cakes Archives - Page 4 of 5

Peach Brandy Pound Cake, Commander Hotel

May 7, 2017May 22, 2019

The opening of the Atlantic Hotel in 1875 is often regarded as the official “founding” of Ocean City.

If you wanted to visit the little beach town in those days, you had to take a boat or a train across the Sinepuxent Bay.

Train passengers often arrived to town covered in ash and soot. Nonetheless, the journey was a part of the experience.

Ocean City train station, kilduffs.com

Besides, the soot wasn’t the last mess to deal with. There was, of course, lots of sand. In 1910 a permanent boardwalk was built to elevate vacationers from the perils of sand.

A highway bridge to Ocean City was built a few years later. At last, the beach could be enjoyed without too much inconvenience from soot OR sand.

Ocean City remained a sleepy little beach town. When John B. Lynch, his wife Ruth, and his mother Minnie built the Commander Hotel on 14th street in 1930, it was a bit of a risky prospect. On the northernmost end of the “city”, the property was beyond the end of the boardwalk and a bit out of the way.

In 1933, an August hurricane changed everything. Residents watched as huge waves battered the barrier island, buildings washed away, and the boardwalk was destroyed. Thirteen lives were lost, and the road and railways linking the island to the mainland were no more. At the south end of the island, the Sinepuxent Bay washed a stretch of land out into the ocean, creating an inlet directly from the Atlantic to the bay.

Fishermen were overjoyed at this last bit. No longer would they have to drag their ocean catches across the island to the safe harbor of the bay. Federal funding was quickly secured to preserve the inlet from filling back up with sand. The new inlet became a crucial fishing port. Ocean City was now much more than a sleepy resort; it was the “White Marlin Capital of the World,” attracting sport and commercial fishermen. In the year 1939, 161 white marlins were caught – two by President Roosevelt.

Commander Hotel, Boston Public Library

The Commander Hotel proved to be a gamble that paid off. It was expanded over the years and incorporated attractions like clambakes and dinner theater.

The hotel was known for their food; three meals were included with the price of a room. Sometimes, guests enjoyed clams and corn served at long tables on the beach, or they dressed up in coats and ties to have dinner in the dining room in the evenings. John Lynch, Jr., the son of founders John & Ruth Lynch, contributed this Peach Brandy Pound Cake recipe to the 1995 book “Maryland’s Historic Restaurants and Their Recipes,” noting that in addition to the cake being a favorite in the Commander’s dining room, his own family enjoys it around Christmas.

And it is indeed a great pound cake – moist, flavorful, and just sweet enough.

The old Commander Hotel was torn down in 1997 to make way for something larger and more modern. By this time, hotel meals were no longer an important part of vacationer’s stays, with the plentiful restaurant options in town. The current building fits in with the other large hotels full of generic rooms that serve more as a place to stay than a destination in itself. Guest Norris Lanford recalled as much on eve of the hotel’s demolition: “I didn’t go to Ocean City. I went to the Commander Hotel.”

In a town built on a barrier island, where everything could be one big storm away from washing into the sea, change is the one thing you can count on.

Recipe:

1 Cup butter
3 Cups sugar
6 egg
3 Cup flour
.25 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Cup yogurt (or sour cream as called for in the original)
2 Teaspoon rum
1 Teaspoon orange extract
.25 Teaspoon almond extract
.666 Teaspoon lemon extract
.5 Cup peach brandy

Cream butter and gradually add sugar. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with yogurt, beating well after each addition. Stir in flavorings. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 20 minutes or until cake tests done.

Recipe adapted from “Maryland’s Historic Restaurants and Their Recipes” by Dawn O’Brien and Rebecca Schenck

The Southern Heritage Cookbook Library + “Sweet Potato Pound Cake”

April 19, 2017January 12, 2019

The books that got me curious about Maryland food were not Maryland cookbooks, strictly speaking. This cookbook set had been a constant in my household growing up, and I never thought of them as regional at all, despite the “Southern” in the name.

On my mother’s kitchen bookshelf they served as a source of inspiration and reference. Everything we could need was in “The Southern Heritage Cookbook Library.” When, as a child, I wanted to try and make cheesecake. We turned to the “Just Desserts” volume which gave us a decadent cake with mounds of cream cheese and sour cream, seven eggs, and which required about five hours in the oven.

That cake became an annual birthday tradition for me and it was what eventually led me to discover the concept of “Maryland food.” Feeling nostalgic in my 20s (and wanting to impress my friends), I borrowed “Just Desserts” for that cheesecake recipe. Thumbing through the book I noticed all of the information – illustrations, ephemera, anecdotes. I fell in love with this cookbook in a new way, and I began to acquire copies of the entire series for myself.

Illustration from “All Pork”

Eventually, I noticed various recipes with names like “Old Maryland Baked Ham,” “Maryland White Potato Pie,” and “Maryland Fried Chicken.” Aside from feeling surprised to see Maryland in a cookbook dedicated to the South, I was surprised that Maryland had any food tradition outside of crab cakes. Some of these dishes were unknown to me. I had to try them for myself. And maybe… blog about them?

So here we are.

The Southern Heritage cookbook series was first published in 1983 by Oxmoor House (Southern Living Magazine.) My mother remembers it as a subscription – one book a month for 19 months (the 19th is a master index to the entire book set). Copies of any of the books can now be found cheaply online, or occasionally in thrift stores or Book Thing in Baltimore.

Several of the cookbooks (e.g. “Company’s Coming,” “Sporting Scene,” “Breakfast & Brunch”) take a menu-based approach, listing a sample menu with the story behind them.

menu in “Company’s Coming” volume

For example, “Maryland Garden Pilgrimage Luncheon” features:

Old Durham Church Crab Cakes
Green Peas with Spring Onions
Cold Slaw
Jubilee Rolls
Maryland Fudge Cake
Glazed Strawberry Tarts

The “Cakes” book or “Plain and Fancy Poultry” might include recipes but also instructions on icing a cake or trussing a chicken, respectively.

Basically, they were the only reference I needed throughout my 20s, right up until I decided I wanted to, say, try to cook Vietnamese food… or to collect every Maryland cookbook just for the heck of it.

While it is true I now have many more ‘authentic’ sources for Maryland recipes, the Southern Heritage Cookbook library has continued to be a useful reference and a visual delight.

The weathered page of my beloved cheesecake recipe

Two Illustrations from “Cakes”

menu in “Family Gatherings” volume

Recipe:

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2.5 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
.5 teaspoon ground nutmeg
.25 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
.5 cups flaked coconut
.5 cups chopped pecans

Cream butter. gradually add sugar, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add sweet potatoes and beat until blended.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt; gradually add to sweet potato mixture, beating well after each addition. Batter will be stiff. Stir in vanilla, coconut, and pecans.

Spoon batter into a well-greased 10-inch tube pan. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until take tests done. Cool in pan 15 minutes, remove to rack and cool completely.

May be glazed with lemon or orange glaze if desired.

Recipe adapted from Southern Heritage “Cakes” cookbook

Recipe notes: This is not a Maryland recipe as far as I know but it was very tasty; “a keeper” as they say. I’ll probably make this in the fall with black walnuts.

Red Devil’s Cake

March 12, 2017January 12, 2019

I found this rare little church cookbook at the Kelmscott Bookshop a few months ago. It’s got a bunch of old photographs and a brief history of a town in Maryland right on the Pennsylvania border, Bentley Springs.

“On October 4, 1837, the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad obtained a right-of-way from William Dorsey and leveled a path through the valley for its rails… Mr. Charles W. Bentley and Ann O., his wife, appreciating the healthful location and charming natural scenery, purchased it from Talbot Denmead… and named it Bentley Springs. It was found to possess waters of great medicinal value and was visited by hundreds every summer, until it obtained an extensive reputation as a summer resort.
The Bentleys, apparently with unlimited resources [built]… a large hotel that contained forty rooms with lavish appointments and a courtyard paved with blocks of marble…” – Bentley Springs History and Favorite Recipes

Boarding House

I couldn’t find much else about Bentley Springs aside from the information in the recipe book. Much of the town was built around supplying food and labor to the hotel. A church was built in the 1870s along with several mills that employed the townspeople.

When the hotel burned down, the boarding house (pictured above) was built in its place and the Bentleys moved away.

Like many mill towns built around the railroad boom, Bentley Springs went into a bit of decline in the automobile age. One of the paper mills burned down, followed by the beloved town store a few years later.

Despite this, the recipe book assures us, “the pleasures were many”: children playing in the snow and swimming holes, church picnics, fishing and trapping. Emphasized above all is the natural beauty, wildflowers, rocky hills and babbling brooks. The kind of scenery that makes me excited for spring.

This cake recipe was contributed to the book by “Eliza V. Smith,” who sadly does not appear in any of the photos of townspeople. A few of the same photos printed in the cookbook can be found on this site.

I believe that “Red Devil’s Cake” and the now ubiquitous Red Velvet Cake are essentially the same thing. Recipes for Red Devil’s Cake appeared in newspapers across the country in the 1920s and 1930s. The original red color of these cakes was caused by a reaction between the cocoa and the acidic sour milk. Modern cocoa tends to be Dutch processed and this reaction is a thing of the past. Most Red Velvet Cake recipes now involve red food coloring.

My cake beautification skills are pretty pitiful as you can see, but I enjoyed this moist cake with some buttercream frosting.
I’d imagine that Eliza’s Red Devil’s Cake would have been made with pride and care and brought along to one of the many picnics and revivals centered around “this little stone church in the wilderness.”

Recipe:

2 Cups cake flour
1.25 Teaspoon baking soda
.24 Teaspoon salt
.5 Cup butter
1 Cup sugar
2 egg
2 square chocolate
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
.75 Cup sour milk
.333 Cup boiling water

1. Sift, then measure flour. Sift three times with soda and salt.
2. Cream butter until light and lemon colored. Add sugar gradually, beating after each addition until light and fluffy.
3. Slowly add the eggs which have been beaten until they are almost stiff as whipped cream. Gradually add the chocolate which has been melted and cooled.
4. Stir the vanilla into the milk. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk, beating until smooth after each addition. Add the boiling water and beat well.
5. Turn into greased cake pan and bake.
6. Frost, let cake stand for two hours before cutting to allow red color to develop.
Amount: 2 8 inch layers
Temperature 350° for 25-30 minutes.

Recipe from “Bentley Springs: Our History and Favorite Recipes”

Black Walnut Cake

November 25, 2016January 13, 2019

“An old almanac in the Goschenhoppen Folklife Library contains a woodcut showing a farm boy with a baseball-bat size club whacking away at a walnut tree. The late Thomas R. Brendle records the practice of waking-up young fruit and nut trees that are reluctant to start bearing by beating them with club. The folk practice dictates that the trees were to be beaten on New Year’s Day in the morning without speaking. A current arborist write that this is not complete nonsense. Apparently if a young apple tree, for example, has reached the age when it should start to bear and it just doesn’t flower, during the winter when it is dormant a beating with a padded club and a vigorous twisting of the limbs traumatizes and shocks the tree into its normal cycle.” – The Historian: Black walnuts in local culture, Berks-Mont News

A search of early era newspapers for “Black Walnut” turns up a lot of talk about furniture. And this may be what the trees are primarily known for today. But today, foragers know that the smelly, stain-causing green projectiles launched from black walnut trees contain a tasty little treasure for those willing to do the work to get them out.

It is actually surprising that black walnuts didn’t catch on sooner with Euro-Americans, because their flavor is very floral and perfumey – fitting in well with the rose or orange flower water flavorings that were common in desserts of the era. But with Chesapeake abundance, it could be easy to overlook such tough nut to crack. I harvested some black walnuts last year, dried them out, and had Burgersub drive over them with his car, but they came out too pulverized for use. Mom says that my grandmother smashes them with a hammer – but then she has smaller more nimble hands for picking the nutmeats out of the walnut chambers. This year, I bought them at the farmer’s market, conveniently shelled and ready for use.

Black walnuts were widely consumed by Native Americans, and the practical Pennsylvania Dutch (and their Maryland counterparts) have long used the nuts and the trees’ wood. One Pennsylvania writer has said that Black Walnut Cake was a Thanksgiving tradition in his family.

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s Black Walnut notes, “Domestic Cookery,” 1859

Many older Maryland recipes for Black Walnut Cake resemble a pound cake, but I chose a lighter cake from “Maryland’s Way,” contributed by a Ruby Duval of Annapolis (1891-1976). This cake contains baking powder, and uses only the beaten whites of the eggs. Food writer Clementine Paddleford wrote of a similar recipe, hailing from Kansas, in 1952.

I recently learned from “Maryland’s Chesapeake” by Neal and Kathy Wielech Patterson that The Maryland Department of Natural Resources sometimes collects donated bushels of black walnuts in order to grow them into seedlings to be planted along streams. This program, called “Stream ReLeaf,” plants native trees to curb erosion and runoff – ultimately resulting in a healthier and cleaner Chesapeake Bay. If you’ve ever seen the piles and piles of nuts dropped by a black walnut when it’s having an abundant year, you may be reassured that you can have this cake and a clean bay too. Ugh, nevermind, just eat some cake and watch out for the shells because you can break a tooth.

Recipe:

1 Cup butter
2 Cup sugar
3 Cup flour
2 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Cup milk
1 Cup black walnut meats
5 egg whites
Powdered sugar
almond extract or other flavoring

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream butter, gradually beat in sugar, mixing until smooth and fluffy. Sift together flour and baking powder. Gradually add flour and milk to creamed butter/sugar, alternating, beginning and ending with flour. Gently fold in beaten egg whites and walnut meats, keeping light but mixing thoroughly. Pour into bundt pan that has been greased and floured; bake for 45 minutes or until lightly browned.

Wet powdered sugar with almond flavoring and/or water and mix until smooth. Spread over cake while it is still slightly warm.

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

(mini) Smith Island Cake

July 4, 2016January 13, 2019

“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, both in the flavors for frosting and the cake itself” – Maryland Manual On-line

I confess to being a onetime Smith Island Cake skeptic. When the layer-cake was declared the state dessert in 2008 I was baffled. What of the white potato pie? Or Lady Baltimore? (Not a Maryland cake by the way. Shame on me.) And then, in my haste to try this famed cake, I ordered up a slice at one of the many restaurants along Route 50 boasting the dessert. Hoping to lure in tourists on their way to or from the beach, many such establishments scrambled to procure some form of “Smith Island Cake.” I was disappointed by nine dry, lifeless layers, probably straight from Sysco, foe of all that is authentic.

I was missing the point of the Smith Island Cake Act. This cake wasn’t coronated to reign above all other Maryland desserts and to add a token “must try” to diners’ lists for corporations to cash in on. This is about more than cake. It is about recognizing a unique place and culture in our state.

Smith Island Cultural Center | Ewell, MD

Many Marylanders have, unbeknownst to us, had Smith Islanders to thank for our soft crabs and crab cakes, dishes widely known and ‘owned’ from the shore up through the panhandle. When you eliminate the clams, crabs, oysters, and fish that comprise the seafood-centric sustenance of Smith Islanders, what is left to distill into an emblem of tradition and the meticulousness of skilled island cooks is Smith Island Cake.

It is hard to pin down the cake’s origin from newspapers or books. The name “Smith Island Cake” is a relatively recent convention, and the number of layers varies and bloats through the ages. Some early news-writers mention trying the famous “seven layer cakes” of Smith Island. Layers eight, nine and ten have been slapped on in the last 20 years or so, with authority enough that many would scoff at seven layers today.

Mrs. J. Millard (Helen Avalynne) Tawes’ “My Favorite Maryland Recipes” features a seven-layer cake with a cake and chocolate icing composition that is nearly identical to available recipes for Smith Island Cake. Tawes grew up in Crisfield, the closest town on the mainland, a departure point for ferries to the Ewell community on Smith Island.

My 1981 copy of “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook” does not include the recipe for the cake – it was added by popular demand to later editions in the 1990′s. According to “Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia” (2015, Lucy Long), “many incorrectly credited the late island hostess, innkeeper and cookbook author Frances Kitching with the cake’s appearance. She helped popularize it with the thousands of guests she served at her home and boarding house…“ This account claims that the thin layers were the result of a primitive wood oven in which it was hard to get a larger layer to rise properly.

Others maintain that the large icing ratio helped to preserve the cake for longer. The rising fame of the cake only serves to further confuse the cake’s true origin or ‘purpose’ – as if a cake ever needed a purpose.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of purists everywhere, I used Kitching’s recipe for the cake layers to make two miniature layer cakes, and swapped out a cream-cheese icing. I gave my tiny cakes a patriotic flair with food coloring, and I did a characteristically incompetent job of icing them. Nonetheless, the cakes were a hit; moist soft layers held together with a thin slathering of icing.

Smith Island Cake, Bayside Inn

In 2015 I visited the island. After a 30-minute breezy ferry ride to the Ewell community, we watched a video of a resident swiftly and expertly picking crabs for packing. I inquired into Mrs. Kitching’s old place – it had long since burned down. We strolled the streets for awhile. They resembled a sleepy Eastern Shore fishing community, but due to population (and land) loss it was even quieter. Occasional boat motors buzzed like cars on a distant highway, cicadas sang nearby. I was surprised to see pomegranate trees surviving the climate. Biting flies terrorized us, distracting from the picturesque calm summer day. We retreated indoors to Bayside Inn to finish our visit with a soft crab sandwich and yes, a slice of Smith Island Cake. I chose the “Peaches and Cream” variety. It was the best slice of cake I have ever tasted.

Recipe:

2 cups sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into chunks (1 cup)
5 eggs
3 cups flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1 cup evaporated milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
½ cup water

Cream together sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time
and beat until smooth. Sift together flour, salt, and baking
powder. Mix into egg mixture one cup at a time. With mixer
running, slowly pour in the evaporated milk, then the vanilla
and water. Mix just until uniform.
Put three serving spoonfuls of batter in each of ten 9-inch
lightly greased pans, using the back of the spoon to spread evenly. Bake three layers at a time
on the middle rack of the oven at 350° for 8 minutes. A layer is done when you hold it near your
ear and you don’t hear it sizzle.
Start making the icing when the first layers go in the oven. Put the cake together as the layers
are finished. Let layers cool a couple of minutes in the pans. Run a spatula around the edge of
the pan and ease the layer out of the pan. Don’t worry if it tears; no one will notice when the
cake is finished. Use two and three serving spoonfuls of icing between each layer.
Cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the icing. Push icing that runs onto the plate
back onto the cake.

Smith Island Cake Recipe: visitsomerset.com

Cream Cheese Frosting: