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Make America Cake Again (Bake Again?)

Monday, May 19th, 2025

The Exhibit (Courtesy of Carol Foote)

Food can be a tangible link to history. When we taste a recipe from the past, we experience that past in a specific, often delicious, way.

Last fall three social-studies teachers at Mohawk Trail Regional School in Buckland and I learned that we had been awarded a grant to bring a Smithsonian exhibit to the school and create programming to go with it.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted some aspect of the programming to be food related. Luckily, the teachers—Bethany Basal, Catherine Glennon, and Julia White—thought this was a good idea.

The exhibit is called Museum on Main Street: Voices and Votes. It explores the history of voting in this country. We consequently decided that our food piece would revolve around election-day bake sales.

In my own hometown of Hawley (and I presume in other towns), bake sales are a key part of Election Day. Our early May town election in Hawley wasn’t particularly exciting; there were absolutely no contests.

Nevertheless, many Hawleyites braved the rain to come to the Town Office to vote, visit with neighbors, and patronize the bake-sale table. My contribution, oatmeal-cranberry cookies, went fast.

The FedEx man stopped by as he always does when the “bake sale” sign goes up. He didn’t have anything to deliver, but he always likes to pick up something to sweeten his route.

We originally thought that we would ask the culinary students at the school to prepare vintage recipes and then tell visitors about the process. Unfortunately, it turned out that the culinary program wasn’t active this semester. We decided we would still have some bake-sale items but tie them into a larger program.

The program, which took place last Thursday in the school library, was called “Food for Thought.”

The main course was a panel discussion about the nature of community in our rural area. We have a general sense that New England towns don’t have the sense of identity they once did.

Our panel discussed these changes. It was led by Anne Gobi, the governor’s director of rural affairs, and Mick Comstock, a retired Congregational minister who lives in Shelburne Falls.

Mick began by telling stories of his youth in small-town Ohio and his adulthood in small-town Massachusetts. He cautioned against viewing the communities of our past with nostalgic glasses, talking about the ways in which those communities didn’t always welcome non-Anglo, heterosexual Americans. He couldn’t help expressing admiration for some of the ways in which the communities operated. He introduced listeners to the word “neighboring,” which farmers he knew had used to express their way of helping others with dignity.

Anne talked about her experiences in various towns throughout the state, reminding audience members of the expression, “If you’ve seen one small town, you’ve seen one small town.” In other words, she said, rural communities understood their needs better than anyone else could.

Martha Thurber, the chair of the local school committee, discussed the need for expanding our view of community as towns got smaller and had to band together. Jonathan Mirin of the Piti Theatre Company, discussed his reasons for centering his group in our local hills instead of in, say, Boston. Ben Clark of Clarkdale Fruit Farms discussed his stewardship of the land and his neighbors as he runs his family’s multi-generational orchard. And Greg Lilly, the athletic director at the school, described his own mission to help students and alumni create community through sports … and his hope to encourage more young people to stay in the area instead of moving away.

Everyone—panelists and audience members alike—sampled our election foods. These included vintage recipes for ginger cookies and pumpkin bread baked by students who work in the school’s café, along with donuts prepared by Hawley’s Doughnut Queen, Juanita Clark.

My contribution to the proceedings will be an Election Cake. Thought to have originated in Connecticut, these cakes date from the time when the New England states were colonies, although they were also popular in the early days of the American Republic.

Voting was something to celebrate then. Alas, only male property owners could vote, including African-American male property owners after 1780 here in Massachusetts. Women and non-property owners would have to wait for suffrage. They were allowed to bake, however.

Sign, “A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote,” ca 1920. Courtesy of the Smithsonian.

Election cakes were more or less forgotten by 1900. The practice was revived by bakers in 2016, when the phrase “Make America Bake Again” took the internet by storm.

The original election cake was a yeast-risen, spicy cake with dried fruits and booze. To modern eaters it may seem half bread, half cake.

My challenge while baking was to make an election cake without alcohol since it was to be served in a school. Happily, Marie Pellissier, the program officer at the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities who is overseeing our work along with the Smithsonian, is a culinary historian.

Marie sent me an election-cake recipe she had found on the internet that had no alcohol in the cake, although it did have some in the glaze.

I adapted the cake recipe slightly (I love to tinker) and made my glaze with fruit juice instead of alcohol. The resulting can’t couldn’t last as long as 18th-century election cakes, but it did serve a nice crowd on Thursday. Was it as delightfully moist as the alcohol-laden cakes of yore? Probably not. But it was a fun experiment, and the fruit gave it some additional moisture.

To learn more about the exhibit and our future programming, visit the school’s website. (Hint: I’ll be singing on May 29!)

While you’re eating your Election Cake, ponder these words by Chef George Formaro: “Election Cake isn’t just a recipe; it’s a journey into the heart of early America, a taste of the communal spirit that once celebrated our young democracy.”

Election Cake
adapted from the blog “Christina’ Cucina” by Tinky and Marie

Ingredients:
4 cups flour
2 cups dried fruits (I used dried cranberries and golden raisins)
2/3 cup lukewarm water
1 package active dry yeast (2-1/4 teaspoons)
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) sweet butter at room temperature
2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1-1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
enough orange juice to make a glaze; start with 2 tablespoons and slowly add more

Instructions:

Grease and flour a standard bundt pan.

Measure the flour into a bowl. Place the dried fruits in a medium bowl, and toss 2 to 3 teaspoons of flour on them. Mix well.

Pour the lukewarm water into the bowl of a stand mixer, and sprinkle the yeast and the white sugar on top. Allow the mixture to stand for a few minutes until it bubbles up.

Mix in 1 cup of the flour. Add the butter, and mix well.

Stir in the brown sugar, followed by the eggs. Blend well, then add the spices, the salt, and the baking powder. Stir in the vanilla.

Next, stir in the remaining flour and the buttermilk alternately, starting and ending with flour. Gently add the floured fruits.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Cover it with a slightly damp dish towel, and let it rise until it comes almost (but not all the way) to the top of the pan. Ideally, this will take about an hour. Toward the end of the rise preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bake the cake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool on a rack for 20 minutes and then invert it out of the pan and onto the rack. Cool thoroughly.

Whisk together the confectioner’s sugar and the juice to create a glaze, and spoon the glaze over the cake. Serves 10 to 12 voters.

To see a video about what Museum on Main Street means to the school, click here.

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Posted in Cakes, Pies, and Pastry, Historical Figures and Events | 5 Comments »

A Vintage Recipe for a Vintage Concert

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

I’m immersed this week in the 1920s. Pianist Jerry Noble and I are getting ready for a concert on Saturday called “Fascinating Rhythm: Songs in the Air a Century Ago.” We’re trying to recreate some of the sounds of that fascinating decade.

Part of my job in this collaboration is to select and learn music that was popular during the 1920s, and leading up to that decade as well; musical taste doesn’t necessarily divide neatly itself by decades.

Jerry and I will actually start in the 1840s with Stephen Foster, the first American composer of popular songs to make a name for himself with still remembered hits like “Beautiful Dreamer,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” and “Hard Times Come Again No More.”

We’ll segue through Vaudeville and early Broadway hits before singing our way into the 1920s with such songs as “I’ll See You in C-U-B-A,’ a number about Prohibition, when people had to seek out alcohol overseas; “My Buddy,” a delightfully sentimental tune; and “Makin’ Whoopee,” a song about … well … sex.

Between numbers, I’ll do my best to place the music in context and to talk about the culture of the 1920s.

I enjoy talking about culture almost as much as I enjoy singing. The 1920s were a significant decade because in many ways they represented the first truly modern era in the United States. Much of what defines us now flourished in the so-called Roaring Twenties.

Like the present—like much of American history, in fact—this decade revealed a lot of cultural contradictions. For the first time the 1920 census listed more Americans as living in urban than in rural areas.

Americans were conflicted about this trend. On the one hand, they loved the fast, jazzy pace of life in cities. On the other hand, they longed for the life many of them had left behind and remembered as simpler.

It was also in the 1920s that a majority of Americans came to own automobiles. This revolutionized not just transportation but relationships between people, dating in particular.

Before widespread use of the automobile, couples had to court in homes or at social events. Once they could travel freely together in the privacy of cars, they found more opportunities for intimacy.

The decade also saw a huge expansion of American consumer culture in general, as advertising grew and manufacturers came to believe that in order to keep the economy going they had to increase demand for more and more material goods.

And convenience foods developed with a vengeance. Canned goods had been around for more than a century. They were increasingly produced in the ‘20s, and they were joined by a number of new processed food products that endure to this day, including Kool-Aid, Popsicles, Velveeta, and Wonder Bread.

This week I decided to re-create some food item from the decade. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to make. Should it be a favorite recipe of my grandmother, a busy homemaker in the 1920s? Should it be something I had seen in a silent film?

In the end I decided upon a recipe that has always fascinated me because of its improbability: Tomato Soup Cake.

(Campbell Soup Company)

This concoction was known originally as Mystery Cake, probably because bakers then were, like me, a tad reluctant to admit that their spice cake included a can of tomato-soup concentrate, a strange and mysterious ingredient. I made it with THE classic American canned tomato soup, Campbell’s.

The Campbell Company was founded as Anderson and Campbell in 1869. Joseph Campbell, who sold fruits and vegetables, and Abraham Anderson, a canner, decided to combine their resources and skills. Anderson left the company within its first decade so Campbell is the name Americans now know.

In 1894, the company produced its first soup, a ready-to-eat tomato. In 1897, it took advantage of the newly invented condensing process to produce condensed tomato soup, which was soon followed by other condensed soup flavors.

According to the Food Timeline, the first mention of Tomato Soup Cake in print came in 1928. It was referred to as Mystery Cake.

The soup gives this spice cake a lot of moisture (there is very little fat in the recipe) and imbues it with a slightly orangey color.

A version of this recipe was the very first to appear on the label of a Campbell’s soup can, although that appearance came quite a few years after the cake entered popular cooking.

When I tasted the cake, I had the feeling I could taste the tomato soup—or could at least taste something vaguely processed—but perhaps that feeling was imagined. In general, Mystery Cake comes across like a normal spice cake.

Here is the recipe, adapted from King Arthur Baking. As you can see from the photograph, I used my half-size Bundt pan for the cake. This is an anachronism; the first Bundt pan in the United States wasn’t manufactured until 1950. If you want to bake a true 1920s cake, use a 9-inch-square pan.

I happen to be a Bundt-cake fan because this shape ensures that every eater gets an outside slice, my favorite piece of any cake. I promise not to indulge in any anachronisms at my concert, however.

I made the cake on Mass Appeal last week; you may see the video here.  I also sang a song from 1927 that will be included in our program, but that could not be put on the internet due to Canadian copyright law. (It was perfectly air-able in the United States, but the world-wide web includes the whole world, alas.)

1920s Mystery Cake (a.k.a. Tomato Soup Cake)

Ingredients:

1 large egg, at room temperature (You can achieve this temperature easily by taking the egg out of the refrigerator and placing it in warm water for a few minutes.)
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed tomato soup
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1-1/2 cups flour
1 cup raisins

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-inch-square cake pan or a 6-cup Bundt pan.

In a bowl, combine the egg, the oil, and the sugar. Blend in the tomato soup, followed by the baking soda, the salt, and the spices. On low speed, mix in the flour, followed by the raisins.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 35 to 40 minutes. Eat the cake plain or (my preference) with cream-cheese frosting. Serves 6.

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Posted in Cakes, Pies, and Pastry, Historical Figures and Events, Music | 2 Comments »

My Once a Year Day

Friday, June 30th, 2023

Doris Day and John Raitt in the film version of The Pajama Game

The musical comedy The Pajama Game always appeals to me. As far as I know, it is the only musical that revolves around a labor dispute. Jean-Luc Godard is said to have called the 1957 film version “the first left-wing operetta.”

Adapted from the novel “7-1/2 Cents” by Richard Bissell, this 1954 show revolves around the fight for an hourly pay raise on the part of the union members at a sleepwear-manufacturing company, the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory. The fight is complicated when the head of the union finds herself falling in love with a new member of management.

I enjoy the show because it features strong dramatic conflict (and of course a happy resolution) as well as terrific songs, including “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “There Once Was a Man (Who Loved a Woman).”

I was reminded of one of the songs, “Once a Year Day,” recently. Sung by the two romantic leads, it takes place at the company’s annual picnic. Work is suspended for 24 hours, and the time in nature makes the heroine and hero feel freer. They bond despite their workplace adversity.

“Everyone’s entitled to be wild, be a child, be a goof, raise the roof,” the lyrics assert, “once a year.”

I thought of this song because I recently experienced one of my own Once a Year Days. These are days on which I depart from my normal routine and just have fun.

The fun doesn’t always involve food. Once a year, for example, I decide (usually on a Sunday) that I am allowed to watch television all day long.

I have a standing policy of never watching television during daylight hours. My small amount of Puritan ancestry makes me view daytime viewing as the first step toward complete and utter moral decay.

Once a year, however, I relax those rules. I binge-watch a new show for hours on end or spend the day with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Many of my Once a Year Days do involve food, of course.

Every year on my birthday—and only on my birthday—I eat ice cream for breakfast. My birthday falls in December so the appropriate flavor as far as I’m concerned is peppermint stick.

Ideally, my family scours the stores in the days leading up to the big day to make sure peppermint-stick ice cream is in the freezer. It can be hard to find at that time of year.

If the flavor is unavailable, I try to be gracious. I know intellectually that I am not the center of the world. It is hard to know this in my heart, however, and I have been known to be a little short tempered on non-ice-cream birthday mornings.

Another of my traditions falls annually on one mid-summer evening, I like to host a BLT party on my porch.

This classic sandwich leaves me cold when made with non-full-season tomatoes. When we finally get the juicy red real thing, however, I haul out homemade bread, the best available local bacon, and crisp farm-fresh lettuce. I treat myself and my guests to the perfect sandwich.

That evening, and that sandwich, symbolize this warm season for my guests and me. The tomatoes burst with flavor created by the summer sun.

The Once a Year Day I just experienced was inspired by my mother, Jan. Her own mother studied cooking with Fannie Farmer. My grandmother learned well from Miss Farmer and insisted that every evening meal be perfectly balanced, with at least two vegetables, a salad, a starch, and a protein.

Having been raised in that environment, my mother always, ALWAYS ate a carefully constructed evening meal. When alone, I often dine on an omelet or a salad or a bowl of soup. She would not have approved. She believed that dinner—even supper—deserved more planning and more formality than that.

She made two exceptions. Once a year, usually at the end of a long and tiring day, she would serve Welsh Rarebit (pronounced “Rabbit”), a delectable and easy supper of cheese sauce on toast.

And once a year in the early summer—here I’m finally getting to the point of this story—she enjoyed an evening meal that consisted solely of strawberry shortcake.

She was generally not a dessert eater, and shortcake can feel a little heavy at the end of a normal meal. When it constitutes the entire meal, however, it is a delightful indulgence on which one can gorge oneself.

I would sometimes suggest engaging in a second shortcake supper on a subsequent evening, but Jan was adamant about serving this treat only once a year. Twice a year, she maintained, felt a bit unhealthy and might lead to bad habits. Once was satisfying and sufficient. End of discussion.

Here in honor of my mother is a simple shortcake recipe. If you want to be even lazier than I am, feel free to purchase your shortcake or to use any available neutral cake. Angel food works, and so does pound cake.

These little biscuits are not hard to make, however, and even if mine never look professional (I’m not a natural pastry person) they make a flavorful base for the strawberries.

Besides, no one really looks at the biscuits once they are piled high with vivid red berries and lightly sweetened whipped cream à la vanille. (That’s French for flavored with vanilla. Food always tastes better in French.)

Once a Year Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients:

for the filling:
1-1/2 quarts strawberries, washed, hulled, and gently dried
sugar as needed for the berries

for the biscuits:
2 cups self-rising flour (or 2 cups regular flour plus 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 2 tablespoons milk (if needed)
a small amount of melted butter (optional)
coarse white sugar (optional)

for assembly:
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

A couple of hours before you want to begin working, choose 6 attractive berries. Set them aside. Chop the remaining berries, and toss them in a little sugar. Let the chopped berries sit to juice up.

When you are ready to bake your biscuits, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Whisk together the self-rising flour (or the flour plus leavening and salt) and the sugar. In a separate bowl (or a measuring cup) combine the cream and the vanilla.

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour the cream mixture into the well, and gently stir until the mixture is combined, adding a little milk if needed to incorporate all the ingredients into the liquid.

Turn the dough onto a floured work surface, and sprinkle a little more flour on top. Fold the dough over several times; then pat it into a circle or rectangle that is about 1/2 inch thick.

Using a sharp biscuit cutter cut the dough into rounds, about 2 to 2-1/4 inches wide (or however wide you want them!). You may also cut them gently into squares or rectangles with a serrated knife.

Place the biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet. (You may line the sheet with parchment or silicone if you’re paranoid about sticking.) If you like, brush the tops of your biscuits with melted butter and sprinkle a little coarse sugar on top.

Bake the biscuits until they are golden brown (12 to 16 minutes).

When you are ready to assemble your shortcakes, whip the cream until it forms soft peaks, adding the sugar early in the process and the vanilla near the end.

Cut the biscuits in half horizontally. You then have two options. Some people decorate the bottom half of each biscuit with the chopped strawberries, then dollop on whipped cream and top all this with the other biscuit half. One of the reserved strawberries goes on the top of each serving.

My mother (who loved the berries and cream above all and wanted just a hint of biscuit) placed both halves of her biscuit on a plate, then topped them with chopped strawberries, whipped cream, and the extra berry.

Serves 6 (or more), depending on the size of your biscuits. (If you want to serve more people, set aside a couple of additional strawberries for the garnish.)

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Posted in Breads, Muffins, and Scones, Cakes, Pies, and Pastry, Strawberries | 6 Comments »

A Simple Easter (or Passover!) Cake

Friday, April 7th, 2023

Photos by Peter Beck

Holiday cooking is often elaborate. But sometimes it can, and should, be simple.

My friend Peter Beck recently won my heart (as he often does) by sharing a cake that is uncomplicated and relatively healthy … and tastes like spring. If you want something a little dressy but not too gloppy for an Easter dessert, I recommend trying it.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that although this cake contains baking soda, it is still usable for Passover as well, although if you keep kosher you may have to seek out kosher-for-Passover baking soda.

I grew up thinking that leavening agents were forbidden during this eight-day holiday. When the Jews were finally allowed to leave Egypt, according to the Exodus story, they were in such a hurry that their bread didn’t have time to rise. Jews remember this by eating mainly matzo, unleavened bread, at Passover.

Nevertheless, the prohibition is not on leavening agents like baking soda, baking powder, and yeast but actually on the way in which they interact with certain grains, specifically wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt. Peter’s almond flour and baking soda are therefore allowable.

Peter didn’t actually design this cake for the spring holidays. He isn’t a baker in general, although I can testify that he is an amazing cook.

He loves to offer a dessert of some kind when he entertains, however. Like me, he lives in Hawley, Massachusetts, which abounds with lovely hills and wildlife but offers absolutely no bakeries. He didn’t want to have to go somewhere to purchase baked goods. He consequently decided to develop a relatively fool-proof cake.

He also liked the idea of a cake that doesn’t have icing. A number of his friends prefer cake to icing, he told me, and he wanted to make them happy. I like icing, but I must admit that I didn’t miss it in this recipe, particularly when Peter dolloped a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side of each slice of cake.

“I’m also considering a combination of cream and mascarpone,” he told me dreamily. “Just a dollop.”

“I wanted [the recipe] as simple as possible,” he said of the recipe’s development. I looked at almond-flour recipes. The egg holds the cake together and gives it some lift.”

He also liked the idea of having a small cake, he told me. This recipe fills an 8-inch cake pan and serves six with good-sized but not scary servings. The almond flour doesn’t make the final product taste like almond extract (not my favorite flavor), just like cake. And the citrus flavors sing of spring.

Peter told me that he first put the recipe together about a month ago and has made it at least 10 times. (He entertains often!)

“It’s just easy to have on hand,” he elaborated. “It’s nice for tea. One of the things that strikes me as kind of similar but I really think if you can nail it it’s great is a scone. Also, it’s such an easy thing, and people like that you’ve made a cake for them.”

I was flattered by Peter’s assertion that my own go-to desserts, fruit crumbles and cobblers, also inspired him to find a dessert recipe that didn’t entail a lot of fuss.

I firmly believe that every cook needs desserts in his or her repertoire that can be assembled quickly in the late afternoon if one learns that unexpected dinner guests are due. This cake is just such a dessert.

“After baking it one or two times, you’ve pretty much memorized it,” Peter said of his recipe. “You can put it together on the spur of the moment.”

He notes that a completely different tasting, but similar to make, cake may be constructed by substituting 1/2 cup cocoa powder for a third of the almond flour. I may try that for Easter. Or for another occasion.

When I ate it at Peter’s house, his cake was served in honor of the 40th wedding anniversary of other neighbors, Maggie Speier and Roy Lewis. Peter is camera shy so I don’t have a photo of him with his cake, but Maggie and Roy were happy to pose.

If you have no almond flour on hand, that ingredient may be purchased at many supermarkets. Peter tells me that Bob’s Red Mill makes an excellent version of this low-carb flour.

Happy Easter and Passover!

Maggie and Roy

Peter’s Almond Cake

Ingredients:

about 1/2 tablespoon butter for greasing the pan
4 large eggs
1/2 cup local honey
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups finely ground blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
any flavor profile that appeals. Peter used 1 teaspoon dried orange peel and 1/2 teaspoon orange oil when he served the cake last week. He also likes to throw in a little Fiori di Sicilia, a lovely mixed-citrus extract.

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease an 8-inch, non-stick cake pan with butter.

In a large bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. One by one, gradually whisk in the honey, the vanilla, the almond flour, the salt, and the baking soda.

Use a spatula to transfer the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake until the cake is fragrant and set, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 22 to 25 minutes.

Cool the cake in the pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes; then invert it onto the cooling rack and let it cool for 20 more minutes before slicing and serving it.

Sprinkle a little confectioner’s sugar on top if you want to. Serves 6 to 8.

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Posted in Cakes, Pies, and Pastry, Gluten Free (or Almost Gluten Free), Holiday Foods | Comments Closed

A Thanksgiving Pie

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2022

I have never been a great fan of pie. I know it is probably heresy to write this in New England, where pie was king in the 19th century and still holds quite a bit of sway. I love fruit, but I don’t see the point in overwhelming it with pastry by putting a crust beneath it—and usually a crust above it as well.

I do embrace pie at Thanksgiving, however. Thanksgiving is about tradition. In my family, as in most, pie is part of that tradition.

So at this time of year I haul out my rolling pin and my family recipe book. I often make apple pie, which my relatives love, or pecan pie, which pleases my Southern sister-in-law. Pumpkin pie is a family favorite, and no one has ever turned down my world-class key-lime pie, with its pleasing combination of sweet and tart.

I’m sure readers have their own special family pies, desserts without which the fourth Thursday in November just wouldn’t feel like Thanksgiving. Leave a comment to let me know what yours is!

This year I’m doubly embracing tradition by preparing my grandmother’s Mock Cherry Pie.

At the turn of the last century, this pie was extremely popular in the United States. Librarians at the University of Michigan wrote in 2014 that they had recipes for Mock Cherry Pie in a number of vintage cookbooks, including the Woman’s Home Receipt Book from 1902 and a 1920 Boston Cooking School Cookbook.

My grandmother may indeed have learned to make this pie at the Boston Cooking School, where she studied with founder Fannie Farmer the summer before her (my grandmother’s, not Fannie Farmer’s) wedding in 1912.

Unlike Mock Apple Pie, which traditionally uses crackers or bread crumbs as a substitute for the apples and thereby removes the last vestige of nutrition from a pie’s combination of sugar and carbohydrates, Mock Cherry Pie substitutes fruit for fruit.

Our cherry season here in New England is brief, maybe a couple of weeks at most. Unless they had enough cherries in their orchard to can them, New Englanders traditionally had no way to find these fruits out of season.

Mock Cherry Pie uses fruits that would have been available at this time of year to cooks in these parts: cranberries and raisins.

I adore cranberries so I would probably call this Cranberry and Raisin Pie. In deference to my grandmother and to Fannie Farmer, however, I am using the original name.

Both my grandmother and Miss Farmer (as she is always called in our home) helped shape the way I cook. They emphasized balanced meals, yet each had a sweet tooth. To my grandmother, Clara, no dinner was complete without a salad and a dessert.

They both enjoyed New England’s bounty but adapted their cooking as the seasons flew by.

I never met Fannie Farmer, and I learned that my grandmother had studied with her only when my grandmother’s dementia had clouded her memory. Unfortunately, then, I couldn’t elicit any stories about the cooking school from her. Nevertheless, Miss Farmer was important in my household as I was growing up.

We had numerous editions of the The Fannie Farmer Cookbook on our cookbook shelf. It is still the cookbook I consult more than any other work. Some cooks grew up with The Joy of Cooking. We owned a copy of that work and did look at it from time to time. Fannie Farmer was our cooking bible, however.

At this time of year when gratitude is emphasized, I am thankful for both of these practical, generous New England cooks, who influenced my approach to food. Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours!

By the way, I’ll be serving gingerbread, reading from my new book, and signing cookbooks this Saturday, November 26, at 12:30 p.m. at the Buckland (MA) Public Library. Please join us if you’re around! And of course if you would like to buy a copy of my book and can’t come, you may do so at my website. I’ll be happy to inscribe it to you or as a gift for someone.

Clara Engel Hallett’s Mock Cherry Pie

 Ingredients:

2 cups cranberries, cut in half
1 cup raisins
1-1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon flour
1 pinch salt
1 double 8-inch pie crust

 Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Combine the filling ingredients and allow them to sit for a few minutes in a bowl. (My grandmother never told me why she did this; my guess is that it was to let the raisins absorb some of the water and plump up.)

Place the mixture in the bottom crust, and cover it with another crust or a lattice top. Prick holes or cut slits in the top crust to let steam escape.

Place the pie on a rimmed cookie sheet; it has a tendency to leak while baking. Bake it for 10 minutes; then reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 35 to 45 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.

Watch me make this pie here.

 

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Posted in Cakes, Pies, and Pastry, Cranberries, Holiday Foods | 6 Comments »

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