• (mini) Smith Island Cake

    “Effective October 1, 2008, the Smith Island Cake became the State Dessert of Maryland (Chapters 164 & 165, Acts of 2008; Code General Provisions Article, sec. 7-313). Traditionally, the cake consists of eight to ten layers of yellow cake with chocolate frosting between each layer and slathered over the whole. However, many variations have evolved,…

  • Vanilla Ice Cream

    Nearly all of my old Maryland cook-books contain a few pages of ice cream recipes. It was an integral ‘domestic receipt’ by the time Elizabeth Ellicott Lea published the first Maryland cookbook in 1845. Her book contains a characteristically austere four recipes- less than half as many as later authors M.L. Tyson of “Queen of…

  • To Preserve Strawberries

    “Once upon a time, people were wont to talk about the strawberry season and to look forward to it with delightful expectation. It brought visions of strawberry shortcake with mashed berries… and there was the social angle, the strawberry festival which brought together the elite of the neighborhood… Gone are these amenities, sacrificed beneath the…

  • Old Bay Pizza

    Update (2023): The recipe in this post was apparently invented by a woman named Connee Rauser Sheckler, who won a contest with it. It appeared in the “Cooking with Old Bay” cookbook under the name she gave it, “Old Bay Bianca Pizza.” I think I should make this dish again and share a few more…

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    Waverly Jumbles

    “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. –It is not fair. He has Fame and Profit enough as a Poet, and should notbe taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.– I do not like him,and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it – but fear I…