December 21: My Gluten-Free Pound Cake

It continues to be a week of baking here!  We visited Columbia friends and relations over the weekend, so I just got around to baking my Saturday Cake on Monday.  I chose my GF pound cake loaves to give one as a gift and to have a treat for myself.  I deserve a treat or two this time of year because Christmas means cookies, hundreds of cookies, boxes of cookies...

Our family gives boxes of homemade cookies to our neighbors, teachers, friends and coworkers every year.  This tradition evolved out of longstanding practices and fond remembrances of our childhood.  For me, Christmas has always meant time in the kitchen.  Mom and I always made a cake for Christmas Dinner.  On Christmas Eve, my parents and I would have a picnic on the floor under the Christmas tree and we were allowed to open one present at the picnic before heading to midnight mass.  The picnic was usually sandwiches or cold dishes like fruit, cheese and pâté.  Starting in middle school, I was the chef for Christmas Eve supper.  At first, I just selected and prepared the picnic fare.  But then I decided to go "gourmet" and pick a dish that I had never tried before.  I would make a list of ingredients and a game plan for the timing of the dinner, Mom would help me shop and then I did the rest.

Cookies for Teachers, 1981

Before Christmas Eve though, Mom and I baked gingerbread cookies.  We made dozens of gingerbread cookies to give as gifts and we kept some to serve at our picnic.  When I was a freshman in high school, I made ginger-caricatures of my teachers.  Each character cookie was about nine inches tall and was presented in a box on the last day before holiday break.

While in the Secret Service, I made gingerbread and other cookies to share on Christmas day for all of us working at the command post or duty desk.  After my shift on Christmas, I hosted an open house for friends, colleagues and neighbors who couldn't travel.  The open house tradition of sparkling wine, egg nog and finger foods on Christmas afternoon continued until I retired from the USSS.

When we were dating in 2005, I made gingerbread cookies for Keith and the kids.  He loved the cookies and said that the flavor reminded him of some cookies called "fruit bars" from the Eclair Bakery in the Five Points neighborhood of Columbia.  Keith used to make a special trip to that bakery for a box of fruit bars to bring home to Georgia every time he visited Columbia.  He shared the fruit bars with friends and coworkers and eventually he started buying a couple of extra boxes in order to keep some for himself.  The Eclair closed during the 1990s and ever since then, he has been wishing for more of his favorite cookies.

He described the fruit bars to me in comparison to our gingerbread; the spice is the same, but the bars tasted fruitier, and the bars weren't crisp like the gingerbread, they were cookie-like on the outside, but chewy in the center.  There was a color difference between the golden-brown outside (top and bottom) of the bar and the soft, dark inside layer.

I fell in love with Keith and his nostalgia for fruit bars.  So, I was determined to figure out how to make the fruit bars he remembered.  I started with Mom's gingerbread recipe and then added, subtracted, took notes, asked for critiques and practiced through seven iterations until I got it right.

Now, South Carolina Fruit Bars are the foundation of our holiday cookie assortment.  We usually make three or four different types of cookies or small cakes for the boxes.  Fruit bars start the list and get the most compliments from recipients.  We even have a few people every year who beg for the recipe, but Keith says he will never allow me to share it!

We made 55 boxes of cookies this year plus a few dozen extra of each type for ourselves.  Each box is loaded with cookies, tied with a bow and delivered by the family dressed in hats like Santa's elves during Christmas week.  For a friend with a gluten-intolerant spouse, I made the gluten-free pound cake and packed it in a box marked "gluten-free."  Then I put the usual assortment of cookies in a box for her and tagged it, "full-of-gluten."

Yes, there are 40 pounds of flour and 28 pounds of butter in that cart!

This year the boxes contained Shortbread Hearts from The Silver Palate Cookbook (1982),  Christmas Cookies (rich butter cookies with cherries on top from Southern Living), and Bourbon Pecan Balls from The White House Chef Cookbook (1968) by René Verdon.

Verdon was the French chef chosen for the White House by Jacqueline Kennedy, a decision which garnered her much criticism at the time.  Cousin Pat gave me the cookbook as a gift when I was hired by the USSS and the Bourbon Pecan Balls were always a favorite at my open houses.  Some years we make gingerbread boys and girls and Apple Spice Bread.  When Keith worked for Georgia Shakespeare, we made Gingerbards (a silhouette likeness of William, himself, crafted out of gingerbread and royal icing).

But, the most important occupants in every box are the fruit bars that won Keith's heart.

The last cake of the year:  Japanese Fruit Cake

November 21: Peanut Butter Cake Supreme

I've been wanting to try this recipe for months, but other recipes kept taking precedence.  It is from The Carter Family Favorites Cookbook by Ceil Dyer (1977).  Who would know more about peanut butter than a peanut farmer who became president?

I bought the cookbook at an estate sale shortly before Former President Carter announced that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer a few months ago.  I was drawn to the book because I have other White House/presidential themed cookbooks.  As a Georgia native, how could I resist?

When President Carter was in office and this book was published, we lived in Conyers, a suburb of Atlanta.  I had attended Montessori schools since the age of 2 (see January 24: Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake) and then attended Honey Creek Elementary in fourth and fifth grade. My parents' rule was that I was only allowed to watch two hours of television per week.

I had a terrible time deciding between Little House on the Prairie at 8pm on Mondays, The Waltons at 8pm on Thursdays and Wonder Woman, starring Lynda Carter, at 8pm on Saturdays.  I had the daunting task of keeping track which show's reruns to watch during holidays and summer break based on which shows I chose to watch during the regular season.  I would often get to watch whatever I wanted on TV at Mama Judy's and Papa's house when I spent the weekends there.  But, Mama Judy thought that Wonder Woman's costume was a little risqué, so I felt like I couldn't watch Lynda save America there.

This was all taking place during the Energy Crisis and President Carter would preempt broadcast shows for crisis updates and press conferences during the eight o'clock, prime-time hour.  It seemed to only happen on Mondays and Thursdays; the specific days that I was looking to get my precious TV allotment.  I would protest and complain to my Mom who would simply tell me that I would be able to watch the rerun, and to be quiet so that she could hear what the president was saying.

"Doesn't Jimmy Carter know that I only get to watch TWO HOURS of TV a week??!!"

I suppose that my mom got tired of listening to my protestations and told me that if I thought President Carter shouldn't broadcast during my prime-time shows, I should write a letter to the White House.  I did.  I cannot remember exactly what I said in the letter, but I received a form-letter response from the White House Correspondence Office a few weeks later.

Fifteen years after that, I applied to work for the US Secret Service and I remembered my complaint letter to the president.  The background investigation process sent Special Agents to talk to neighbors we had when I was three years old, former teachers, and employers.   It wasn't far-fetched to believe that they would also search some sort of White House database of letter-writers, too.  I was certain that sitting across from three senior agents for my hours-long panel interview, I would be asked about my complaint letter.  Worse yet, what if it would come up during the polygraph exam?  I worried about anything and everything.  The entire hiring process took two years and nine months from the time I applied until the job offer came (during which there was a government hiring freeze, most applications are processed in a year).  I was never asked about my TV letter once.  After being hired, I found out that the USSS only cares about letters that contain threats.

Peanut butter paperweight

The Peanut Butter Cake Supreme was actually pretty Ex-treme.  The recipe says to make it in four layers in 8' cake pans, but it turned out too tall for my cake dome!  It called for smooth peanut butter in the cake, along with self-rising flour.  The icing contains crunchy peanut butter and is cooked in a double-boiler.  I bought real peanut butter from Plains, Georgia at a roadside stand during the summer (re-run season).  But it was not sweetened, not salted and a little too crunchy for cake - not enough crunch for the icing.  I used Skippy instead.

The icing has a creamy, smooth consistency and looks alarmingly like some of my caramel icing fiascos - although here, the lumps are peanuts.  The cake is very soft and tender, but the icing is the very best part.  When I make this cake again, I will make it in 9" layers to make it less imposing and easier to store.  It might make fun cupcakes, too.

I have now acquired the Wonder Woman episodes on DVD, and I have some catching-up to do.
So, please excuse me...  Don't make me write a letter!

Next Saturday:  Granna's Nut 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 3: Lemon Cake with Lemon Buttercream

Maggie Angeline Page Hill, wearing Blaine's Airborne Wings on a suit made by Mama Judy
in her engagement photo for the Atlanta newspapers.  The suit matched her blue eyes.

This weekend, my cake is one of my own recipes.  I developed this recipe for a Lemon Layer Cake with a tangy, buttercream frosting years ago when I was entertaining the idea of having a cupcake and tea shop upon my retirement from the Secret Service.  I have made cupcakes from the recipe for birthday parties, showers, and I even made hundreds of them for a fundraiser for Georgia Shakespeare.  It is an absolute favorite of everyone in our family.

Maggie with my mom at the beach

Any dessert with lemon has always been a favorite in our family and perhaps that is because it was a favorite flavor of Mama Judy who did the baking when my mother and her mother were growing up.  Tuesday the 6th is the 95th anniversary of my grandmother, Maggie's birth.

Mama Mag never did much cooking, but she made delicious cornbread and she loved to eat.  She always asked to go to restaurants that served the things she loved but never got at home; Judy cooked traditional southern dishes and baked perfect southern desserts.  But frog's legs, fried chicken livers, raw oysters and fried oysters all had to be enjoyed by Maggie when she went out to eat.  She had eclectic taste in foods and no fear of trying new things.

Maggie was not a traditional grandmother to me.  She lived with Mama Judy and Papa and they filled the "grandparent" roles when I visited.  Mama Mag was more like a playmate to me.  We sat on the floor and played  card games like Crazy 8's or Battle using sticks of Fruit Stripe chewing gum to place our bets.  She let me play in her makeup and with her costume jewelry.  She would sing and clap her hands to songs on the radio or music played by bands at the mall.  When I was a teenager, she would joke with me like she probably did with her girlfriends as teens.  We would be driving down the street and she would see a punk with a mohawk, or a hobo, and say to me "well, there goes your last chance..." then she would start to roll the window down to call him over.

In 1940, she was pictured in the Atlanta Journal at a jitterbug dance contest in Grant Park.  She was one of the contestants and she kept the newspaper clipping pressed in the family bible along with other flat keepsakes like her school diplomas, blood donation awards and corsages from who-knows-what occasion.  My mother turned the clipping into a collage for me as a reminder of my uninhibited and fun-loving grandmother.  Maggie always lived in-the-moment and didn't really care what people thought (much to her mother's chagrin in her rebellious youth).

"The sky's the limit and there ain't no sky" reads the caption from the Atlanta Journal

 Maggie was the luckiest person I have ever known, probably because she did live optimistically in the moment and she believed that she would win.  She won every contest or raffle she entered.  When I was in high school, on Friday nights, I would go with Maggie to weekly bingo at the retirement high-rise where she lived.  Friday night bingo with my grandmother?  Maybe Maggie was right to think that those undesirable fellows on the side of the road could have been my "last chance" at getting a date.  She won bingo every Friday.  The other residents hated to see her coming, I'll bet, because she not only won the games but usually the door prize raffle, too.

I never won a bingo game there, but I did win the door prize one night.  It was the first thing I had ever won.  The prize was a cake, donated by a local bakery for Branan Towers bingo night.

Maggie on our Florida road trip, 1987

Probably since the place was opened in the 1960s, Maggie had always wanted to visit Disney World, but she had never had an opportunity to go.  In the summer before I left for college, I took Mama Mag on a road trip to Orlando, just the two of us.  We did everything she most wanted to see:  the killer whale show at Sea World (she was disappointed when we didn't get splashed), Disney World (she loved the runaway mine train) and we walked around the world at Epcot.  Our main destination at Epcot was Germany so that she could enjoy weinerschnitzel and a beer at the Biergarten like the ones she remembered from her life in Germany.

Maggie died in 1994.  Hospitalized from respiratory failure, but determined and feisty to the end, she passed away after removing her own respirator tube when Mom and I stepped out of her hospital room for a few minutes.

Maggie had no fear, lots of memories and always expected to win and I'll bet you a stick of Fruit Stripe that she would have loved this Florida citrus cake for her birthday.

Next Saturday: Molasses Cake

September 12: Tiramisu with Homemade Genoise Ladyfingers

Today is Keith's birthday, and his special request was tiramisu.  So, since tiramisu is not a cake, I decided to make the genoise ladyfingers as my Saturday Cake.

I chose to use the Genoise Ladyfingers recipe from Baking with Julia by Julia Child, based on the TV series of the same name. Genoise is the French name for "from Genoa" Italy and refers to a slightly dry, sturdy cake with no leavening other than eggs.  Genoise is traditionally used for jelly rolls, Bouche de Noel, trifle and ladyfingers because it is durable, flexible and soaks up flavors.   The eggs are beaten at room temperature.  The batter is exceedingly fluffy with a texture like whipped cream and is piped onto baking parchment.  My batter seemed to lose some fluffiness between going into the top of the pastry bag, and coming out of the end.  I marked the parchment with guide-lines to help the ladyfingers be consistently sized, but mine look more like arthritic-lady-fingers and the batter spread out as soon as I squeezed it from the bag.  I think may have been to vigorous when folding the melted butter into the batter (last step).  I baked the ladyfingers for about 5 minutes at 400º just until spongy and firm.  A few developed a golden color on an edge, but ideally they wouldn't have any golden color.  I cooled them on their parchment and went on to the tiramisu preparations.

I used the tiramisu recipe from Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook.  Carmine's restaurant is one of my favorite places to eat in New York.  They have one location at Times Square in the theatre district and another on the upper west side.  I was introduced to Carmine's by female Secret Service Special Agent from the New York field office.  We had gone through USSS training together and loved to talk about food and cooking.  Carmine's serves all of their food family-style and the tiramisu comes to the table in a BIG bowl.  It is the best tiramisu I have ever had.  Plus, they make a fantastic Speidini alla Romano appetizer (thick bread toasted with fresh mozzarella, then covered in a tangy butter sauce with capers and anchovies).  Their Chicken Marsala and Fra Diavolo are delicious.  Since we usually traveled to NYC a couple of times a year, it was easy to lure other Special Agents in to the "cult" of Carmine's.  My carmine's cookbook was a gift from the SA whom I had introduced to the Spiedidi and tiramisu.

First thing this morning, before a cup of coffee even, I made the zabaglione.  Zabaglione, or sabayon, is a custard of egg yolks, sugar and sweet wine like Marsala.  It needs to be prepared and allowed to chill for a while before assembling the tiramisu.  The zabaglione is folded into a mixture of whipped cream and mascarpone cheese.

In a baking dish, I layered ladyfingers (soaked in a mixture of cold espresso and Kahlua) with the mascarpone/zabaglione mixture then I added bittersweet chocolate shavings to the top of each layer.  I let the whole thing rest in the refrigerator for several hours and after a delicious dinner of barbecue at Smoke Belly in Buckhead, we returned home for Keith to try his tiramisu.  He loved it!  I was lucky that no one could see the malformed ladyfingers buried under all of the lovely cream!

Next Saturday: Mallorie Hinze's Prune Cake

June 6: Spice Islands (?) Cake

Last week, while shopping for vintage books at a thrift store, our son, Colin, found a treat for me.  He found a set of activity books from the American Girls Collection for their character named Samantha who lived at the turn of the twentieth century.  Apparently, American Girls' Samantha also enjoys cooking, making crafts, trying-on new outfits and producing plays.  Sadly, there was only one cake recipe in the cook book from the set.  The recipe is for gingerbread, which reminded me of my Spice Islands Cake.

The Spice Islands Cake is one of my signature cakes.  I developed the recipe in order to replicate the delicious taste of the Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with whipped cream on top.  It was one of the recipes I created and tested when I was living in Washington, DC.  Whenever I had a difficult day (or week) at work, I would cook to relax.  I would take the resulting cookies, cakes, etc. to my office the next day.  I made many versions of this cake trying to get the spices, texture and appearance right.  I was a regular reader of Southern Living magazine and in 2004, I decided I was ready to submit this recipe to their annual recipe contest.

At that time, I called this "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake."  I obsessed over getting the written instructions simple and foolproof.  I even gave the recipe to a tester or two to see if they could follow the instructions I had written and arrive at an appropriate result.

The recipe uses three different types of sugar (brown, light brown and confectioners) and that year the contest was sponsored by Domino Sugar.  I figured that by specifying "Domino" sugars in my recipe, I would be a shoe-in for a brand-sponsored prize, if not a grand prize.

I did not win.

After I moved back home to Atlanta, I submitted this recipe again to the Southern Living contest.  But this was after my trip to Indonesia, my diagnosis of gluten intolerance, and a couple of years of sour grapes reading the "winning" recipes in issues of the magazine.  I decided that "Pineapple Spice Layer Cake"  was a boring name and that the name had cost me dearly in the judges' assessment.  For my second submission, in an attempt to take back some power from Indonesia, I named the cake Spice Islands.  I thought that it was clever.

Layers showing filling

I still did not win.

Everyone loves the cake, so the name must be my impediment to recipe contest glory.  Keith believes that my mistake in renaming the cake was two-fold; I named it after a place where I suffered terribly, and it could be confused with the Spice Island brand of herbs and spices.  I am now thinking of calling it Equator Cake since pineapples, cinnamon, ginger and cloves originated and a principally grown there.

Close-up of frosting

This (insert name here) cake consists of three layers of cake, with pineapple filling that is like a pineapple curd.  It is covered with a thick layer of stabilized whipped cream that contains even more pineapple.

Whether I submit this recipe to a contest again, or not, it is absolutely a winner.  The cake is moist and tender.  The filling is tangy with loads of pineapple flavor.  The whipped cream frosting has the creaminess to balance the spice and fruity tang of the cake and filling.  I wish all of my "pastimes" worked out this well.

Next Saturday:  Basil Pound Cake

May 30: Pecan Molasses Bundt Cake with Bourbon Glaze

I found this recipe in my folder of clippings where it has, apparently, been hanging around for quite a while.  The clipping is from the March 2003 issue of Bon Appetit magazine.  I am sure that I clipped it because the words "pecan" and "bourbon" beckoned to me.

As I read the recipe, I realized that it calls for nothing but staples from our cupboard!  Corn syrup, check.  Cake flour, check. Molasses, ditto.
Needless to mention the bourbon and pecans as we always have a bottle of Maker's Mark on hand and pecans in the chest freezer.  One of my Secret Service partners in Jackson, Mississippi used to say that "you don't need a gun, until you need it real bad."  The same can be said for bourbon and pecans.

I have also been waiting for an excuse to use a new Fleur de Lis bundt pan by Nordic Ware that I bought for myself as a birthday treat.  Although bourbon whiskey is named for Bourbon County, Kentucky, and not the family of rulers from France, I thought it apropos.  It is interesting to note that the eponymous county is no longer home to any distilleries, since they were all destroyed during prohibition.

The new pan created a gorgeous cake.  The recipe calls for adding half of the cake batter to the pan before the addition of the molasses and pecans to the batter so the top half of the cake is lighter in tone.

The glaze is full of buttermilk (another staple - for pancakes, cornbread, poached chicken), butter, sugar and bourbon.

It makes the cake shiny, flavorful and terrifically moist.  This cake turned out very well and is unlike the other bundt recipes in my arsenal.  Since it is composed of staples, it'll be easy to make this cake often.

Vive la Bundt!

Next Saturday: Spice Islands Cake

May 23: Snow Cake

I love shopping at estate sales.  They are the best sources for inexpensive cookware, books of all types, vintage table linens, vintage hats, and vintage sewing notions.  It is sometimes difficult to see a person's belongings exposed and for-sale once he or she can no longer use them, their home thrown open to the public.  I admit that it makes me sad to see framed family photos or diplomas for sale when I imagine that the owner had always assumed that personal treasures like those would go to their next-of-kin.  But, I am sure that the owner kept all of their books (or hats, or buttons) because they valued them and I would like to think that he or she would be happy that someone else values those items, even if it is not a family member.

Two weeks ago, I made a terrific find at an estate sale!  I purchased a 1929 edition of The White House Cook Book.    Of the cookbooks for sale at the home, it was the only cookbook that looked as if it had gotten any use at all.  Judging from the other cookbooks and the appearance of the house, I believe that this cookbook was a family heirloom, not a cooking companion.  The owner of estate was an avid ballroom dancer with closets full of dance costumes and well-worn, gorgeous dance shoes.  She had flair!  Although her kitchen indicated that she did cook, it obviously wasn't her primary passion.

I bought The White House Cook Book even though it looks a little worse for wear, because I already own the revised and updated edition from 1996 and I had never seen another copy of the original for sale.  On the front and back covers there a rings of damage where an earlier cook had used the book as a trivet.  On the back cover, a yellowed paper doily has found itself permanently fused.  The previous owner, or perhaps the estate broker, attempted to repair the cover-to-spine joint with Scotch tape.

The original version was a 1887 copyright, written by the White House steward to Grover Cleveland.  My revised and updated version is a mere shadow of the original.  I purchased it from the Smithsonian Institution gift shop on an excursion to the museum.  When I lived in Washington, DC, I would spend many of my days off from the Secret Service visiting historical sites and museums.  Accompanying me on most of my adventures was another special agent, my friend, Darcy.  Since we worked at the White House and the book contained excerpts from the original book, we decided that I needed a copy.  As part of updating the book, Bazel and Ross included Hillary Rodham Clinton's cookie recipe and updated versions of the recipes they chose to reprint from the original.  The updated versions of the recipes read like methods of torture; using "liquid Butter Buds" reduced-calorie margarine and egg substitute to try convert an 1887 recipe on each page into a health-consious version printed on the facing page.  Grover Cleveland was, no doubt, turning in his very ample grave when this book came out.

Two versions, side-by-side, on my antique enamel topped table that I bought on a excursion with Darcy

As I very carefully perused the fragile pages of my newest acquisition, I found one page of the cake recipes that, judging from the stains on the paper, got a lot of use.  In the middle of the page is a recipe for Snow Cake with "delicious" in parentheses next to the title.  It caught my eye for both the parenthetical epithet and the fact that it uses arrowroot as the flour thereby making it gluten-free.

The instructions are minimal and antiquated, but I have grown accustomed to recipes of this sort.  It calls for "pounded white sugar" which would be granulated sugar, historically sold in cakes then pounded down to the flowing grains of sugar we recognize.  I decided to use caster sugar in case the pounded sugar turned out finer than our granulated sugar today.

In addition to being old-fashioned, the instructions seemed contrary to baking science.  I creamed the butter and sugar and gradually added the arrowroot as instructed.  Then I beat six egg whites to "a stiff froth."  Then I aded "them to the other ingredients and beat well for twenty minutes."  Two problems:  The other ingredients, when combined, had the consistency of dry oatmeal and I had always been admonished that over beating a dough or batter after adding eggs made the texture tough.  But, I decided to forge ahead as instructed in the book and get a workout by beating the batter by hand (no Kitchen Aid in 1887) for twenty minutes.  It calls for baking in a buttered mold or tin and I chose my larger tube pan.  I only baked it for forty minutes instead of the prescribed "one to one and a half hours."

My better judgement told me that twenty minutes of beating would overwork the eggs and I was right.  The resulting cake rose hardly at all and had a rubbery internal texture and a crispy dry crust.
But the flavor was sublime.  It tasted buttery, without feeling buttery like a pound cake.  It was not very sweet and would go beautifully with coffee or toasted and topped with jam or lemon curd.  So, rather than accept a terrible texture for a cake with flavor potential and gluten-free ingredients, I decided to make a second cake today in an attempt to remedy the problems I found with the original recipe.

I added 3/4 cup of whipping cream (alternately with the arrowroot) to moisten the batter before adding the egg whites.  I gingerly folded the egg whites in until just combined with the arrowroot mixture.  I used my smaller tube pan to give more height to the rising cake.  Although this improved the rise and the texture, the result was still rubbery evidence of overworked egg whites.  I think I will have to put some more work into salvaging this recipe to live up to its "delicious" hype.

A couple of days ago, I went to collect mail from our post office box and found a pleasant surprise.  Darcy had sent me a cookbook as a belated birthday present.  The book was a reprint of Ellen Emlen's handwritten recipe book from the collection of the  Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

As a contemporary of Grover Cleveland, Mrs. Emlen will be happy in her eternal rest knowing that no one printed her book with low-fat, low-cholesterol facsimiles included.  I hope that she will also be happy that I hope to use a recipe from her book in some future posting here.




Next Saturday: Pecan Molasses Bundt Cake with Bourbon Glaze