American Cake - Cake #26: Bangor Brownies

Time Period: 1870-1899

Hopefully, nobody asks you too much at a trivia contest about the origin of brownies. Are they named after the pixie-like characters in Palmer Cox's cartoons and poems? Are they named after the color, derived originally from the toasted nuts and molasses used to make them? Did they first come about because someone forgot to throw baking powder into the mixing bowl? Did someone at a chocolate company simply decide to toss in extra egg and chocolate to the cake recipe? All of these are described as possibly having a hand in the brownie's inception. This recipe honors the deep roots that brownie have in Maine, though at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, chocolate cake was already being cut into squares for portability.

As far as the project goes, I am quickly running out of easy recipes. Almost gone are the days of simply mixing six ingredients, then baking. Before we transition to the more complicated cakes, though, turning out this pan of brownies took hardly any effort. They were fairly tasty, though I wouldn't say this recipe blew me away. The brownies also didn't solidify quite enough, which meant that cutting and serving turned into a very messy process. Still, they were a satisfying dessert to serve at an afternoon of playing cards with friends; brownies are the laid-back member of the cake family, and that makes them welcome at almost any event.

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American Cake - Cake #25: Cinnamon Flop

Time Period: 1900-1916

Though a lot of cakes depend on eggs for their batters, there are plenty of home kitchens throughout American history that didn't have them in the fridge ready to go. Without the electricity from refrigerators and mixers, the Amish population in Pennsylvania had to depend on staples and hand-stirring. The cinnamon flop was a popular one in the early 1900s, and though nobody is quite sure how the word "flop" derived in this context, this cake has been a stalwart for the Amish ever since.

I made this one as a birthday cake for Tiddy while I was on a conference call for work, so you know its steps weren't too complicated. It served well as both an after-dinner dessert and a next-day coffee cake, though as with most eggless cakes, it didn't take long to dry out over the next couple of days. 

It's unlikely this cake will wind up in the top ten by the end of the project, but as a rough-and-ready dessert that can be whipped up in a hurry, it performed admirably.

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American Plate - Bite #83: Iceberg Lettuce

Several of the Bites in this project are representative of tastes acquired by the masses through the weight of history, but that have fallen out of favor in modern culinary discussions, and today's is no exception. Take a stroll in any grocery store produce section, and you'll see a vast array of leafy greens, packed with flavor and vitamins. Salads are no longer limp, dull bowls of mediocrity, eaten only by people looking to drop a few pounds. But there's still a holdover from those days, and it comes in the form of iceberg lettuce. This ultra cheap variety is virtually flavor-free, and far less nutritious than other lettuces and it is still, somehow, the top seller in American markets, holding 60% market share. How did it come so far when it tastes so unremarkable?

Lettuce itself is, of course, not American. It's been cultivated since the days of Ancient Egypt. Iceberg lettuce is American, though. It was developed in 1894 by W. Atlee Burpee & Co., who named it after it's icy pale color and temperature requirements needed for shipment. After World War II, America developed the technological capability to ship it anywhere in the country, and extend its shelf life. Iceberg's popularity skyrocketed, and has never come back down again.

Iceberg lettuce also found itself in the crosshairs of a political movement, when United Farm Workers staged a boycott in 1972 until working conditions improved. From then, it's coasted into modernity on being inexpensive and crisp.

There are worse things I could have to eat for the American Plate project, but honestly, is anyone ever in the mood for iceberg lettuce? The salads I made with it had to be topped with a myriad of seeds, dressings, meats, and cheeses to make any kind of serviceable lunch. If you want to add some crunch and roughage to a taco or hamburger, it's the cheapest way to do so, but if you're actually looking for greens with flavor, you should look elsewhere.

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American Cake - Cake #24: Malinda Russell's Washington Cake

Time Period: 1800 - 1869

This recipe was published as part of a 39-page booklet named A Domestic Cookbook in 1866. It was created by Malinda Russell, a free woman of color, and is thought to be the first cookbook by an African-American woman in our country's history. Mrs. Russell is thought to have run her own boardinghouse and pastry shop, and her recipes had a more European flair than her contemporaries. This cake, for example, is similar to an English-style pound cake. After the Revolutionary War, a lot of cakes began to be named after President Washington, but eventually, Washington cakes began to be categorized by being pound cakes infused with currants or lemon.

This is one of the lemon Washington cakes, as it contains both lemon juice and lemon zest. The citrus gave it a nice zing, and unlike another pound cake I've made, it was not dry. That said, I do not know what is wrong with my tube pan, as it often turns out cakes with raggedy patches torn out, like this one. Malinda Russell was no doubt better at presentation than I. Oh, well. At least it tasted good.

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American Cake - Cake #23: Moosewood Cardamom Coffee Cake

Time Period: 1963 - 1979

American Cake is not a political book. By that, I mean that although certain types of cakes are intensely regional, and thus associated with certain types of people, the focus of each of the entries is simply the cake's origin, without much comment as to the personality of the person who invented/perfected it. And that's how it should be in a cookbook. That said, the introduction to this 1973 cake pins it to "a group of Cornell students" that "opened a mostly vegetarian restaurant called The Moosewood Collective", and served "seasonal meals with ingredients from local farms". OK, so, hippies. Got it. One of the cooks went on to publish some of those recipes in The Moosewood Cookbook, which included this coffee cake, inspired by the flavors of Scandinavian baking. That cookbook went on to be entered by the James Beard Foundation into the Cookbook Hall of Fame, which is something I now desperately need to research.

As you can tell from the picture, this cake is not fooling around when it comes to butter. The cardamom goes directly into the cake batter, which is then divided into thirds and separated by two layers of filling that contains cinnamon, brown sugar, and chopped walnuts. I baked this as this year's birthday cake, and it turned out very well. The butter saves it from being too dry, though it still benefited from a big mug of coffee on the side, or at times, some whipped cream as a topping.

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American Cake - Cake #22: Hershey Bar Cake

Time Period: 1946 - 1962

Though a lot of the cakes in this project have main ingredients that are not native to America, there's no denying the origin of Hershey's chocolate. Milton Hershey apprenticed with a Philadelphia confectioner when he was a teenager, and there was no looking back. He built his company on the ideal of making chocolate affordable, and between that, stamping the name of his product right into the chocolate itself, and providing it as rations to wartime soldiers, it's little wonder that Hershey's became a national phenomenon.

This cake, which derives all of its chocolate from Hershey's products (no cocoa powder) first appeared in the 1950s. At the time, it contained more sugar, which was later reduced in place of Hershey's syrup to infuse even more chocolate into it. Some recipes even ask for more drizzled on top, but that seems like overkill.

Today, it's become very fashionable to bag on Hershey's for being mass-produced, processed, "fake" chocolate. To some extent, I get it. There are certain ingredients I want to be as pure and natural as possible, and I enjoy more thoughtfully-sourced chocolate of varying levels of darkness as much as the next guy. That said, I don't have any beef with Hershey's. Though I don't have much of a sweet tooth, when I do get the craving for candy, there's nothing wrong with a good ol' fashioned Hershey bar, and hey, if it's Mr. Goodbar, even better.

While Hershey's has now mostly been relegated to bite-sized candy to give out at Halloween, this cake wasn't bad. Would it replace traditional chocolate cake in any serious baker's cookbook? No, of course not. But much like the chocolate bars themselves, it was a perfectly serviceable dessert.

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American Plate - Bite #83: Coca-Cola

Though it's been interesting to read about the history of the foods and drinks in this book, this entry is a good reminder that no matter how fascinating they may be, and no matter how tasty they are, or how embraced they are by a local culture, marketing is where the battle for widespread popularity is won. Staples like venison and bananas generate their own word of mouth, but when it comes to actual products, we wouldn't be talking about McDonald's or Jell-o today if they didn't have the teams of people who originally dreamed up the most effective ways to sell them.

Coca-Cola is perhaps the platonic idea of such a product; it wasn't the first soft drink invented, and certainly hasn't been the last. It doesn't taste markedly different than other colas, doesn't look different, and its ingredients don't cause a unique effect. And yet, it's the most famous and widely-available soda in the world.

Like many soft drinks, it began its life as a type of cure-all snake oil. The flavored syrup was invented in 1886 by Dr. John S. Pemberton, who was researching its use as a treatment for opiate addiction. At other points in its past, Coca-Cola was also claimed to cure headaches and impotence, in addition to the usual boasts about providing energy to the exhausted. 

People liked the taste of the syrup when it was mixed with carbonated water, and the product was named after its main flavorings: coca leaves and cola nuts. Coca leaves being the source of cocaine is often laughed about, because who wouldn't become enamored with a drink that gets you literally high? That component was removed by 1903, though. What really sent Coke on its meteoric rise were the people that knew what to do with it.

Ownership passed from a local who expanded the use of Coca-Cola into soda fountains to businessmen who innovated a bottling process that would also expand worldwide. It was sent to soldiers on the front of both World Wars as rations. It was talked up as cheap luxury during the Depression. It was touted as a welcome alternative to booze during Prohibition. 

No matter what was going on in the world, Coca-Cola was offered as a solution. It's little wonder that it has become the behemoth that it is today. Thanks to relatively recent developments in sugar substitutes, when I drink Coke, I generally opt for Diet Coke or Coke Zero, finding the original a bit too sweet for my tastes. I often like to add a splash of lime juice for some added zing. I certainly wouldn't call myself brand loyal, but the marketers across American history have certainly done their job well; it'll always be the first product to spring to mind when the topic of soda is brought up. 

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