This week's CakeBook book is a slim volume in The Edible Series, Cake: A Global History by Nicola Humble. Covering everything from general history and culture to symbolism and literary relevance, the book manages to pack a lot into 127 pages. This is one I re-read at least once a year, and is a copy that I particularly cherish. Not just for the subject matter, but also for that fact that I once ran into Amy Sedaris while carrying this book and convinced her to sign it . . .
CakeBook Monday: BAKING IN AMERICA by Greg Patent
Oh, how I love this book. Well-researched and expansive, it is packed with history and stories and is a must-have if you harbor any interest in American baking and/or American culinary history. Though sadly out-of-print, used copies can be found online for practically nothing and it was re-issued as an e-book late last year.
My own copy, above, is tagged and tabbed and torn up and stained, the cover long gone. I've read through it a few times and baked a decent number of recipes from the book. That said, two of my favorites are Emily Dickinson's Black Cake (the recipe which Ms. Dickinson sent in a letter to a friend in 1883) and Indian Meal Cake (a recipe for which appeared in the first baking book printed in America in 1828; 75 Reciepts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats by Eliza Leslie, available for free as an e-book).
Greg Patent is pretty active online, blogging as The Baking Wizard, and can be found here on Twitter
CakeBook Monday: THE ART OF COOKERY by Hannah Glasse
Welcome to the very first CakeBook Monday post, a weekly highlight of books old and new that focus on cakes and baking, include wonderful recipes, or feature cakes and baking in an interesting way.
For this inaugural post, I have chosen an extremely popular book that you’ve probably never heard of, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (available for free from Google books, though I love my Applewood 1805 facsimile).
The most sought-after cookbook in Revolutionary America, it was first published in London in 1747 and, as the title page notes, was “Printed for the Author; and fold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a China-Shop, the corner of Fleet-Ditch.” The book made Mrs. Glasse, mother of 11 (5 of whom were surviving at the time of publication), a wealthy woman, at least for a time. Bad decisions led to declaration of bankruptcy, the sale of all rights of The Art of Cookery, and time served in a debtors prison. She died in 1770.
Her life is the subject of a hard-to-find (at least stateside) BBC documentary, Hannah Glasse: The First Domestic Goddess. Much of what I know about her comes from the introduction to the aforementioned Applewood Books edition by the fantastic Karen Hess as well as this 2006 article from The Independent.
But what about cakes and baking?
Truth be told, I chose this book for one line in one recipe:
Blood-warm. How odd and creepy, yet plainly intuitive? I can feel, without first-hand knowledge, what temperature that is.
So there you go. CakeBook Mondays off to a morbid start.
Bonus recipe!
