Classic Southern Cakes
This 'Lady Baltimore' intrigues me
The southeastern United States has a tradition of great cakes, and like many Southern food traditions, the cakes are a mix of German, British, and Caribbean foodways.
Here are just six of them, including one, the Lady Baltimore, discussed in the most recent podcast episode (below) and my current research obsession. If you want more, check out “American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes” by Anne Byrn. I love that she has decided there are “mother cakes” in the tradition of mother sauces. These six, I think, are descendants of spice cake, fruitcake, and sponge cake.
Caramel Cake: This one seems so simple, but the point of pride for bakers is the caramel frosting (not icing! … Maybe some people make icing but frosting really seems to be the standard). Most recipes I see online say to sub in yellow box mix if you like. Eyes on the caramel prize.
Apple Stack Cake: Very thin rounds of gingery spice cake are layered with an apple butter with chunks of dried apples. There’s a legend that this is a wedding cake, and everyone brings a layer to build a very tall cake. But you’re also supposed to make it a couple days ahead, allowing the butter to seep into the cake. So I’m not sure what to believe.
Red Velvet Cake: “Red” because cocoa and baking soda combined create a vaguely reddish color. Velvet because baking soda, brought to market in the 1800s, was making more delicate cakes. Probably. Maybe it was named after the decor at the Waldorf Astoria. But food coloring almost certainly wasn’t used until the Depression. Oh, also, I think “red velvet” and “devil’s food” might have been the same thing originally. And while buttercream frosting has no role here — clearly the far better choice is cream cheese — I want to try ermine frosting, which is probably what was first used. (Something timely: it’s becoming a classic Juneteenth dessert.)
Hummingbird Cake: This is sort of a spice cake (there’s cinnamon) with pecans, bananas, and canned pineapple chunks. It started as an unfrosted tube cake called the Dr. Bird. Here’s the story: the national bird of Jamaica is a hummingbird called the doctor bird. Air Jamaica made it their mascot in the late 1960s. It seems that at some point the airline served this cake at an expo or a press event — no one seems totally sure, but the Dr. Bird recipe started showing up in newspapers in 1972. (Some folks really lost the plot and thought it was named after a real doctor.) This 1987 notice clarifies it nicely: “Several years after I began making the ‘Doctor Bird’ cake, I noticed others submitting identical recipes to various publications and they were called the ‘Hummingbird Cake.’” Plenty more to read about the cake and the airline here.
Lane Cake: Sometimes called a Prize Cake, the sponge layers are spread with an egg-and-sugar mixture usually filled with raisins and pecans, sometimes cherries — the version pictured above has coconut flakes and dried peaches. It can be frosted or not, but bourbon is incredibly important, for authenticity. In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Scout gets drunk off a slice.
Lady Baltimore Cake: The Lady Baltimore is extremely similar to Lane Cake. It is, again, sponge cake layers, this time spread with a honey-date-raisin-walnut-rum mixture. It is always frosted. In fact, I think it might have been a leader in the American style of overfrosted cakes, since early mentions of it usually talk about how big it is, with its voluminous frosting. Oh, and you mix the filling with the frosting for the inner layers. It is often reported that the cake was invented in a book, published in 1906, of the same name and set in Charleston, South Carolina. Based on primary sources from 1906, I’d say it’s the other way around: the author was so inspired by the cake, sold at the Woman’s Exchange, that it became the subject of his Saturday Evening Post serial and novel. This reviewer clearly got an advance copy of the book, marketed as a romance, and is having a little fun.
The Lady Baltimore appears on “The Simpsons” in Mrs. Skinner’s cake scrapbook and I really believe they chose the absolute perfect cake for the scene and the character.
Which cake are you making first?
Myths and truths about one of the South's more food-focused cities.
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And I just came across this Old Line Plate post about Lord and Lady Baltimore cakes: https://oldlineplate.com/lord-baltimore-cake-grace-e-j-hanson/
As a sweets lover, I appreciate this rundown of cakes. Gonna make the caramel cake soon!