Another Layer of Love at the Very End

My Granna died on Tuesday.  Valentine's Day would have been her 89th birthday.

She began to suffer from congestive heart failure on January 31.  I was thankful to have received a call from my Uncle Randy after the nursing home contacted him that day.  I was blessed to have a husband who encouraged me to stay by her side for the last nine days of her life.  Keith even booked a hotel room for me in Thomaston (over my protestations about the budget and being absent from our home) so that I wouldn't have to drive long hours.  I was able to stay there, close-by, in case the nurses called with a change in Granna's condition during the night.

It is said that when you are born, you have your mother there to help you along; but that everyone dies alone.   That is certainly true.

Granna breathed her last while I was on the five-minute drive from the hotel to her nursing home.  But all of those days that she fought, I was beside her if she was scared or sad or hurting.
I come from strong and determined stock.  When she was born in 1927, she only weighed 2.5 pounds.  Her parents were afraid she wouldn't live the night, but they swaddled her up, placed her in a shoe box on top of their dresser, and prayed.

Growing up in the Depression, she walked to her country schoolhouse with nothing but a handful of parched corn or a piece of corn pone in her lunch pail.  But, she developed a love of learning that led her to a college degree, a career as a medical records technician,  and her passions for oil painting, photography and horticulture.

She expanded the universe of experiences for all of us in her family.  She touched all who knew her with her grace.


I baked two cakes today; a Five-Flavor Pound Cake (September 7) and a Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt (January 31).  I am taking them to the staff of the nursing home on my way down to Warm Springs tomorrow for the funeral.   I appreciate the care and affection they showed my grandmother, and their forgiveness each time I took some Saturday Cake to her without enough to go around.


I will be taking some time off from the blog to let all of the flavors of the last fifteen months sink-in.

2015 Re-Bake and the Recipe for my New Year

Yesterday, I thought for quite a while about resolutions.  The Cake on Saturday resolution of the past year has changed my life.

Many of the recipes that had been bookmarked-but-languishing on my shelves of classic cookbooks became part of this weekly experiment.  The most successful attempts:  Victoria Sponge Sandwich, Cherry Cake, Mace Cake, Feud Cake, Mexican Chocolate Cake (which I will add to my repertoire as a cupcake recipe), Queen of Sheba, Pecan Molasses Bundt Cake with Bourbon Glaze, Basil Pound Cake, Chocolate Ganache Frosting (July 4), Five-Flavor Cake, Hummingbird Cake, Sweet Autumn Cake (without all the crumbs, caramel and nuts on top), Myer's Rum Cake, frosting from Peanut Butter Cake Supreme, and The Chocoholic.

Early on, I was worried about finding the time to bake each week.  But, I was surprised to find that with each Saturday's adventure, it became easier and easier to make time.  I found comfort in making family recipes just because it was a Saturday and not relegating them only to "special occasions."  I came to grips with repeat fiascoes in the form of my burnt-sugar-nemesis, Caramel Cake.  As a result, I also discovered that my husband's encouragement and an Allgood pitch out of the back door can allow me to move-on from, possibly, any failure.  

Best of all, I have had the opportunity to share my false steps and triumphs with Granna each week when I took her a slice of Saturday cake on my visits to the nursing home.  

She's the one who got this whole thing stirred-up in the first place!

Now, what will I do with my Saturdays in the New Year?

Bitter Ending to a Year of Sweet Cakes

Over Christmas weekend, Granna had another stroke.

Unfortunately, I am not the family member who gets the emergency calls from her nursing home.  My father didn't notify me of her stroke for several days, and then it was via text message.  My father and I are not close and perhaps that is why he neglected to tell me immediately.  But honestly, this just reminds me of why I don't have a close relationship with him.

I went to visit her yesterday.  I spoke to the nurses and other care providers who explained why they were legally unable to call anyone but my father when the stroke happened.  They gave me more details about Granna's condition and her prospects for recovery.  I then sought-out Granna in the cafeteria where she was slumped in her wheelchair being spoon-fed her lunch.  She was happy to see me.  The result of this stroke is paralysis of her left side.  Her speech is slow now, and requires more concentration and effort on her part.  Her face is slightly slack in appearance and she has trouble chewing and swallowing.

She is no longer able to eat solid foods like cake.

November 28: Granna's Nut Cake

My grandmother's Nut Cake recipe is one of the treasures I found as I sorted through her cookbooks and clippings.  I found slips of paper with notes, sometimes written by a stranger's hand, about family tree birth dates, maiden names and death dates.  Granna made lists of flowers she needed to use to make an arrangement for horticulture club.  She made lists of dishes to serve for certain birthdays.  I found lists she made of her planned menus for Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving lunches.

Her neat, tight, level handwriting spelled out her plan of action for entertaining the whole family for the holiday.  Occasionally, her notes featured prices of the items she planned to make, or whether she had a coupon, or notes on which market had the best sale.  On the nut cake recipe, in addition to lots of stains and smudges, were written the price-per-pound for all of the expensive ingredients: Butter $1.67, Candied Cherries 1.29, Pecans $3.75 (now three times the price).

Pricey Ingredients

Did I remember one of those specific Thanksgiving menus on slips of paper used as bookmarks in a recipe book?   Sometimes she dated the notes "Thanksgiving 1985" and I sat, wishing I could remember any specific holiday at her house.  But, they were unremarkable because they all pretty much featured the same menu.  Each planned item was a favorite of one of her children or grandchildren; there was her cornbread dressing, her sweet potato casserole, turkey (sometimes cooked by my grandfather on the grill until it was as dry as sawdust), asparagus casserole, cylindrical cranberry sauce with rings of indentations left by the can, her homemade potato rolls, and her nut cake.

Granna's nut cake was the perfect lovechild of fruitcake and poundcake.  I have never seen another recipe for this cake.  It has a golden crust showing just the slightest nut-shaped hints of the treasures inside.  Candied cherries, candied pineapple and chopped pecans are packed into the buttery cake with none of the crazy cloying citron or bizarrely-colored fruit of fruitcake infamy.  Granna always made the nut cake in advance (it bakes for three hours and has to cool in the pan) and wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil to store in the freezer until the night before we arrived at her house.

Keith likes to take us all out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner so that I don't have to "spend all day in the kitchen" instead of watching the Macy's parade on the couch with him.  But, I always make pies for dessert at home after the feast.  I always make pumpkin pie by Chief Wilma Mankiller's recipe.  Chief Mankiller was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma for many years and she was an honoree at my college commencement.  Her recipe calls for baking pumpkin from scratch and it is Keith's favorite pie.

Everyone loves Mama Judy's pecan pie recipe, so I made a gluten-free version and a gluten-"full" version.  I also made a coconut custard pie on a gluten-free crust.  Mama Judy used to make a coconut custard pie (probably from Mrs. Dull's cookbook) but I found an appealing recipe clipped from a newspaper stashed in one of Granna's cookbooks.  It turned our very well.  I used frozen, prepared pie crust this year to save time.  The pies turned out just fine albeit with soggy bottom crusts, so I won't take the easy way out on pastry next year.

We've been rolling in pie and then cake for days.  It was a great weekend.

Granna's notes were her way to plan, organize and even savor the excitement of our visits.  She probably sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee reviewing the list multiple times in preparation for a holiday.  When I look at the lists, I can see her working on them and her nut cake tastes like thanksgiving to me.

On Saturday:  The Chocoholic

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 31: Caramel Cake IV, The Final Chapter

Halloween is supposed to be scary.  So, what better time to embark on my fourth attempt to make a caramel cake.  Right?

Saturday started out with such potential:  I had already found a good recipe for the cake layers that had enough body for the heavy caramel (Nathalie Dupree's from Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking).  I made three lovely, level layers and set them out to cool on wire racks.  So far, so good.

The most promising development, since my last attempt, was an intriguing new recipe for the caramel icing.  I did not want to get my hopes up, especially because there was rain in the forecast for Sunday and the rising humidity could spell disaster for the caramel.

My friend, Ellen, took pity on me after my previous battles with caramel frosting and sent me this recipe.  Ellen is a native of Alabama and has many memories of the homemade caramel cakes served at funerals, church suppers and pot luck dinners over the years.  She has never made a caramel cake, but her family's southern pedigree is solid.  Ellen's parents own a large farm and Ellen inherited a green thumb.  She is the first person of my acquaintance who has successfully grown peonies in Georgia.  She is a career woman who values pragmatism while at the same time revering southern traditions.  A few years ago, after seeing a picture in the local newspaper of the local DAR chapter (picture a bunch of older ladies in hats wearing socks and orthopedic sandals with their dresses), she suggested that we "block rush" the DAR to shake up the establishment a bit, or at least inject a little style.

Ellen found the recipe for caramel icing in her recipe box.  It was one of her grandmother's recipes, handwritten on the back of a piece of paper with an Enfamil (baby formula) logo along with a note to "call Lou."  Ellen's grandmother, Christine Pinson, was known as "Blackie."  Blackie got her nickname in nursing school when nursing candidates were referred to as Miss (surname).  Blackie entered nursing school with her sister, and the confusion caused by two Misses Pinson led to the need for two official nicknames.  Christine with dark hair became "Blackie" and her sister, the blonde, became "Whitey."  Blackie became a public health nurse, hence the Enfamil paper.  Lou, also a nurse, was probably the source for the caramel icing recipe.

The recipe called for browning sugar in a skillet, then adding that to a mixture of evaporated milk, sugar and oleo (margarine).  In spite of my hesitation about using margarine, I tried it.  The recipe called for it, so I figured it was the accurate thing to do.  However, I also set some unsalted butter and a second round of measured ingredients aside to make a butter batch, just in case.

The first batch of sugar, I burnt in the iron skillet.

The next batch of sugar turned out fine and I moved on to bring the full mixture with milk and oleo to "soft ball" stage (240 degrees).  Or so I intended.  The batch never reached soft ball before burning to the bottom of the pan to such an extent, that I felt sure that the pan was ruined.

Results of the second batch, as black as my mood and potentially as dangerous.

So, after working up a sweat scrubbing the pan, I decided to try again.  By this time, the trick-or-treaters were out roaming the streets and I decided to blame goblins for the failure of that second batch.  After adjustments to the burner temperature, checking the accuracy of my candy thermometer and an internal pep talk, I was ready to try again.  Keith, meanwhile, had grown weary of my sighs and wary of my increasing frustration level.  He said "you know, you really don't have to make a caramel cake.  It's not like your Granna made them all of the time, she just said that her mother made them on Saturdays. I might even love you more if you don't make a caramel cake, ever.  I hate to see you like this."

The third batch, let me just be succinct, was another profound failure.  

Despite my attempts to remedy all of the possible errors from the second batch, I ended up scrubbing and scraping burnt sugar-tar from my favorite sauce pan.  There was grumbling, cussing and a welling-up of tears before I reached the zenith of my frustration.  I felt like Anthony Michael Hall's character in The Breakfast Club whose elephant lamp wouldn't light-up when he pulled the trunk.  I should be able to do this.

Why can't I make a caramel cake?  Why won't it light up when I pull the trunk?

Come and get it, opossums and birds!

At that moment of emotional overflow, I walked into the dining room and saw the pretty cake layers anticipating their icing.  Something snapped.  I told Keith to grab a bite of one of the cakes before it was too late, then I scooped up the cakes and marched out the door.  Then, I violently threw the cakes into the back yard watching them smash to bits against the old swing set.  

Let me backtrack briefly to remind you that I come from a proud line of women whose ultimate expression of anger toward an inanimate object is to throw it into the back yard.  My Mama Judy, in a particularly trying season in the 1950s, got so annoyed with an iron, that she hurled it out the back door - narrowly missing poor Papa's head.  The iron lay, rejected, in the backyard until Papa secretly picked it up and disposed of it sight-unseen by Judy.  There have been times in my life, and my mother's life, when throwing that offending toaster,  immersion blender, or computer mouse out the back door and leaving it there is the only alternative.  My cousin, Liz, refers to this state as "having a case of the Allgood Red-Ass."  I am pretty sure, based on the anecdotal evidence, that all of the Allgood girls have succumbed to the condition at some point.

I followed my attack of the "ARA" with a glass of wine as I sat on the couch and promised Keith that I wouldn't be attempting any more caramel cakes.  Besides, on Sunday I visited Granna and asked her why she thought my caramel cakes didn't work.  She admitted that she didn't remember ever making one.  So, I finally got a treat after all my tricky caramel disasters.  

The toothpick comes out clean, and I am done.

Next Saturday: Myers's Rum Cake

July 4: Yellow Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

My Saturday Cake for the Fourth of July had to be an iconic American cake.  A yellow cake with thick chocolate frosting is so nostalgic that it borders on cliché.  When I was very young I had a Little Golden Book that featured a picnic with a chocolate-frosted, yellow cake.  I cannot remember the title of the book or even the main characters, only the cake and the nifty trick the character in the book used to take the cake on a picnic.  The character packing the picnic basket taped a knife for the cake to the bottom of the cake plate for safe transport.  I don't remember anything else that the folks in the book packed for the picnic.  Sandwiches?  Fried chicken?
All I remember is the cake.

This recipe is from the January 2006 issue of Gourmet.  I remember the reason I clipped it was for the frosting.  I have been on a special chocolate frosting quest for many years.  More indelible than the children's book illustration of a cake with a knife taped to the bottom, is my memory of the chocolate frosting from Rich's Department Store Bakery.

Rich's was an Atlanta landmark with a main store downtown at Five Points and locations at malls in the metro area.  For many decades, Rich's was the store at which you rode the Pink Pig at Christmastime.  As a teen, you took deportment classes in the Juniors' department, or had your "makeup done" for the first time at their cosmetic counter.  As a bride, anywhere in Georgia, you registered for gifts at Rich's, no matter how far you had to drive or take the train.  As an Atlanta matron you had your furs cleaned and stored in the Rich's Fur Vault.  The Rich's Bakery had counters in almost all of the stores and even had a few freestanding bakeries in Atlanta due to the popularity of their products.  They were known for their spectacular, stunningly-white coconut layer cakes.  A Rich's coconut cake was all my Granna requested for Christmas after they moved to Tennessee.  Going to get a cake for Granna (packed in Rich's iconic, cane-pattern-printed, green & white box, tied with white bakery twine) was a prerequisite to every Christmas road trip to her house.

Rich's Bakery Box Design

Better than the coconut cakes, to me, were the cupcakes with chocolate frosting; yellow cake with a shiny chocolate dome.  Sometimes I would get to pick out a cupcake on our way out of the store after a shopping trip.  Often for my birthday, Mom would buy a box of those chocolate cupcakes for me to share with my classmates.  For my seventh birthday, Mom threw a puppet-show-themed birthday party for me at our house.  She built a hinged, tri-fold puppet theatre out of Masonite that was big enough to conceal two or three "puppeteers."  Mom painted the theatre white and trimmed the borders with gold tinsel garland.  She covered the dining room table with piles of puppet materials and each guest got to build a puppet.  Every guest also got a box lunch, packed in a distinctive Rich's Bakery box along with a cupcake.  I kept the puppet theatre for many years; it even became a curbside lemonade stand during some summers.  Rich's was bought by Federated Department Stores years ago and was eventually sold to Macy's.  After the sale to Federated, the Rich's Bakeries were closed and the landscape of Georgia birthdays, weddings and Christmas changed, not for the good.

I have tried to find a comparable chocolate frosting for many years.  Ganache seems to come the closest.  But, Rich's frosting was not applied by dipping the tops of the cupcakes; it was applied generously with a knife or spatula that left a couple of subtle tracks in the chocolate sheen.

Back in 2006, when I clipped this recipe, I neglected to tear out the second page of the directions.  I looked online for the recipe, but had no luck after nine years.  So, my guidance ended when the batter went into the pans.  The baking of the cake layers was no problem, but when I got around to the frosting I had only the list of ingredients and the magazine picture to go by.  I made the ganache the way I have made it in the past; heat the heavy cream to a boil then pour it over the finely-chopped chocolate in a large bowl and still until melted, smooth and shiny.  After that, the frosting needed to cool and then be beaten with a mixer to make it the right consistency to spread and resemble the Gourmet picture.


This ganache frosting was DELICIOUS.  But the cake, though tender, was a little "crumby" for our tastes.  I will stick to my standard 1-2-3-4 cake.  I will keep the frosting "recipe" (such as it is) for other cakes since both the flavor and texture was perfectly rich.  

However, my search for a recipe for the elusive chocolate frosting of my childhood must continue...

 Too bad I haven't found it taped to the bottom of a cake plate.

Next Saturday: Gateau Américan

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

April 25: Robert E. Lee Cake

Among my many cookbooks from Bonnie Slotnick's Cookbooks in New York is Housekeeping In Old Virginia.  It was a gift from my mother.  This book is a 1965 reprint of one originally copyrighted in 1879.  The editor, Marion Cabell Tyree describes it as "containing contributions from two hundred and fifty of Virginia's noted housewives, distinguished for their skill in the culinary art and other branches of domestic economy."  Referring to herself, in the third-person, in the preface, Mrs. Tyree offers that "if she, above all, shall succeed in making American homes more attractive to American husbands, and spare them a resort to hotels and saloons for those simple luxuries which their wives know not how to provide... [she] will feel amply repaid for all the labor her work has cost."  I love this stuff.

Ad on reverse of clipping

The best parts of old cookbooks are the clues left behind that tell you about the previous owner of the book.  Inside the pages of my practically pristine copy of Housekeeping In Old Virginia, I found the clipping of the original late 60's magazine advertisement selling the cookbook as part of a cookbook-of-the-month club.  The book seems to have hardly been used.  I guess that the previous owner ordered the book from the ad, but kept the clipping in case she wanted to return the book to get a refund of her $3.95.  I don't know the magazine title or issue, but there is a strange and wonderful ad for Saran Wrap on the back side of the page.
  
Housekeeping In Old Virginia contains many gems among the recipes; tips on butchering and the storage of meat without an ice house, and how to take quinine without tasting it.  Some recipes are confounding in their apparent simplicity and this is the case with the "Robert E. Lee" Cake, submitted by "Mrs. G."  The recipe in its entirety:

Twelve eggs, their full weight in sugar, a half-weight in flour.  Bake it in pans the thickness of jelly cakes.  Take two pounds of nice "A" sugar, squeeze into it the juice of five oranges and three lemons together with the pulp; stir it in the sugar until perfectly smooth; then spread it on the cakes, as you would do jelly, putting one above the other till the whole of the sugar is used up.  Spread a layer of it on top and on sides.

A compelling recipe challenge!  After determining, from other recipes in the book, that jelly cakes are round layer cakes.  I set about deciphering the term "nice A sugar."  From what I was able to find on the internet, "A" sugar was a term for white granulated sugar.  Three ingredients in a cake with eggs as the only leavening agent, then iced with a filling that is fruit juice and sugar?  Could "A" sugar in 1897 be fine like a caster sugar?  How much pulp?


The cake was no problem.  It smelled egg-y during the baking and it rose high and even.  The filling was less successful.  Instead of stirring by hand while wearing a late Victorian corset and layers of skirts in a hot southern kitchen with no air conditioning, I used a Kitchen Aid to stir.  It took quite a while to dissolve the sugar and then I had sugary citrus juice that would never cling to a cake enough to use as a filling between the

layers much less on the sides.  I added more sugar and it turned grainy.  I gently heated the juice and lost the bright citrus flavor while not improving the texture.

So, I started over on the filling.  I tried using more pulp to add some more structure and more pectin to the mix.  I sectioned the oranges and lemons and retained the juice with the pulp.  This helped, but the texture was still only as thick as pancake syrup.  It was still a little grainy.  I set about icing the cake, juggling the runny filling as fast as I could.  Much of the juice soaked into the cake, leaving a coating of citrus pulp on the outside.  The results are interesting.  The citrus flavor interacts nicely with the egg-laden cake.  The cake is moist and light with a thin, crunchy crust.  The texture of the filling is still strange and a little grainy.  If I make a "Robert E. Lee" cake again, I will make it with orange/lemon curd filling similar to Lemon Cheese Cake (see March 7).

A recipe for "Robert E. Lee" cake, out of a cookbook from Old Virginia demanded to be made for Confederate Memorial Day, April 26.  I, like most native southerners, have Confederate veterans in my family tree.  Papa's mother, Sarah Angeline Sells Page, was an diminutive adolescent at the time of the war and she was a spy for the Confederacy.  She only stood 4'11" as a full-grown woman and during the war she was dressed as a young child and sent across enemy lines with maps and communiques secreted inside the body of her doll.  On my father's side, Granna's grandfather, Jefferson Smith, was a sharpshooter (sniper) in General Gordon's brigade.

Despite the fascinating Confederate history I have in my bloodline, our family never commemorated Confederate Memorial Day.  I don't remember special parades, commemorative services at cemeteries or even any mention of the holiday.  The way I found out that April 26 is Confederate Memorial Day is that it is also my birthday.  On my 16th birthday, my mother checked me out of school early to go to take my driving test and get my license.  We arrived at the license office in East Atlanta on Moreland Avenue to find it closed!  Georgia state offices were closed for Confederate Memorial Day back in the 1980's.

For my birthday this year, my mother will be making a gluten-free version of my favorite cake, Chocolate-Pineapple Cake.  A Chocolate-Pineapple Cake is the creation of Mama Judy's sister, Daisy Allgood Babb (called Aunt Whick, mother to Pat, Betty, Jackie).  It is a four-layered, 1-2-3-4 cake with tangy pineapple curd between the layers and dark chocolate buttercream frosting on the outside.  My mother has made this family delicacy for me for almost every birthday.  I cannot wait for tomorrow.  We'll have both a gluten-free cake and a citrus-y experiment of a cake for my birthday celebration!

My mom with my birthday cake in Jackson, Mississippi at my first house (before I removed that terrible wallpaper)

Now, if someone could give me an early birthday present and help me clean all of the sticky fruit juice and sugar out of my kitchen...

Next Saturday:  Mexican Chocolate Cake

April 18: FDR's Favorite Black Nut Cake

Seventy years ago, on April 12, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia.  My Saturday Cake is from a book called "Hi-Ya Neighbor" written by Ruth Stevens.  Mrs. Stevens was the manager of the Warm Springs Hotel and wrote "Hi-Ya Neighbor" as a memoir of FDR's relationship to Warm Springs and a collection of menus and recipes that were the president's favorites.

Book jacket.  I have two autographed copies, collected from vintage book stores.

Aside from the fact that Mrs. Stevens ran the hotel where the "Secret Service men" stayed during visits, I have a family connection to the Warm Springs Hotel, the town of Warm Springs and to the Warm Springs Foundation.

Roosevelt sought treatment for the effects of Polio at Warm Springs in 1924.  The mineral-rich water there bubbles up at about 90 degrees, year round. A small resort had been built there on the site where centuries of Georgia residents, namely Creek Indians, had sought therapeutic treatment for injuries and disease.  Roosevelt was so impressed by the area and the positive results of his exercise in the warm water, that he helped launch The Warm Springs Foundation in 1927.  The Foundation is a large beautiful campus focused, to this day, on the treatment of victims crippling diseases and injuries.

My Granna, also born in 1927, worked at the Foundation as her first job.  Many teens in Meriwether county got their first jobs there as lifeguards, orderlies, tutors to juvenile patients or servers in the dining hall.  It was there that Granna met my grandfather, Eugene McDaniel and fell in love.  After my grandfather received his WWII draft notice, they eloped.  My Granna (16) had to lie about her age to the judge!

When Roosevelt passed away in 1945, his train departed from Warm Springs with nearly every citizen of the town paying their final respects track-side.  The crowd included my grandmother, pregnant with my father, her first child.  Granna later worked for Mrs. Stevens at the hotel coffee shop and my father would eat breakfast there on his way to school.  Mrs. Stevens would ask my dad if he had been a good boy and when he said "yes, ma'am!" she would give him a nickel.

The Warm Springs Hotel had a chicken coop out back and when a guest wanted fried chicken, the cook would step outside, wring a chicken's neck and then prep and fry it up.  Alice Waters has nothing on Ruth Stevens!

"Hi-Ya Neighbor" is an unusual compilation of anecdotes, gossip and memories.  Mrs. Stevens writes about her many encounters with FDR and about the great transformation he spearheaded in the town and the treatment facilities.  On the president's final day, she had prepared an enormous barbecue in his honor at the mayor's country home outside town.  Roosevelt never made it to the party.  On the menu that day was a 300-pound hog and various side dishes prepared by Stevens, along with this Black Nut Cake (because it was FDR's favorite).

Adding dredged nuts and raisins

Before the bath

The recipe is fascinating.  It calls for 2 quarts of shelled pecans, a pound and a half of raisins and "a wine glass full of sherry."  Mrs. Stevens's instructions dictate that the cake be baked in a steeple pan which, I admit, I had to Google.  A steeple pan is a tube pan; it makes sense since there's a "steeple" in the middle. 

The cake must be cooked on the stove, in a steam bath covered with a towel, for one hour, then it is moved to the oven to bake slow (330 degrees) for three hours. 

After an hour of steam

At the two-hour mark

THREE hours!

The batter with sherry, raisins and pecans smelled delicious during mixing.  I followed Mrs. Steven's instructions to the letter and cooked this cake a total of four hours, although I cannot fathom making this cake in Georgia in the days before air conditioning!

After about two hours in the oven, the cake looked done and felt done.  I feared that Mrs. Stevens was playing a prank in calling it a Black Nut Cake because it would surely turn out black as charcoal after another hour in the oven.  But, I stayed-the-course and helped myself to a glass of sherry to calm my nerves.

At a few minutes shy of three hours, I removed the cake from the oven and was more than a little concerned about the smell of burnt raisins that emerged with it.

The cake is actually quite good.  It has a sturdy crust, but the middle is very flavorful and moist. It is the consensus at our house that it is very good cake.  Keith says that it is the roasted nut flavor of the crust that makes it special.  I think that in the future, I will start testing the middle of the cake for doneness at two hours.  The raisins on the very outside do seem somewhat burnt.

For the eightieth anniversary of The Foundation, a special fund-raising effort was launched to fund renovations; plaques of dedication on the white columns of Georgia Hall were sold.  As a surprise for my grandparents, our family dedicated a column to them.



Next Saturday: Robert E. Lee Cake

April 11: Feud Cake

This is the first of my Saturday Cakes that I can actually eat.

I have tasted some filling and frosting along the way, but I am unable to eat any of the cakes because I am gluten-intolerant and, frankly, I blame Bill Clinton.

In June of 2005, I was one of the select U.S. Secret Service agents who had been trained to conduct intelligence advances for protectee travel overseas.  I was assigned to an advance team, armed with classified information and a satellite phone, and sent to Banda Aceh, Indonesia.  Former president Clinton and former president Bush were the special envoys from the United Nations to the areas ravaged by the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.  The Aceh region of Sumatra was the hardest hit area in the disaster.  The only building not leveled by the Tsunami was the concrete and cinder-block mosque in the center of Banda Aceh.  All the residents and shopkeepers posted newspaper pictures of the mosque standing tall above the flattened town.  Indonesia is, according to their government, the most Islamic country on earth and the survivors of the disaster took the sparing of the mosque as a sign or miracle.

My trip was to prepare for former president Clinton's six-month checkup on the recovery effort.  Our team was there for quite a while before Clinton's arrival and the entire trip had involved all-nighters for me conveying information back to headquarters in Washington.  In the wee hours before the former president was scheduled to arrive, I became violently ill with a stomach ailment.  Our team had been careful due to the unreliable hygiene of disaster area food preparation.  We used bottled water from the embassy to drink, brush our teeth and even wash our faces (because some infections come from opening one's eyes in infected water).  We had eaten MRE's, crackers & peanut butter that we had packed in our luggage, or the food from one restaurant that had been approved by embassy personnel.  I had eaten at the restaurant for supper and I think that it was the nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice) that made me sick.  During the day of the protectee visit, I spent the day briefing our personnel on intelligence situations while at the same time downing re-hydration salts and trying to remain conscious in the equatorial heat.  Clinton visited a refugee camp in the hills where the survivors from low-lying Banda Aceh had been housed.

Tsunami refugee camp

Tsunami refugee camp

View from helicopter

After the visit, I had a 24-hour flight back to Atlanta with a 6-hour layover in Tokyo.  I don't remember driving home to Newnan from the Atlanta Airport or how I got up the stairs to my bedroom.  I spoke to my mom the next day and when she heard my voice, she told me that she was on her way (at the time, her car was in the shop, so she had to rent a car to drive to Newnan from Atlanta).  When she arrived, she took me directly to the hospital. 

After days of Gatorade, Jello and soda crackers, I was somewhat better, but not recovering as I should have.  I saw my physician in Atlanta for a follow-up.  The bacteria (foreign strains of Campylobacter and Salmonella) ) that had made me sick were clear from my system, but I was still weak and unable to digest.  After another week, my doctor started testing me for parasites and diseases that could be continuing to make me sick.  My blood tests revealed that even my liver and kidney function were affected.  Among the tests was one for Celiac  disease and it found two of the four Celiac antibodies present.  My doctor told me to eliminate all wheat, barley and rye from my diet.  After about a week of the new food restrictions, I felt well.  Every time I had started to feel better on the Gatorade/Jello regimen, I had eaten dry toast or soda crackers.  No wonder I continued to be sick!  All told, I was out of work for a month after my return to the states and I ended the month 25 pounds lighter.  I have since heard from other people whose Celiac or gluten-intolerance was triggered by tropical bacteria, including someone infected in Indonesia (in Bali, on vacation).

This Feud Cake recipe is from a cookbook called Talk About Good!, published by the Service League of Lafayette Louisiana in 1967.  The book was part of my Granna's collection.  The recipe called for 6 egg whites, but not the yolks.  In searching online for an explanation of the name of the cake, I found other recipes that call for the whole eggs.  It requires only 2 tablespoons of flour which I have replaced with Cup4Cup Gluten-Free Flour.  The rest of the cake is simply egg whites, sugar and pecan meal. It is frosted with sweetened whipped cream and decorated simply with pecans, so it went together easily and quickly.

This cake is delicious!  It is like a toasted-candied-pecan cake or a cake-y, creamy, pecan pie.  I am really pleased with the appearance of the pecans and the white/brown contrasting layers.  I will certainly make this cake again and perhaps I will try a recipe with the yolks to see what kind of difference that makes.

I am not sure why this recipe is called a Feud Cake.   There were a few stories online about the ownership of the recipe being source of the dispute.  I have decided that in my case, the feud is my own body fighting with the gluten...  and this cake settles the feud.

Next Saturday: President's (FDR) Favorite Black Nut Cake