Have Your (Layer) Cake and Eat It Too, Southern Style
“If you get down and out,” she said, “just get in the kitchen and bake a cake.”
Chocolote Little Layer Cake, New York Times Dining and Wine, 12.16.09
Today’s New York Times Dining and Wine section features a delicious article by Kim Severson about “the cake ladies of Alabama” (which sounds just like poetry to me), about the awe-inspiring multi-layer cakes made by ladies in the small towns of Southeast Alabama. The article is plum-full of great quotes from the ladies (and a couple of men), that will have you grinning from ear to ear. It made me miss my growing up years, when I had the privilege to be in the company of women just like this on a regular basis, something fierce. God, am I glad to be from the South! But I digress.
One of the ladies, Martha Meadows, 77, learned to bake 15-layer cakes from her mother. From the article: “Why 15 layers? ‘That’s just the way it comes out,’ she said. ‘One time I got 17. Of course, I weren’t trying.’ ” Miss Martha makes something called the “chocolate little layer cake,” which she demonstrates in the short video (about 2.5 minutes) accompanying the article. Man! That cake is fierce! Talk about a project. Now, if I ever find myself some Saturday afternoon with a hankering to tackle an enormous and exacting cake challenge, this is gonna be it.
Of course, I don’t bake. So that’s a problem.
Here’s a funny bit from the article:
“I’m not much of a baker, so I took some lessons in Alabama. While the measurements were exact, the methods were sometimes vague. I asked Mrs. Meadows how long to beat the batter. ‘It needs to be beaten a pretty good little bit,’ she said.
How long should I cook the icing?
‘When it gets to cooking, turn it down.’ ”
Yep, that’s pretty much Southern for baking, through and through.
Check out the Cake Ladies of Alabama, it will make your day (or night).
I haven’t had this particular Southern delicacy, but I certainly sympathize with the often vague instructions that come from decades-old recipes. When I was learning how to cook as a kid, my father taught me a measuring trick that had been passed down by his grandmother: cup your hand and make a pile (of salt, baking soda, whatever powdered ingredient) as wide as a nickel, and that’s a teaspoon. Make a pile as wide as a half dollar and it’s a tablespoon. It’s not perfectly accurate, but works well enough in a pinch.
The real fun comes from translating recipes. You end up with crazy obscure ingredients or some measurement system leftover from the Middle Ages. It’s all metric except for “one eighth horse-cup of mashed tangleroot”.
Hey Benito,
That’s it – “vague” instructions. It makes me crazy! It’s like the writer of the article mentions how she once got a recipe for some kind of cake, and the first line of the recipe is, “start with yellow cake,” no instructions on how to make yellow cake, just
“start with yellow cake.” As she notes, generally in the South, women assume other women know how to bake. I’ve found this to be entirely true! But I most definitely do not bake! : )
I’m trying to visualize your measuring trick, and I can’t, oh, wait, now I get it. OK.
I don’t think I want to know what a “horse-cup” is. ; )