After taking a bite of the cake, Keith said "WOW."  It tastes like pound cake with a little something extra and it is superbly moist from the glaze.

Encore!  Encore!

Next week:  Lady Fingers for Tiramisu

August 8: Orange Cake

I am glad that I chose a simple, straightforward cake this weekend.  Autumn and Colin start back to school on Monday and there were end-of-summer haircuts and supply-shopping trips to accomplish.  In addition, I had production meetings about the play for which I am designing costumes, Calendar Girls at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.  The show opens on September 10th and this weekend I made my costume presentations for approval of my renderings.  Now, I can hit the ground running on my designs.  It is set at the turn of the millennium, so I will be able to shop-and-alter rather than build most of the costumes.

This recipe is from my folder of magazine clippings; it was published in the January 2004 issue of Gourmet in a feature about sour cream, Culture Club.  The cake is a single-layer, square cake without frosting.  It is flavored with fresh-squeezed orange juice and orange zest.

The texture is absolutely perfect, due to the sour cream, no doubt.  It is moist and not "crumby."  It's a delicious cake, but its delicate orange flavor almost cries out for a glaze or frosting.  The family was unanimous is wishing it was, to quote Colin, "oranigier."  I am not sure if it was the fact that oranges are off-season and had come from South America or if the cake is supposed to have a very subtle taste.  I will try the recipe again, adding more orange zest and maybe I'll cheat a little by adding a spoonful of concentrated orange juice to the fresh juice.

Next Saturday:  Seven Layer Cake

July 25: Mocha Loaf Cake

With Leon and his cake at the Durham Bull

I got a head start on the weekend, this time.  Our daughter took college campus tours at Duke University and Davidson College at the end of the week, so I made a loaf cake that could easily be packed for a car trip.  Since Durham was one of our stops, we knew we would have to visit our friends, Leon and Areli, who own Cocoa Cinnamon, Durham's finest coffee house.  Saturday was Leon's birthday, so I made three loaf cakes; one for our car trip, one as a gift for Leon, and one for the folks who watched our house and cats while we were away.

I chose the Mocha Loaf Cake from the Opti-Mrs. Cook Book by the Atlanta Optimist Club, published in 1958.  This book is pretty fabulous.  It includes recipes submitted by wives of club members.  It features recipes, requested by the editors, from wives of national and Georgia politicians.  It includes advertisements from long-defunct Atlanta businesses including their "prefix + five digit" phone numbers.  The best advertisement is the one for J. Austin Dillon Company, funeral directors and ambulance service, clearly a family-owned business of the Dillons and Thomases.  Mrs. Dillon and Mrs. Thomas are listed prominently in the ad as "Lady Embalmers."

This book is also among my favorite cookbooks because it includes notes and recipes by its previous owner.  This lady was obviously a bit fond of Mock Cheese Cake (uses egg, condensed milk and applesauce instead of cream cheese).  She has several versions of the recipe, one written in her own hand, stuck into the back of the book.  She used a straight pin like a staple to hold a small stack of recipe clippings together.  I wonder if she ever found the perfect Mock Cheese Cake recipe...

While I am intrigued by a cheesecake that contains no cheese, I thought that my Mocha Loaf Cake was a better choice for this week.  The cake contains buttermilk, strong coffee and unsweetened chocolate.  The frosting has coffee, too, as well as cocoa and cinnamon.  The mocha flavor is really nicely balanced and the cake is very light.  I used disposable loaf pans for portability, and they worked really well.  For the frosting, I added a little more powdered sugar than the recipe prescribed because I was afraid it would be too soft and melted for the trip.  The family thought the frosting was a little dry, but they gobbled it up.  Leon enjoyed his cake and gave me great feedback; he thought that the flavors of coffee, cinnamon and chocolate were well balanced, and he enjoyed the contrast between the soft cake and the texture of the frosting.  I might make this as a layer cake in the future because of the dark/light, firm/fluffy contrast of this cake and its frosting.

Our trip to Durham was terrific fun and beneficial to Autumn in prioritizing her college choices.  It helped her frame her Duke TIP camp experiences at Duke and Davidson for making her college choice.  She is a great student with (a lot of opinions and) aspirations for attending medical school.  She wants to become a forensic pathologist, or medical examiner.  But we'll be proud of her no matter what college or career she chooses... even if she decides to become a "Lady Embalmer."

Letter to Opti-Mrs Editors from the White House...

and from Mrs.Herman Talmage, First Lady of Georgia,
well-known for her cooking (see next Saturday's post!) 

Ads with cheeky cartoons about domestic help in the kitchen!

Next Saturday:  Hat-in-the-Ring Cake

June 20: A Pound Cake for Father's Day

 
This weekend has been a busy one; packing up and delivering Autumn to The Georgia Governors Honors Program while still having some fun for Fathers' Day.  I knew that I would only have time for a tried-and-true recipe and not a new baking adventure.  I still wanted to make a special cake for Keith to enjoy on Fathers' Day.  I was relieved when Keith's chose, not surprisingly, a pound cake.

Since next week will mark my 26th week of cakes, I thought I would list my "keepers," so far.  Of course, I have not included the recipes from my regular repertoire, just the new recipes that I have tried for the first time as Saturday Cakes.  You will notice that a Caramel Cake is not in this list (I shall endeavor to perfect the caramel cake in the next six months, honest, I mean it).

Victoria Sponge (January 17)
Mace Cake (February 28)
Feud Cake (April 11)
Mexican Chocolate Cake (May 2)
Queen of Sheba (May 9)
Pecan Molasses Bundt with Bourbon Glaze (May 30)
Basil Pound Cake (June 14)

Have a happy Fathers' Day and celebrate the Summer Solstice with some cake!

Next Saturday: Pearl's Banana Cake

June 14: Basil Pound Cake

I come by it honest and the proof is in the cake this week, or rather in the cake recipe.

I have always had a slightly obsessive relationship with magazines.  I always want to be the first one to read a magazine when I buy it or receive it by subscription.  While I realize that most magazines are read at the newsstand or grocery store checkout line and then put back, I still prefer to be the first in the house to read MY magazine.  I remember buying my first Seventeen at the newsstand at the Greyhound terminal to read on my solo bus trip to  Granna's house in Tifton during a middle school summer.  I kept it and flipped through the pages for the trends that whole summer, and after returning home I kept it because it reminded me of my trip to Granna's.  I still have the issues of French Vogue that I bought in Paris during my gap year in the late 1980s.

There have been times in my life when my budget was so tight, that I felt like a shiny magazine was the only luxury I could afford.  I got to bring one home and carve out time to savor the perfumed pages of a fashion magazine, or the envy-producing photo array from a decorating magazine, or the inspiring recipes from a food & lifestyle periodical.  Cheap thrills.

When I was growing up, my mom had an unwritten rule that had been handed down from Mama Judy, no person in our house was allowed to open and read a magazine until that magazine had first been read by the person to whom it belonged by subscription or off the rack.  Likewise, no magazine should be cut-up, thrown-away or recycled unless by that owner.  Mama Judy was a notorious "purger" of other things, like the clothes she designed and made for my mom but then donated as soon as my mom outgrew them.

Magazines were different.  Judy held on to magazines, especially decorating magazines.  She kept stacks of magazines to revisit for design inspiration the next time she redecorated or rearranged the furniture.  She kept pictures from magazines to catalyze clothing creations and help steer her pattern making.  My mother embraced the practice and passed it down to me.  We graduated from keeping stacks of magazines, to piles of pages.  Like my mom, I keep folders of articles torn from magazines and newspapers; folders full of gift ideas, book reviews, home decorating dreams, travel tips, even gift wrapping inspiration.  The largest folder is the recipe file, an accordion file with sections for different types of dishes.  The Saturday Cakes are helping me tackle the "cakes" category.

The week before last, my mother gave me a folder of cake recipes that she had been saving but had never gotten around to baking.  This Basil Pound Cake is from Mom's collection of clippings; it is from the July 1984 (!) issue of Better Homes and Gardens and is on a page filled with recipes for foods found in American summer gardens.



I thought is was interesting that the recipe recommended baking the cake in the 9x13x2-inch baking pan (or a loaf pan).  I had only ever made pound cake in a loaf or tube pan.  Also, the recipe included a buttercream frosting.  I had never had frosting on a pound cake except at a wedding!  The cake turned out very well.  Autumn proclaimed that she liked it better than plain pound cake, and she is the only child we have who doesn't like frosting.  Although it only contains one tablespoonful, the fresh basil gives the cake a mild flavor that is green and bright.  I think it is brighter and more distinctive without the frosting.  Keith, a big fan of buttercream frosting, can't decide whether he likes it better with or without.  I think that I will make it next time without the frosting, but accompany it with a fruit topping (fig preserves? lemon curd?).  Or perhaps I will get a serving idea from a new magazine...

Next Saturday:  A Pound Cake for Father's Day