CakeBook Monday: SEVENTY-FIVE RECEIPTS by A Lady of Philadelphia

That Lady would be Eliza Leslie, one of the most popular cookery writers of the 19th century. Considered the first baking book to be published in the United States by an American author, Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828) is lovely little volume. As Eliza notes in the introduction, "The receipts in this little book are, in every sense of the word, American." This holds especially true for her recipes incorporating a popular ingredient of "the new world": Indian Meal. I mentioned this book, and the Indian Meal Cake, briefly when I posted about another CakeBook Monday selection (Baking In America), but I thought her book, and her contribution to cookbooks and cookery writing, important enough to warrant her own Monday slot. 

Other than the Indian Meal Cake, I have not yet baked one of her recipes from this book, though I do want to try Queen Cake out of sheer curiosity:

CakeBook Monday: Cake Making at High Altitude

This slim advertising pamphlet from the Swans Down company is one of my favorites. The graphics are fantastic, as are the recipes which cover a range of altitudes from 3,000 to 7,000 feet. Published in 1955, all of the classic cakes of the day are represented, from Devil's Food and Front Cake to Angel Food and Wonder Cake. There's also a trove of recipes for fillings and frostings such as Sugarplum (Seven Minute Frosting with Prunes), Sea Foam (Seven Minute with brown sugar instead of corn syrup), and Clever Judy (an uncooked egg-based chocolate frosting). 

CakeBook Monday: THE CAKE COOK BOOK by Lilith Rushing and Ruth Voss

This wonderful cookbook from 1965 contains a plethora of cake recipes, but the reason I really love it is for the Rare, Historical, and Offbeat chapter which contains the priceless recipe for the Toothless Nell Cake. Plenty of used copies can be found online for as little as a mere penny.

Toothless Nell lies buried in Boot Hill at Dodge City, Kansas. Wyatt Erp, Bat Masterson and other law men of that day probably tried to keep her in bounds. We are told she liked this cake. How she ate it without teeth history doesn't record.

I baked and wrote about the Toothless Nell cake for my former blog, Domestology, back in 2012. You can find that post here if so inclined. 

CakeBook Monday: BUNDT CAKE BLISS by Susanna Short

I really love a good bundt cake, perhaps more than any other type of cake. This may be because I am one who prefers the cake to the frosting, or it could be the simplicity of a bundt; so lovely and so tasty in one generous form. 
    Generous is not a word I would use to describe Bundt Cake Bliss as it is a slim little number, a mere 145 pages, including the index. There are no photographs, but they don't really seem necessary—a bundt is a bundt is a bundt in shape. It's all about what you put in it.
    And that is where the options open wide up. Though mostly recipes for sweet cakes, there are a few savory in the bunch (Green Chili Cornbread, for example). Some of my favorites that I have baked numerous times are Apricot Almond Pound Cake, Sour Cream Walnut Streusel Coffee Cake, and Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake. Most of the recipes are entirely from scratch, but there are a few that used boxed cake mix and instant pudding. 
    You get a little history lesson in the book as well, learning the story behind the bundt cake in a forward by one of the bundt's creators: Dotty Dalquist.