Orange Layer Cake, Beverly Guy
When Maryland started enforcing car registration laws on Smith Island in 1973, Beverly Guy took it in stride, despite the hassle. Her 1966 Falcon had never been issued the proper inspection certificate. Dealers just didn’t bother when the cars they sold were headed for Smith Island.
Between July and August of that year, Guy got her papers in order and spent $300 to meet the requirements. “It’s been a great strain,” she admitted to Mary Corddry of the Baltimore Sun, but of the enforcement she said “it’s a good thing, really.”
The inspector was surprised to observe that Guy had put 100 additional miles on her car in under a month, on an island with four miles of roadway. Guy explained that she was a hairdresser who made house calls. The Falcon passed inspection and Guy went back to business.
She was a little less laid back when it came to cakes. In 2008, when the layer cakes she’d been making all her life were catapulted to statewide—and sometimes nationwide—fame, she told Walter Nicholls of the Washington Post that she’d be holding her fudge-iced cake recipe close to the vest. Commercial bakeries on the mainland were already cashing in on the soon-to-be-minted state dessert of Maryland, and Guy wasn’t having it. “You may think I’m petty and hateful,” she told Nicholls, “but they are pushing it to the hilt” with variations featuring crushed up cookies and candy. Real Smith Island Cake was more simple, and when found on the mainland, it “has to come over on the ferry to be real.”
Beverly Guy credited the famous Frances Kitching with increasing the number of layers to ten. As the Post reporter interviewed her, Beverly went about her daily process of baking cakes, one after another.
She was born on the island in 1949, to John Tawes Tyler and Rose Marie Tyler. Her father was a waterman whose family had been on Smith Island for five generations.
After high school, Beverly married Gene Guy, a waterman 21 years her senior. Gene’s mother Bernice Guy ran a boarding house on Smith Island and, much like Frances Kitching, was known for her cooking. A 1955 article in the Baltimore Sun called her meals “substantial, plain, and excellent.” The article also took note of the local accent “which sounded purely Cornish,” and the fact that “the strongest drink allowable [on the island] is root beer.”
About a decade before the 2008 “state dessert” bill would shine a spotlight on Smith Island cuisine, the Ewell Volunteer Fire Company produced “The Smith Island Ladies Aux Cookbook.” While Beverly Guy did not share her treasured chocolate-iced cake recipe, she did share one for an Orange Layer Cake. (The book also contains four of Bernice’s plain but substantial recipes.)
Beverly never made any secret of her usage of cake mix, which she doctored up with additional vanilla, margarine instead of oil, and—typical to an island recipe—evaporated instead of fresh milk.
The cake is iced with a homemade orange juice custard between its six or seven (you read that right) layers.
Recipes like this one are unfortunately imprecise due to corporate greed, ie “shrinkflation.” What would have been an 18.25 oz box of mix at the time of this cookbook’s publication is down to 13.25 ounces as of this writing. I managed to get a tasty and moist specimen out of the recipe but I won’t assume it’s up to Beverly’s standard.
Beverly died in August of 2024. Her obituary mentions her cakes and pies as well as her love of her cat and “The Young and the Restless” soap opera.
She’d rode the tide and rose to prominence alongside the cakes she loved to bake, giving interviews and expressing chagrin as mainland bakers reaped profits off of a reputation she’d helped build. That never stopped her love of baking, and she kept doing so up until her doctors made her stop in her final year of life.
The name of Frances Kitching may always come to mind when Smith Island cooking is mentioned, but Smith Island is no more made of one baker than it is of one waterman. Beverly Guy is one other name deserving of association with our state dessert.
Recipe:
- 1 box Duncan Hines cake mix, yellow
- 4 eggs
- .25 Lb softened margarine
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- .75 Cup water
- .5 Cup evaporated milk
ORANGE GLAZE ICING:
1.5 Cups granulated sugar
4 Tablespoons cornstarch
2 dashes salt
1.5 Cup orange juice
4 beaten egg yolks
2 Tablespoons butter
Combine first 6 ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Beat with mixer until light and fluffy. Grease each of 6-or 7- 9″ cake pans lightly with Crisco. Spoon 4 heaping tablespoons of cake batter in each pan and spread evenly. Bake at 350° until the sides of each layer turn brown and top is very light brown. Do not overbake! Remove from oven and let cool just a little while right in the pans. Spread Orange Glaze Icing between each layer; spread remaining icing on top and sides of cake. ORANGE GLAZE: Combine sugar, cornstarch and salt in medium saucepan. Gradually stir in orange juice and beaten egg yolks. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and glazed. Remove from heat and stir in butter until melted.
Recipe from The Smith Island Ladies Aux Cookbook. Ewell Volunteer Fire Company. 2000s.
