American Cake - Cake #3: Martha Washington Great Cake

Time Period: 1650-1799

Back before elections assumed national importance, local votes were a big deal for a lot of communities. In the earliest days of America, towns would have a holiday on election day, and gigantic Election Cakes would be baked to mark the celebration. Similar cakes were baked to mark other festive occasions. Around Christmastime in 1797, George Washington returned home to Virginia after his two terms as president, and Martha Washington is said to have baked a great cake much like this to honor his homecoming. "Great" cakes were called such because they held a huge quantity of spices and dried fruit and were extremely dense.

Fruitcake does not enjoy an admirable reputation in America these days, but colonial Americans wouldn't recognize what modern citizens rightly despise. There's good news for fruitcake, though: People are beginning to realize that if you can ignore what fruitcake has become and adapt an old-fashioned recipe, instead, it can be downright tasty.

This cake had a lot of interesting facets to it. For one, the first step was to wake up at the crack of dawn so I could begin soaking currants in white wine. Once the fruit was in a covered bowl to stay warm and happy while it sucked up the booze, I went back to bed. A couple hours later, I sprang up to get to work. The batter itself started pretty standard; eggs, flour, sugar... The usual stuff. But then instead of adding milk for the liquid component, it was the remainder of the wine once the currants were strained out.

That wasn't the final twist. Once the currants were stirred in, and the batter went into the loaf pan, it was time to bake. Most cakes go into a hot oven for a short burst of time. This one was the complete opposite. It went in at an extremely low temperature and baked for more than two hours.

Once it was out and cooled, Tiddy and I sliced into it. It was fairly decent, and I looked over the recipe again, noting that it promised that this cake gets better the more it sits. We tried some more hours later, and lo and behold, it was true. The flavors had melded even more, and the texture had firmed up. So, it's time to see what a little patience will bring: I'm writing this just before bedtime, and am looking forward to seeing what another overnight rest will do for this cake.

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American Plate - Bite #36: Spanish California Rabbit Stew

One of the nuances of the American Plate Project is how readily available each of the Bites is. It's pretty simple to get my hands on a hot dog or a banana, but things like Lincoln's favorite cake and lamb's quarters will probably come later in the process. Once in a while, though, I get a shot at one of the more esoteric items on the list, and fortunately, the stars aligned this past week to get to one of the most niche Bites in the bunch.

American history is full of stories about the colonies and the Civil War, but we'd do well to teach more of the history surrounding our expansion. Around the 1830s, a steady stream of wagon trains set out west, with pioneers settling vast swaths of land. Of course, some of that land was already occupied, but that sure didn't stop anyone. Encouraged by President Polk, Congress delcared war on Mexico in 1846, and over the next several years, the United States acquired loads of territory, be it by invasion, annexation, or purchase.

As with many stories of conquest, the new citizens and the existing ones eventually blended into a single community, which gave rise to a whole new regional cuisine, and eventually the modern Tex-Mex we all enjoy today. We talk about foods that represent America often, but the dishes that were born from the combination of pioneer Americans and Latino citizens are really far more American than a lot of the things we often ascribe national identity to. I'm looking at you, apple pie.

Encarnación Pinedo's 1898 cookbook, El cocinero español, described a lot of these wholly American creations melded from Old World and New World influences. As hares were plentiful in the Southwestern region (and still are), they were a very popular protein to cook with, and Pinedo included multiple ways of stewing them in her book. Of course, the recipe needed some slight adaptation from its 1898 version, which read:

"Cut the rabbit in small pieces. Fry in very hot fresh lard with small pieces of pork fat. Fry over a quick fire, and when it begins to brown, add some chopped onion, garlic, and salt. Let it cook. Then add tomatoes, olives, chopped mushrooms, one or two spoonfuls of flour, and powdered oregano. Cover it with a chile sauce, leaving the casserole covered, and cook it over a moderate flame."

The American Plate provided an udpated recipe for Rabbit in Chile Sauce, and what better time to prepare it than a snowy winter's eve? I definitely still need some practice in butchering meat; the rabbit may have come pre-skinned, but I'm not great at separting a carcass into its component pieces. There was lots of chopping to do, too. As with every recipe, I put in more garlic than is called for, and popped open my last bottle of red wine for the sauce. I don't like the texture of mushrooms, but they add nice flavor, and I wanted to stay authentic to the recipe, so I included them as big chunks instead of minced pieces so I could eat around them. I'm glad that the updated recipe retained the olives, too. They added a very nice bit of salty brine to the stew.

The weather was bad enough that I didn't go out for extra accompaniments such as bread or green vegetables, so I just served the stew on wild rice, which worked out pretty well. Both Tiddy and I enjoyed it a lot, though eating a heavy stew with a glass of red wine meant I was passed out on the couch half an hour later. That's something those Southwestern pioneers sure didn't have the luxury of doing.

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American Plate - Bite #75: SPAM

Americans like to romanticize the humble meals of other counties, but we have plenty of humble ingredients, ourselves. Nobody could ever accuse SPAM of being upscale, but it's been consistently popular since its inception by Hormel in 1937. Named for its components (Shoulder of Pork and Ham), it made its debut at just the right time. Fresh meat was too expensive during the Great Depression, and when WWII kicked off, SPAM was perfect for use in the military as well. Rationing and the short shelf life of certain foods meant that people needed cheap, long-lasting items for their bare pantries, and SPAM fit the bill.

Convenience is not the only thing that sold it, though. As the US military moved from country to country during the war, other nations also started developing a taste for it. It remains popular in places like Korea, Guam, and the Philippines. SPAM also made up a large part of the diet fed to the Japanese American citizens unfairly interned in camps during the war, but when they left, they kept it in their recipe books; SPAM-based sushi (called Spam Nori) is still eaten today.

It even became something of a comfort food in Britain, which led to it being lampooned by Monty Python, which may have led to its adoption as a term for junk email. Wild ride, huh?

It's trendy to criticize SPAM, and while I wouldn't serve it at a dinner party, I share a kinship with some of those citizens just trying to fill up on an inexpensive, easy dinner sometimes. Many a night when I'm trying to pinch pennies, I can turn to a can of SPAM, fry it up in butter and spices, and mix it into a bowl of scrambled eggs. It's not fancy, but it's hearty and simple - two qualities that Americans pride themselves on.

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American Cake - Cake #2: Chocolate Stout Cake

Time Period: 2000-the present

We started in Colonial times, and have now immediately rocketed to the present. One of the hallmarks of modern cakes mentioned in the book is a trend towards celebrating local ingredients, so I wanted to be sure and do that, if possible.

The opportunity presented itself when Tiddy's friends told us they were having a stout party. There would be plenty of stout beers around, as well as two stout stews. I don't like drinking stouts, but stout stews are consistently amazing, so I knew the flavors can really work in cooking.

We told them we'd take care of dessert, and I turned to the Chocolate Stout Cake recipe. It's easily the most massive cake I've ever made. Three full layers of chocolate cake, with ganache frosting between each layer, and covering the entire outside. It took four sticks of butter, four cups of flour, four cups of sugar, and almost two full bottles of beer. I selected the Oatmeal Stout offered by our local Schlafly brewery to embrace local flavors, and because I thought a hint of oatmeal would work well with the chocolate. I got started on baking, dirtying just about every dish in the house.

When I was done, it was towering. It was so tall, I couldn't fit the dome of the cake plate on top. We had to secure it for the car trip by putting a plastic bag over it and by me keeping a death grip on the edges of the cake plate and doing balance exercises that would make a gymnastics coach proud, while Tiddy took turns like an eighty-four-year-old.

But it paid off! The stout stews were delicious, and the gigantor cake tasted pretty good, even if it did put the whole party into a food coma within ten minutes. Maybe next time I'll go for something a little daintier.

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American Cake - Cake #1: American Gingerbread

Time Period: 1650-1799

As a wise woman once sang, let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. The first cake I tackled for The American Cake Project was American Gingerbread, which is the very first recipe in the book.

I have to confess, though, that I didn't (just) make this first because it's the earliest chronologically. Gingerbread is also very seasonably appropriate in early December, and honestly, the directions, ingredients, and necessary equipment is a lot simpler than it is for a lot of the later, fancier cakes.

And that makes sense. At this point in history, Americans had extremely limited access to ingredients, and home kitchens with bake ovens were just coming into existence. Traditional sweeteners were tough to acquire, and if a colonist wanted to leaven a cake, they'd have to use a yeast culture imported from Europe.

Things changed when potash was discovered. Don't ask me how people figured this out, but it turns out that when trees were cleared and burned, the resulting ash, when combined with sour milk or molasses, produced carbon dioxide bubbles that could raise a cake. Potash became a forerunner of baking soda, and using molasses was a lot cheaper than using honey or sugar, so a cakey version of gingerbread was born.

Used as a stomach settler in the 17th century, gingerbread caught on quickly. People assumed the molasses had health benefits, though it's far more likely that the ginger was the major contributor. The spices also helped cover up the flavor of the potash, which was decidedly not tasty.

In 1796, Amelia Simmons wrote the first American cookbook, called American Cookery. It included recipes for roasts, soups, breads, and desserts, and had no fewer than seven different preparations described for gingerbread. Though most of the gingerbread referred to the hard dough used for cookies, the cake version was mentioned as well. Simmons' recipes don't translate well to the modern era, but Byrn combined, then adapted the colonial recipes into a modern version of this uniquely American cake.

Gingerbread is classic for a reason. I've liked it since I was a kid, and this recipe is possibly one of the best I've ever encountered. Sweet, but not too sweet, with a good punch of spice, this version of American Gingerbread will likely be filed away as my standard. I'm sure a lot of the upcoming complex cakes will have charms of their own, of course, but gingerbread is comforting and reliable, and will always sit atop my list of welcome desserts.

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American Plate - Bite #22: Doughnuts, Waffles, and Cookies

The Bites in this project roughly split into two origins: Native Americans and immigrants. The natives contributed things like maize and venison, while immigrants brought over wonderful things like tostadas and sushi.

For today's entry, we must thank the Dutch that founded the region around New Amsterdam in current day New York. Though they didn't invent these sweets, one could make a strong argument that they perfected them. Cookies wouldn't be what they are today if the Dutch hadn't infused them with the spices they controlled, and the tradition of shaped cookies served at the holidays come directly from their tradition of pressing the dough into molds.

They brought waffle irons to the colonies, putting them on long rods to hold over a fire, and conceiving countless recipes, incorporating the waffles into dishes both savory and sweet. Everything from the caramel goodness of a stroopwafel to the hearty mixture of waffles with chicken and onion can be attributed to Dutch settlers.

The Dutch also elevated the humble doughnut, dropping balls of stiff batter into pork lard to fry. Originally, they were called "oleykoeks" (oil cakes), and were dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Modern doughnuts with holes arose about two hundred years later.

Today, all three of these goodies are in heavy rotation. Cookies are the only one I really make often at home, but there are plenty of businesses anxious to satisfy the American sweet tooth with these concoctions. The doughnut shop near me serves them with all sorts of interesting toppings, like chocolate heated with Mexican spices or blueberry cheesecake. The cookies pictured come from a store that will deliver them late at night to hungry customers who don't want to venture out (read: drunks with the munchies). The waffles are of a now-departed restaurant that served them both sweet and savory. They got topped with everything from cheese to banana/chocolate to salted honey mustard to barbecued brisket.

When people think "dessert", it's natural for our minds to drift to things like cake or ice cream, but this trio forms an iconic backbone of American eating, and many thanks to Holland for that. Proost!

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American Plate - Bite #98: American Cheese

The reputation of a lot of American food is less than sterling. People love to look down their noses at certain foods, and when I say the phrase "American cheese", I can bet that a certain image comes to mind. It can be tough for American cheese to instill the same respect as far as influencing our national cuisine as something traditional like maize, or even ice cream can do. Still, American cheese is woven into the fabric of our nation in myriad ways. Not only is it a symbol of food engineering, but of political policy and the resurgence of a more rustic food movement.

It took hold in this country the same way a lot of other foods did: It was easy to store and resilient. What better way was there for a Plymouth pilgrim to keep milk over the long winter months than by eating it as cheese? It was just the calorie bomb hungry citizens needed. The plethora of grassland for grazing animals ensured that cheese was popular from the very beginning. There actually weren't that many steps between that and cheese so processed that it has to be called "cheese product".

Cheese was mostly made, bought, and sold as a farm product until 1851, when Jesse Williams and his son opened the first cheese factory. Its commercial use took off, and in 1916, James L. Kraft patented what came to be known as the Kraft American Single. The main customer was the military, but it was soon discovered that the public would eat it up, too. It melted well, and was produced more "cleanly" than farm cheese, so Americans were soon lining up to pay more for inferior cheese. This trend continued, culminating in the invention of Cheez Whiz in 1952, a product so full of additives that it doesn't contain an iota of actual cheese.

The reputation of American cheese was not improved in the 1970s, which saw the creation of the Dairy Price Support Program. Giving governmental assistance to dairy farmers led to a glut of cheese that was given out in the 1980s to needy families; hence the phrase "government cheese".

Things started to change with the uptick of interest in the culinary world. People began to remember the good ol' days of eating real cheese, and a new generation of higher class American cheeses started to appear. From Vermont cheddar to the goat cheeses of California, American cheese is now something discussed in the same circles as expensive wines.

I wanted to be sure to taste a range of what American cheese had to offer, so as you'll see in the picture above, I visited both ends of the spectrum: After snacking on a few slices of Kraft singles, I bought a wedge of some pretty expensive Humboldt Fog, which made my taste buds sing with happiness.

Though cheese is eaten all over the world, it has come to symbolize so many different things in American culture, from ethics in food production to a sense of socioeconomic status. It helped colonists survive the winter and helped poor Americans survive unemployment. It gives us a lot to think about as we spear a cube of Colby Jack with a toothpick.

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