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"It's a delicious example of how cakes can be made with little oil or fat," says Byrn. Flash forward to today, when vegan cooks are searching for ways to bake eggless cakes, and the Cowboy Cake continues to be baked."Īfter the Civil War, when the sugar plantations of Louisiana were destroyed, housewives substituted lowly sorghum and molasses and came up with the delicious Gateau de Sirop of Louisiana and the Appalachian Stack Cake.ĭuring WWI, sugar and flour were rationed. With no source of fresh eggs, they made do by cooking down raisins into a thick syrup that magically moistens and leavens the cake without eggs and with very little fat. "Frontier settlers moved West and could not carry their hens with them. "The Cowboy Cake is an excellent example," says Byrn.
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Some of the country's best-loved cakes rose (beautifully) from adversity. On a macro level, every major historic event – "wars, depressions, good times, stock market upticks, westward migration"– has left its mark on it.ĭuring hard times, when the four fundamental ingredients that go into a cake – butter, eggs, sugar and flour – were not always available, what was available, and in spades, was that fifth killer ingredient: ingenuity. On a micro level, cake has been there for American birthdays, graduations, weddings, victories, elections (including Election Cake) and even funerals. (Since yeast makes alcohol when heated, it was guilty by association.)
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Later on, the temperance movement swooned over this cloud-soft cake, because it was made without yeast. If chocolate cake is an offspring of science, the delicate Angel Food Cake is the child of frugality, created by Pennsylvania Dutch cooks who couldn't bear to let the egg whites left over from noodle-making days go to waste. "The first chocolate cake was called Mahogany Cake, and it was very pale compared to the deep, dark cakes today." They would use local berries to make jam and use it in spice cakes for the holidays. German immigrants brought the tradition to America. From applesauce cake, crumb coffee cake, molasses coffee cake and chocolate cakes to Shoofly Pie and black walnut cake – they all sprang from Pennsylvania Dutch ovens. If Italians brought in the rustic torte and Mexicans introduced delicacies like the Chocoflan and Tres Leches Cake, the contribution of German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania (and came to be known as the Pennsylvania Dutch – a corruption of Deutsch) is unmatched. "Eggs whites had to be whisked and flour incorporated by hand, the coconut had to be cracked, the meat extracted and shredded." "Southern cakes such as the Coconut Cake, Lane Cake, Lady Baltimore Cake, Japanese Fruit Cake, and Pound Cake were very labor-intensive," she adds. "They also brought a knowledge of new ingredients like coconut." "They brought a creativity to cooking and much hard work," says Byrn.
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Author Anne Byrn says enslaved Africans brought with them knowledge of how to use coconuts.Įnslaved African cooks made for some of the most talented bakers in the antebellum South, producing some of the region's best cakes. Keenly attuned to cake's deep regional roots, Byrn takes the reader on a coast-to-coast trail of crumbs, from "the dark, moist gingerbread of New England, to the elegant, English-style pound cake of Virginia, to the hardscrabble apple stack cake of Appalachia, to the slow-drawl, Deep South caramel, to Hawaii's Chantilly Cake and Alaska's rhubarb, to the more modern California cakes of almond or orange," she writes.Ĭoconut layer cake is one of the South's best-loved cakes. Lee, others have had more whimsical christenings - such as the Shoofly Pie, named after a circus mule, and the Brooklyn Blackout Cake, a cheeky nod to the blackout drill imposed in Brooklyn post-Pearl Harbor. While some cakes are named after heroes, like George Washington Carver and General Robert E. "Which is why a grandmother's cake recipe will usually have walnuts in it," says Byrn. One of the earliest cakes to use an American ingredient was the Indian Pound Cake, which used corn meal, known then as "Indian meal." Other inventions – the hickory nut cake and black walnut cake – used nuts indigenous to the New World. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title American Cake Subtitle From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-loved Cakes From Past to Present Author Anne Byrn