Hard Jelly Cake

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When I finally took a stab at baking the Shady Side specialty Hard Jelly Cake, I nervously wondered how my reputation would fare.

Treading in the steps of experts is always a setup for embarrassment. If my beaten biscuit experience taught me anything, it’s that the flame-keepers of some of our state’s more forgotten foods tend to take their responsibility seriously. When my attempt cast disgrace on the reputation of beaten biscuits, seasoned bakers did not hold back criticism.

As I explored the history and culture of Hard Jelly Cake, one of Maryland’s more obscure traditions, I found a similar wellspring of passion.

Mrs. Edgar Linton’s recipe in the 1966 cookbook “Maryland’s Way” is the only recipe for it in my database so far. “This is an old southern Maryland receipt,” wrote Linton, “popular at Christmas time. A Shady Side specialty, it keeps very well and looks festive when sliced thin.”

With only Linton’s recipe to go on, I couldn’t really envision what the cake was meant to taste and feel like. A few years ago, my aunt from Shady Side purchased one from Elaine Catterton. Catterton is one of the few bakers carrying on the tradition, making cakes for raffle/sale around the holidays.

The wax paper wrapping and red string were clearly part of the experience of Hard Jelly Cake. The cookie-like layers were infused with the flavor of grape jelly. The cake was not like any cake I’d ever had before.

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This unique dessert is another multi-layered specialty dessert hailing from a small town on the water. The similarities to Smith Island Cake end there. Hard Jelly Cake has not found a fanbase far beyond the descendents and social circle of the families who popularized the cake in Shady Side a hundred and fifty years ago. Despite its rarity, the cakes are still made and sold around Christmastime in Shady Side, and mentioning it’s name is sure to bring fond memories to those who are familiar with it.

Valerie Carson Watson grew up in the Annapolis area and had a network of friends and family who made Hard Jelly Cake.

She grew up knowing the cake was special “a lot of work and love” went into baking the cakes, which were put into a cookie tin wrapped in wax paper to age for a month before being served.

“It was a Christmas tradition,” she told me. “My grandmother and her sisters made hard jelly and then my mom and then me,” she said. Across the marsh from Watson’s family lived another Hard Jelly Cake baker, Ida “Honeybaby” Harpe, the aunt of Watson’s friend Jeanne Ewald. “Jeanne’s grandmother and her sister’s made the hard jelly cakes as well. Jeanne’s mother continued and then Jeanne and I started making them. Ida’s grand-daughter makes them now too.” This year, Jeanne and Valerie’s cake-baking had to go on pause due to COVID precautions.

On the origin of the cake in Watson’s social circle, she said “my older sister, Leslie thinks Hard Jelly Cakes started with the Townsend sisters. My grandmother was a Townsend from Davidsonville. Ida’s son, Neil think it started with the Owings sisters. The Owings family were from Shady Side.” The origin story takes a backseat to the social bonds represented by cake-making.

Online recipes for the cake turn up the tight web of the social connections of a small town like Shady Side. The comments on one blog post mention Ida “Honeybaby” Harpe by name.

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It’s rare that a recipe can be traced definitively to a family, but it is fairly likely that the Hard Jelly Cake originated with the Hartges and spread through their family tree and the surrounding community.

Anton Heinrich Gottlieb “Henry” Hartge left Germany along with a few of his nephews in 1832. Hartge had experience as a piano builder and that is what he did for several years in Baltimore. He originated a method of using an iron frame in his pianos. One of Hartge’s employees, another German man named William Knabe, went on to become a well-known piano manufacturer in Baltimore using this design.

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Legend has it that Henry Hartge visited Shady Side to tune a piano and decided to stay, around 1845. Henry’s grandson Emile Alexander Hartge turned the family woodworking business in a more regional direction and began building ships. Hartge Yacht Yard, founded in 1865, may be one of the oldest boat-yards in the country.

Hard Jelly Cake bears more than a passing resemblance to Baumkuchen, or “Tree Cake,” a German Christmas specialty. That cake sometimes incorporates things like almond paste and apricot jam, and is coated in chocolate. In 19th-century Shady Side it became something simpler, and entirely unique.

It is worth noting that cakes, like most recipes, tend to be passed matrilineally. Names, on the other hand, are patrilineal. Valerie’s sister Leslie Trettau said “I asked a couple of the Hartge’s about the hard jelly cake and they never heard of it.” It was women who shared this cake recipe with one-another. Whether it was Henry’s wife Emily Tscheripe, Henry & Emily’s son Fernando’s German-born wife Mary Doerr, or another German woman who popularized the layered jelly cake in Shady Side, the Hartge family is just one piece in the Hard Jelly Cake story.

In a 1975 article in the Annapolis Capital Gazette, Edna Collinson (1912-1992) of Deale connected Hard Jelly Cake to the Hartge family as she prepared them with her daughter Jeannine Tucker. Ethel Andrews of Shady Side reminisced about the special cake. “It was a Shady Side [Christmas] custom to visit all of the homes,” she said. “And in those homes there were tables laden with approximately 20 homemade cakes. The hard jelly cake occupied a prominent place.”

A few years earlier, in 1967, a Maryland-born woman named Virginia Morris shared her recipe for Hard Jelly Cake with the Salt Lake City Deseret News. Morris’ recipe contains twice the flour as Mrs. Edgar Linton’s recipe. A comparable ratio appears in recipes shared online. It may be that the Maryland’s Way recipe was a typo, which would certainly alter the experience of making the cake.

As a part of a military family, another Hard Jelly Cake enthusiast, Deborah Ford, 74, lived in Germany for ten years. She visited factories to find pans like the ones she inherited and uses to make the cake. Her search came up fruitless, and the cakes in Europe failed to stoke the tase of home that Hard Jelly Cake represents. “They do many different tort cakes but they are more like a cake and only a few layers. I was disappointed. Guess it is a dying art world wide.” She continued to make the cakes herself to keep the tradition alive.

Making the cake is a minefield of missteps. Lacking a way to cut the dough discs, I used a saucepan. I then realized I was in the predicament of sliding the slabs onto a pan to be baked. I’d recommend parchment paper!

There are the things only a seasoned Hard Jelly Cake-baker would know – how dark to cook the layers, just how thick to spread the jelly… and then there is the matter of taste and substitutions – each alteration a potential sacrilege.

Although the recipe in Maryland’s Way called for currant jelly, by most modern accounts, a love of authentic Hard Jelly Cake requires an appreciation of grape jelly. Watson recalled that her grandmother had a grapevine in her yard. The smell and taste of Elaine Catterton’s cake evoked memories of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for me.

I made my own cake with elderberry jam because I had it on hand. But I must profess I do not have a great love of grape jelly. “Sorry,” Valerie Watson said, “but that’s all the ladies used when making their cakes.”

I was happy with my results, but a lot depends on the flavor of the jelly.

I may purchase another Hard Jelly Cake if I have the opportunity, but I doubt I’ll frequently make my inauthentic non-grape version. Hard Jelly Cake is, after all, someone else’s tradition. I have some of my own.

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On Christmas Eve’s Day, we got a car and drove around delivering my Vanilla Butternut Cakes to family and friends.

After leaving a pound cake with my aunt in Shady Side, I stopped to view the Hartge cemetery. Like many small family cemeteries, it sits nearly in someone’s backyard. The old tombstones poke out at different angles, sinking into the marshy earth, with the West River in the background. The Hartge Yacht Yard still operates on the other side of the river.

We went on our way and I spent the day dropping little gold cake boxes on porches, stoops and mailboxes, occasionally exchanging a smile or a text message with people I miss dearly. Loving traditions will always morph and change to match our resources. Baumkuchen became Hard Jelly Cake.

“I realized once I left Shady Side that no place out of our area knew about [Hard Jelly Cakes],” said Deborah Ford. She left the area in 1968, bringing the cake tradition along. “That was the one home memory I kept alive for many years no matter where we were stationed. I sure miss the quiet little village on the Chesapeake Bay.”

Recipe:

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• 1 Cup shortening
• 1 Cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 3.5 Cup flour
• 2.5 Teaspoon baking powder
• .5 Teaspoon salt
• .5 Teaspoon nutmeg
• .5 Cup milk
• 1.5 glass red currant jelly [about 3 fl oz]

“Cream together the shortening, sugar and egg. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with milk to creamed mixture. Chill dough. Take a small piece of chilled dough and roll until thin. Select the top of a cooking pot or a small plate of the size desired and, after dough is rolled, place it on top and, using a pie crimper or a knife, cut a circle of dough the shape of guide. Using two spatulas, slip one under each side of circle and carefully lift it onto greased cookie sheet. A large cookie sheet holds three 7” circles. Bake at 350° for 8 to 10 minutes.
When browned slightly, remove from oven, place one layer on cake plate, spread with jelly, put another warm layer on top, spread with jelly, and continue in this manner until you have a jelly layer cake with about 10 to 14 layers. To make a pretty cake, before baking the last layer, sprinkle it with red colored sugar crystals. Also, it may be sprinkled with powdered sugar after baking. Makes 2 cakes, 7″ in diameter or 10 to 12 layers.”

Recipe from “Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cookbook“

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