Snacking State-by-State: Massachusetts III - The cream cake that eats like a cream pie

New England clam chowder is just one of Boston's many culinary exports to the rest of America. One of the most famous ones is that most popular of Yankee desserts, and no I'm not talking about the whoopie pie.  This one had spread across the country before I was even born.


Official Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State Nicknames: The Bay State
Admission to the US: February 6, 1788 (#6)
Capital: Boston (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Worcester (2nd largest); Springfield (3rd largest); Cambridge (5th largest)
Region: New England, Northeast; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Vermont, New Hampshire (north); New York (west); Connecticut, Rhode Island (south); Atlantic Ocean (south and east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: cranberry juice (beverage); cod (fish); wild turkey (game bird); baked navy bean (bean); cranberry (berry); Boston cream pie (dessert); chocolate chip cookie (cookie); Boston cream donut (donut)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods, in particular Boston-specific foods such as: Boston cream pie, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread; "New England" clam chowder; Irish, Italian and Portuguese ethnic dishes; codfish cakes, lobster rolls and other New England seafood dishes; cranberries and blueberries

I always loved Boston cream pie while growing up.  On my first trip to Boston (and as of this posting, not the only one) I wandered through the rain during a very long, eight hour layover en route to Amsterdam, into Boston's North End - the Italian neighborhood, and stopped at Mike's Pastry for Boston cream pie that was actually made in Boston.  It was a little on the frozen side, but despite that it was still one of the best pieces I have had in my life.

This is a daunting cake to make - yes, it's called a pie, but it's really a cake baked in a pie pan. It requires many steps.  True, it's not as complicated as the Smith Island Cake, but it is still in a lot of work.  Mind you, it is worth it.

The Recipe: Boston Cream Pie

Among many recipes I found for Boston cream pie, I was drawn to Sweet Dreams host Gale Gand and her recipe for Boston cream pie.  Gand's recipe can be found on the Food Network website, and was featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Tradition".

 

You will make three separate things for the pie: the cream, the cake and the ganache:

For the "pie" (which is really just a cake) you need:

* soft or cake flour (I had White Lily on hand, a decidedly non-New England flour)

* granulated sugar

* baking powder, salt and cream of tartar

* milk

* vanilla

* cooking oil

* 2 eggs, separated

The cream filling also has a fair bit of ingredients: 

* more milk

* more sugar

* more vanilla (Gand calls for a vanilla bean, which I did not have on hand)

* 6 eggs - but just the yolks 

* unsalted butter and corn starch

The ganache doesn't have many more ingredients:

* sweet baking chocolate (yes I know, I have semi-sweet pictured.  I realized it was not only the incorrect kind, but was only half of what I needed.  I went out and got the sweet kind instead)

* heavy whipping cream

Although the recipe gives you the cake/pie recipe first, I found it much more productive to make the cream filling first, since you will need to chill that.  So make it, and chill it while you set to baking the cake/pie.

First, boil milk and vanilla (beans) over medium heat and immediately take it off the heat when it starts boiling.

While doing that, you might as well separate those egg yolks.  You won't need these whites.  Do whatever you want with them.

Whisk the yolks together with the sugar...

...and add the cornstarch, whisking until lump-free.

Add a quarter cup of the hot milk-vanilla mixture, whisking again
.

And then do the same with the rest of the milk.

At this point, I wasn't sure I was doing it right, but I slogged on, straining the mixture into a pot.

Next, you continue whisking over medium-high heat, until it gets thick.  This will happen in a few minutes.

Take it off the flame, and whisk in the butter until it melts.  Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.

Now to the cake/pie: while preheating the oven to 350°F, sift together the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.

Separate the last two eggs, this time setting the whites aside - you will need these soon.  Add to the sifted dry ingredients the yolks, milk, oil and vanilla...

...and beat until mixed, plus a few minutes after.

Next, you will make a meringue: beat the whites and the cream of tartar until soft peaks form

Like so.

Fold white into yellow.

Then pour the batter into a 9" pie plate.

Bake until the top springs up when touched, about 30 minutes.

Finally, you make the ganache.  Boil the cream until little bubbles form around the edges of the pan.

While you do that, roughly chop the chocolate into small pieces.

Pour the hot cream over the chopped chocolate, and stir until the whole thing melts together.

Again, like so.

You are now ready to assemble the whole thing.  When cooled completely, cut the "muffin top" off the cake, and set aside.

Once more, like so.

On the bottom half of the cake/pie, you will spread - or in this case, pipe - the cream filling on top.

Spread out the cream, and place the top over it, and finally pour the ganache over top the whole thing.  It will cover the sides as well as the top.

Sure, I'm not from New England by any stretch of the imagination, but I've eaten a lot of Boston cream pie in my lifetime.  This shows just how far and wide it has spread.  This pie certainly outdoes the many stale, store-bought versions we got from the store.  While I would have loved a little more cream, the pie is fresher, the ganache smoother and the cream sweeter and the whole thing is not the tacky-feeling stuff we get outside of Massachusetts.  It is a painstaking dessert to make (again, not nearly as labor-intensive as the Smith Island Cake), but well worth the effort.  I don't know if I can ever eat the store-bought kind again.

By the time this post goes up, I will likely have eaten my fill of actual Boston cream pie, made by real Bostonians (or at least Provincetowners).  Look for a post soon about that trip.  Meanwhile it is time to heave-ho from the Commonwealth for the Upper Midwest and the Great Lakes.  Our next stop on this State-by-State tour takes us to Michigan.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home.  Also available in part on Google Books.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Gand, Gale.  "Boston Cream Pie".   Featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Kitchen" of the show Sweet Dreams (Gale Gand, host).  Food Network, 2011.

Haggerty, Bridget. "Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth".  From the Irish Culture and Customs website, copyright 2001-2011.  All rights reserved.



Passos Duffy, Marcia.  "New England Boiled Dinner (Corned Beef & Cabbage)"  From The Heart of New England website, copyright 2004-2011.  All rights reserved.


Shields, John. Coastal Cooking with John Shields (the Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series).  Broadway Books: Portland, Oregon, 2004. 

Yankee Magazine. "Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage". From "Meat Recipes", March 2010. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Massachusetts" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Massachusetts".

Brewer-in-Chief

Just heard this on CBS: Barack Obama recently met with a member of our military at the White House, and served a very special, hard-to-find brew.  Which is strange, since it's made in DC.  Why is it so difficult to find?  It's the White House's own brew. As NPR reported a few months ago, Obama decided to do this for St. Patrick's Day (to honor his partial Irish heritage).  Historians say this is the first time beer has ever been brewed in the White House.  Yep, I would've guessed 1807 or some time around then.

Snacking State-by-State: Massachusetts II - It's not just for St. Patrick's Day anymore

Apart from WASPs and Germans, Irish comprise the largest ethnicity in the United States.  And thanks to what seems like every other boxing or bank-robbing movie to come out of Hollywood over the past five years, Massachusetts - specifically Boston - is very Irish.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State Nicknames: The Bay State
Admission to the US: February 6, 1788 (#6)
Capital: Boston (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Worcester (2nd largest); Springfield (3rd largest); Cambridge (5th largest)
Region: New England, Northeast; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Vermont, New Hampshire (north); New York (west); Connecticut, Rhode Island (south); Atlantic Ocean (south and east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: cranberry juice (beverage); cod (fish); wild turkey (game bird); baked navy bean (bean); cranberry (berry); Boston cream pie (dessert); chocolate chip cookie (cookie); Boston cream donut (donut)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods, in particular Boston-specific foods such as: Boston cream pie, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread; "New England" clam chowder; Irish, Italian and Portuguese ethnic dishes; codfish cakes, lobster rolls and other New England seafood dishes; cranberries and blueberries

Boston, like other parts of Massachusetts, is home not just to a very large Irish-American population but also many Italian- and Portuguese-Americans.  But I often think of the Irish - my people, my people! - when I think of Beantown.  Of course, Boston baked beans are not typical Irish food.  Boiled meats are, and one of the most significant Irish contributions to American cuisine is corned beef and cabbage - or as it is known in New England, the boiled dinner.

Mind you, corned beef and cabbage isn't exactly "Irish food" - it's "Irish-American".  The boiled meats in Ireland, often boiled with cabbage and other vegetables, may be beef, or they may be ham.  The Irish Culture and Customs website busts this well-heeled American myth about Irish culture.  For one thing, the Irish only started eating a lot of beef in the past century, since most Irish were too poor to use cows for anything other than their milk.  Their meat of choice was more often pork - a much more accessible meat.  So why did diaspora Irish eat so much beef?  The website gives an answer:

...It was in the late 19th century that it began to take root. When the Irish emigrated to America and Canada, where both salt and meat were cheaper, they treated beef the same way they would have treated a "bacon joint" at home in Ireland: they soaked it to draw off the excess salt, then braised or boiled it with cabbage, and served it in its own juices with only minimal spicing - may be a bay leaf or so, and some pepper.


This dish, which still turns up on some Irish tables at Easter, has become familiar to people of Irish descent as the traditional favorite to serve on Saint Patrick’s Day. Certainly, there will be many restaurants in Ireland that will be serving Corned Beef and Cabbage on March 17th , but most of them will be doing so just to please the tourists.  [Haggerty 2011]

I have made many a corned beef and cabbage in my life, but I have almost never boiled it.  I'm much more used to roasting or slow cooking it.  So this boiled dinner is a pretty new concept for me - an entire dinner, boiled.  This is also true for my very not-New-England family.  My Italian-American grandmother's recipe for corned beef and cabbage (certainly made for my Irish-American grandfather) was covered in wonderful brown sugar and mustard, and baked in the oven.  You can't boil it while covered in brown sugar and mustard.

I'm not really one for boiling things. Maybe it's a Baltimore thing, I dunno.

The Recipe: New England Boiled Dinner / Corned Beef and Cabbage

There are many recipes for corned beef and cabbage, boiled dinner-style.  The one I ended up using comes from Marcia Passos Duffy on "The Heart of New England" website.  True, the site focuses on Upper New England and not Massachusetts, but this one was one of the simpler recipes that had many of the ingredients I had on hand.  I could have gone the next step and actually corned the beef myself, but I didn't feel like putting out the extra effort.  That and I would have needed an entire week to corn the beef on my own.  Maybe some other time.  If you are interested in trying, check out Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage from the March 2010 edition of Yankee Magazine.  Passos Duffy, on the other hand, uses pre-corned beef like the rest of us.

Passos Duffy's corned beef and cabbage recipe calls for a 4 to 5 pound brisket.  I scaled it down for the 3 pounder I found at Harris Teeter.

* corned beef brisket (You know those St. Patrick's Day sales in the supermarket where you can find corned beef brisket for 99¢ per lb?  Well it's not St. Patrick's Day for another six months.  I found it "cheap" at Harris Teeter for $4 per lb - a 2 1/2 lb brisket for around $11)
* cabbage (this will usually run you a buck a pound at least outside of March.  Fortunately, there was just enough cabbage in my garden untouched by those damned Harlequin bugs to use for this project.  It was all itty bitty cabbage, but it was still cabbage)
* carrots (I got these from my garden plot, too.  They got big)
* potatoes and onions (bought both for between $1 and $1.50 per lb)
* dried thyme, dried basil leaves, and bay leaf (had them all)
* mustard seeds and coriander seeds (these are not in the recipe, but I wanted to add them myself, especially since mustard seeds often show up in those little throwaway herb and spice packages that come with most corned beef briskets)
* water, for boiling
 

Before all else, soak the corned beef brisket in water for at least 30 minutes to leach out the extra salt.

When ready, cover the brisket in water in a large pot or Dutch oven, and add the herbs and spices.

Passos Duffy quotes a cookbook from 1845, Esther Allen Howard's The New England Economic Housekeeper, in which Howard makes sure you remember to skim the scum as it boils to the top.  Do this occasionally for the next three hours, which is how long you need to boil the meat.  Do this until "fork tender".

Next, add all of the vegetables except for the cabbage, and boil for 30 minutes.

Halfway through the boiling of the other vegetables, add the cabbage.  Continue to boil for another 15 minutes

Scoop out the vegetables and take out the brisket.  Slice and serve.

As I said before, I usually never boil meat.  I found this version surprisingly tasty.  I had figured that the flavor would be leeched out by the boiling process, but not at all.  I quickly finished this up, and I must say it lasted a while.  I made these Massachusetts recipes just before Hurricane Irene struck a few weeks ago, and when my power went out for almost two days, this was one of the things that hadn't spoiled by the time the lights went back on (by the way, heating it for 250°F for 40 minutes works just fine in a power outage - ah, but microwaves have made us forget how to heat things up in the oven).  Far from having the flavors of the meat and vegetables washed out, this dish ended up being juicier and more flavorful overall.  Additionally, it's difficult to dry this out when it's completely submerged in water. I often have that drying out problem when I roast it.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home.  Also available in part on Google Books.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Gand, Gale.  "Boston Cream Pie".   Featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Kitchen" of the show Sweet Dreams (Gale Gand, host).  Food Network, 2011.

Haggerty, Bridget. "Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth".  From the Irish Culture and Customs website, copyright 2001-2011.  All rights reserved.



Passos Duffy, Marcia.  "New England Boiled Dinner (Corned Beef & Cabbage)"  From The Heart of New England website, copyright 2004-2011.  All rights reserved.


Shields, John. Coastal Cooking with John Shields (the Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series).  Broadway Books: Portland, Oregon, 2004. 

Yankee Magazine. "Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage". From "Meat Recipes", March 2010. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Massachusetts" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Massachusetts".

Snacking State-by-State: Massachusetts I - ANUTHAH Chowdah!

By the time you read this post, written a few weeks ago (ah, the magic of pre-scheduled auto-publishing), I will in fact be in the state you are now reading about, in Provincetown for the wedding of my friends Eric and Alan (shout out, guys - I know you are reading this).  This wasn't timed this way; it was mere coincidence.  So in a way, these posts have been a culinary primer for my first actual, on-purpose trip to New England (not counting that eight hour layover a few years ago on a flight from Baltimore through Boston and Reykjavik to Amsterdam).  As for the Provincetown excursion: you'll read about that wicked trip sometime in the next few weeks.

Official Name: Commonwealth of Massachusetts
State Nicknames: The Bay State
Admission to the US: February 6, 1788 (#6)
Capital: Boston (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Worcester (2nd largest); Springfield (3rd largest); Cambridge (5th largest)
Region: New England, Northeast; New England (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Clambake; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Vermont, New Hampshire (north); New York (west); Connecticut, Rhode Island (south); Atlantic Ocean (south and east)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: cranberry juice (beverage); cod (fish); wild turkey (game bird); baked navy bean (bean); cranberry (berry); Boston cream pie (dessert); chocolate chip cookie (cookie); Boston cream donut (donut)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: New England foods, in particular Boston-specific foods such as: Boston cream pie, Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread; "New England" clam chowder; Irish, Italian and Portuguese ethnic dishes; codfish cakes, lobster rolls and other New England seafood dishes; cranberries and blueberries

Every time I come back to New England cuisine, I am reminded of something that famous TV chef Paula Deen (not a New Englander) said about Southern food: to paraphrase, she had never heard of anyone saying anything about Northern cookin', so she wasn't sure it was any good, unlike Southern cookin'.  I'm sure she meant no offense.  Still, after getting through half of the New England states, I can guess that Miss Paula is probably quite wrong about Northern cookin', because those New Englanders are very much in love with their cuisine.  Once again, I come back to Brooke Dojny, former Nutmeg Stater-turned-Mainer who seems to be the authority on Yankee cuisine.  From her book The New England Cookbook (also mostly available on Google Books), Dojny describes the historical importance of New England food, perhaps the oldest US regional cuisine (in place by the mid-1600's):

By the dawn of the eighteenth century, a new and distinct regional cuisine had taken root, with dishes that we continue to cook today.,  Chowders, fish cakes, baked beans, succotash, cornbread, boiled dinner, roast turkey and cranberry sauce, pumpkin and berry pies - these traditional dishes form the central core of New England home cooking, linking past with present in an unbroken chain. [Dojny 1999: xiv]

Among the New England states, Massachusetts is the largest in terms of population and influence, not to mention the first settled.  And while the Bay State may not be the be all and end all of New England food, it certainly has given those of us in the other 44 states plus the District the quintessential portrait of what we think of as "New England food": Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread, Boston cream pie (notice a trend here?). And it's not just Boston.  Take, again, Provincetown, at the tip of the tip of Cape Cod.  You can find all of New England's iconic foods here (albeit at much higher prices than most of New England): lobster, clams, oysters, cod, even crabs.  And do not forget that Provincetown, Boston, and all of Massachusetts has gained much from its immigrant communities, especially the Portuguese, Irish and Italians.

Even that most classic of New England clam chowders, in a region of many varied clam chowders, actually is from, again, Boston: the creamy, white and very opaque (sorry, Connecticut and Rhode Island) clam chowder full of clams and potatoes, but not too buttery or creamy (you too, Maine) and definitely not clear and tomato-ey (excuse you, New York - you people aren't even New Englanders anyway.  Then again, neither am I).  Even the famous New England boiled dinner - what I grew up calling "corned beef and cabbage" - was made popular by Irish-Americans in and around Boston.  Let's face it, Massachusetts has been the nation's conduit for proudly Yankee cuisine.

Maryland native John Shields used to live in Massachusetts before returning home.  Here I interpret his simplified recipe for "Back Bay Clam Chowder" - as he puts it "the real thing - pure, unadulterated, classic New England chowder, rich with clams, lightly enhanced with cream, and fragrant with briny broth" (Shields 2004: 18).  You can find the recipe for his Back Bay Clam Chowder on the same page of his cookbook Coastal Cooking with John Shields (2004).


The Recipe: Back Bay (New England) Clam Chowder

I say "simplified" because Shields takes the traditional recipe - hand-shucked clams in a broth thickened by crushed oyster crackers and water - and simplifies it with pre-shucked clams packaged in their juices, and a roux of flour and salt pork grease.  I further simplified it by using bacon grease instead.  Yes, I should have used salt pork, but I had the bacon on hand, saving me the extra expense.

You will need:

* clams, with juice (about $6 for a container of chopped clams in juice right from Cape Cod, at Whole Foods)
* bacon (instead of salt pork - again, remember the authentic ones usually use salt pork, though I did see recipes that use bacon)
* flour (to make that roux with the bacon grease - again, real Englanders crush oyster crackers to thicken the soup)
* potatoes and an onion (here, a leftover Vidalia - again, not a New England onion)
* milk (had it)

* salt and pepper
* fresh parsley (from my garden)
* Though Shields' recipe does not mention it, I added a few tablespoons of butter

A lot of these procedures were the same as that Southern Connecticut clam chowder, with the addition of much milk.

Render the bacon fat until the bacon is crispy, and discard the bacon (or in my case, eat it with a nice omelette while you're making New England clam chowder).

Fry up the chopped onion in the bacon grease until soft...

...and then add the flour.  Okay, so not exactly a roux.

You will then add the skinned and cubed potatoes with your clam broth, plus enough water to cover the potatoes.  Boil the potatoes until tender.

Next cook the milk in a separate saucepan and simmer until small bubbles form around the sides.

Add the milk and clams, and cook for about 15 minutes.

Stir occasionally.  I also added butter at this point.  Garnish individual servings with parsley

I was mostly satisfied with this clam chowder.  My one issue was that it was much thinner than I had expected.  Maybe I did not let the onions soften enough, or maybe I needed more flour.  Despite this, it was a hearty soup.  Mind you, it was very different than most New England clam chowders I have eaten - thinner than the Chunky Soups and Progressives, and not a can of salty milk jelly with mini bits of clam like Campbell's standard soup.  In general, I am amazed at how easy it is to make a clam chowder - that is, if you don't bother to shuck your own clams.  Maybe another time.

Sources:

Dojny, Brooke.  The New England Cookbook: 350 Recipies from Town and Country, Land and Sea, Hearth and Home.  Also available in part on Google Books.  Harvard Common Press: Boston, 1999.

Gand, Gale.  "Boston Cream Pie".   Featured on the episode "Desserts from the Yankee Kitchen" of the show Sweet Dreams (Gale Gand, host).  Food Network, 2011.

Haggerty, Bridget. "Corned Beef & Cabbage - The Feeding of A Myth".  From the Irish Culture and Customs website, copyright 2001-2011.  All rights reserved.

Passos Duffy, Marcia.  "New England Boiled Dinner (Corned Beef & Cabbage)"  From The Heart of New England website, copyright 2004-2011.  All rights reserved.

Shields, John. Coastal Cooking with John Shields (the Companion Cookbook to the Public Television Series).  Broadway Books: Portland, Oregon, 2004. 

Yankee Magazine. "Annie's Corned Beef and Cabbage". From "Meat Recipes", March 2010. Copyright 2011 Yankee Magazine.


Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Massachusetts" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Massachusetts".

Snacking State-by-State: Maryland IV - Once on Smith Island

Like any other state, Maryland has its own sub-regional specialties, things you will most likely find in one part of the state instead of another.  In Southern Maryland, this is stuffed ham.  In Baltimore, it's the snowball.  And on the smallish Smith Island, the only inhabited island in the Maryland half of the Chesapeake Bay, it is the cake that bears the island's name.

Official Name: State of Maryland
State Nicknames: The Free State; The Old Line State; America in Miniature
Admission to the US: April 28, 1788 (#7)
Capital: Annapolis (24th largest city)
Other Important Cities: Baltimore (largest); Columbia (2nd largest); Germantown (3rd largest); Frederick (8th largest)
Region: Mid-Atlantic, South, Northeast; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Crabcake; Clambake; Chestnut; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: The Mason-Dixon Line (north and east); Pennsylvania (north); Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean (east), Virginia and the Potomac River (south and southwest); District of Columbia (southwest); West Virginia (west and southwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: blue crab (crustacean); rockfish, aka striped bass (fish); Diamondback terrapin (reptile); Smith Island cake (dessert); milk (drink)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Chesapeake Bay foods, especially based on blue crab, oyster, clam, shrimp & fish; historically, foods of the Upper South (especially fried chicken, stuffed ham, beaten biscuits & Brunswick stew); cuisines that reflect a broad multicultural landscape closer to Baltimore (Italian, Polish, Ukranian, German, etc) and Washington (Latin American, West African, Southeast Asian, Korean, etc)

This is not my first attempt at a Smith Island cake, the official state dessert of Maryland.  I tried it a few years ago, but quickly gave up after destroying the second and third thin layers just by trying to remove them from the cake pans.  For anyone who has never tried to make one, it is a challenge.  In her book Dishing Up Maryland, Lucie Snodgrass discusses the Smith Island cake in a vignette with innkeeper Susan Evans, a thirteenth-generation Smith Islander who has been making Smith Island cakes like women in her family have for perhaps hundreds of years.

Lore has it that the original families baked [the first Smith Island cake], although it only had four layers at the time.  Over the years the height of the cake grew as the women competed against each other to see who could make the most layers.  Today, Smith Island Cakes most commonly vary from eight to eleven layers,, depending on who's making it...  Assembling and icing the cake can be tricky and takes years of practice, Evans says.  She learned to make the cake from her mother, who learned form her mother mother, and so on.  "It's an island thing," Evans says, shrugging.  "They've always been made, and every woman knows how to make one." [Snodgrass 2010: 273]

Instead of using Susan Evans' recipe, I found a very popular printed version of the recipe on the Visit Somerset County website, attributed to Smith Islander Frances Kitching.  This is the version I used.

Recipe: Smith Island Cake

For the Smith Island cake, you will need the following ingredients, plus a lot of patience.

* flour (of course)
* evaporated milk, not the regular kind (don't have enough? just reduce regular milk over a simmer - just below a low boil - stirring constantly, until reduced by about a third)
* baking powder (not pictured - I knew I forgot to include something)
* several eggs
* vanilla
* granulated sugar
* several sticks of butter
* salt
* unsweetened cocoa (squares or powdered)
* water (this is an ingredient in the cake batter, and again i forgot to include it)

You will also need several cake pans.  Don't have ten of them just sitting around?  You will need to reuse the same three or four over and over.  Also, Mrs. Kitching's recipe calls for 9-inch cake pans.  All I had were 8-inch ones, which suited me fine.

First, cream the sugar and butter together.

And add one egg at a time to the mixture.

Sift the other dry ingredients together and add them about a cup at a time to the batter.

Still adding...

Your evaporated milk goes in next.

And then the vanilla and water until you just form a loose batter.

As shown here.

 Now comes the next of several tedious steps: the baking.  Grease the bottoms of as many same-sized cake pans as possible, and fill with a heaping serving spoon of batter.  I'm not sure what Mrs. Kitching meant by that measure, but I took a wild guess and grabbed a large spoon to fill each cake pan.

Plop the batter in the middle of the cake pan...

...and smooth it around the bottom with the spoon.  It is supposed to be this thin.

 

 Bake at 350°F for 8 minutes, and let cool a bit.  I found that trying to remove it once completely cooled actually made it tear more easily, so I tried to get it out of the pan while it was still warm.  You will need a towel for this, of course.  And these things tear easily, so you must be slow and deliberative.  What I did was take my knife and move it around the edges of the layer (yes, it already has pulled away from the side, but this helps), and slowly and carefully start to work it under the layer.  If well greased enough, the layer should eventually, and slowly, fall out.  Keep your hand over it at all times to prevent breakage or folding over, and either pile each layer by itself or (if you lack the room to do so) separate them with parchment or wax paper.  Please do not stack the steaming layers one on top of each other with nothing in between.  You will end up with one big layer of cake.

While baking your many layers of cake, prepare the frosting - a simple, cooked sugar frosting.  Start with more evaporated milk and sugar, stirring and warming them together.

Next add your unsweetened chocolate: either squares or the equivalent amount of cocoa powder and oil/shortening.
 

Add to that one stick of butter, and melt it all together, stirring.

When it coats the back of a spoon (okay, this is the front of the spoon.  Use a little imagination here.), set it aside for 30 minutes.  Impatient that I am, I stuck mine in the fridge to cool down a little faster.

Finally, you have your layers ready to assemble.  I found that I had enough batter for twelve layers - ten plus a few extra in case I messed some of them up.

For example...

To assemble the Smith Island Cake, place a layer on your serving plate, and spread some icing on top of it.  I used a spatula at first but eventually I found that a spoon was easier to use.

News flash: some of your layers will break and tear.  One tore into a few little pieces.  Mrs. Kitching tells us in her recipe not to worry about it - when the cake is assembled, no one will notice.  I did, however, try to sandwich the broken layers in between the ones that didn't manage to come apart.

Worry about icing the layers first.  Don't worry about the sides until everything else is stacked and iced together.  I found that I had just enough icing to cover this cake, so if I undertake this again I will make a little extra.

This new attempt at tackling the legendary Smith Island cake worked for me this time.  Though it wasn't as pretty as I had hoped it would be, the spongy layers sandwiched between ganache and all compacted one on top of the other make for a deceptively filling - and I mean "filling" - cake.  I am not sure how I will be able to finish all this, even with sharing it with others.  But at least now I can finally say I have tangoed with the Smith Island cake and survived.  Even if this Western Shore man can't say he's an expert like generations of Smith Island women, at least I came up with a lovely, sweet and dense cake that actually turned out.

- - - - -

And so my culinary tour of my home state is done, and I am more familiar than ever before with some classic Maryland recipes as well as a few that have been added to the state's increasingly varied multicultural landscape.  Now I head up north, back across the Mason-Dixon and up to New England again, for an exploration of that other bay state, Massachusetts.

Sources:

"Crab Cakes".  Recipe from the author's family.

Fowora, Simbo.  "Jollof Rice".  Featured on the episode "Nigerian Dinner" of the show Sara's Secrets (Sara Moulton, host).  Food Network, 2006.

Gibbon, Ed.  The Congo Cookbook.  1999-2009.  Available as a downloadable book from lulu.com and reprinted on the website http://www.congocookbook.com.

Hafner, Dorinda.  A Taste of Africa.  Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, CA, 1993.

Kitching, Frances.  "Smith Island Ten-Layer Cake-Mrs. Kitching's Original Recipe". Reprinted on the "Fun Stuff" page at the website VisitSomerset.com (website for Somerset County, Maryland).  2007-2010 Somerset County Tourism.

Shields, John. Chesapeake Bay Cooking. Broadway Books: New York, NY, 1998

Shields, John. "Foreward".  In Dishing Up Maryland by Lucie Snodgrass.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Snodgrass, Lucie.  Dishing Up Maryland.  Storey Publishing: North Adams, MA, 2010.

Walter, Eugene.  American Cooking: Southern Style.  From the series Foods of the World.  Time-Life Publications: New York, NY, 1971

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Maryland" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Maryland".