Photo: Jetheriot; Shepard Fairey/Creative Commons
Best skip this post.
Yes we can fall in love with the First Family
I’m not ashamed to say it: J’adore les Obamas.
Unlike the Obama Girl, I’ve got more than a crush on Barack. I’m madly in love with the entire Obama family.
The President’s fresh face smiling in a sea of tired gray D.C. pols makes me swell with pride.
When I see Mrs. O. stride athletically up to a podium I feel like jumping to my feet to cheer.
I want to turn cartwheels as I imagine Malia and Sasha running across the White House lawn.
As a lifelong pessimist, I feel stupid confessing I feel optimistic. In one of America’s darkest hours. Crazy.
Yes we can trust magical thinking: How a cake helped elect the President.
The thing is, I played a HUGE role in getting President Obama elected. It was all because of my cake.
Let me explain.
Remember childhood magic? The rituals and incantations you made to appease the Fates? Your conviction that certain actions would lead to specific outcomes?
You were certain if you stepped on every other pavement crack on the way to school, Beth and her gang wouldn’t torment you at recess.
If you prayed, Kit—your battered old Tom cat—wouldn’t die after mixing it up one too many times.
If you wore the red v-neck shirt, Kyle Frommer would fall in love with you.
Okay, admit it. It worked a lot of the time.
Maybe it would work on Election Day, I reasoned.
Yes we can time-travel back to 1968
Election Day 2008 found me sitting on the steps of a Beaux Art Mansion in Nyack, New York. Its expansive lawn sloped down to a panoramic view of the Hudson River. The sun shone brightly, but not enough to warm the cold marble steps.
I shifted my seat and let my mind drift. Why did so many budget-strapped peace organizations wind up with prime real estate, I wondered idly.
Snapping back to the task at hand, I flipped my cell and dialed a Virginia area-code.
As one of a troop of phone bank volunteers, my job was to hustle procrastinating voters to the polls.
It was hard to stay focused. Along with the cold steps, the motley volunteers distracted me. Especially the lefties d’un certain age. Many were veteran civil rights workers. They reminded me of my late mother.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” said a handsome steel-haired woman. She wore an alpaca skirt and dangly malachite earrings. My mom sported similar outfits when she toted me, my sister and brother to picket lines at Lucky Supermarket and CORE meetings near our home in El Cerrito, California.
“I’m afraid he’s not going to make it. What if something goes wrong?” Malachite Lady said, biting her lip. “What if—” her voice shifted quickly as her callee picked up and Malachite Lady began her scripted get-to-the polls motivational speech.
I was worried, too. That’s why I volunteered that morning. That’s why I made the Election Cake the day before.
Yes we can use a 150 year old recipe. Maybe.
The Election Cake came from a recipe of my friend, C. Son of Southern aristocrats, gourmand and naturalist, C. is also an erudite amateur historian.
In the 19th century, C. informed me, people celebrated election wins—or salved the wounds of loss—with special foods.
His recipe for Election Cake was generously studded with raisins and pecans, enriched with almost a pound of butter and fortified with bourbon.
I’d had the recipe for more than a decade and never made it. I had a track record of failures with heirloom pre-Fanny Farmer era recipes.
As a history-obsessed kid growing up in 1970s Northern California, I sweated over Martha Washington’s “receipts.” The dishes called for “quince paste,” “marchpane,” and other cool-sounding mystery ingredients.
After hours of pounding almonds, fermenting plums and baking in a 450 degree oven, the results almost always disappointed.
Very likely, C.’s Election Cake too would taste like cardboard.
But who cared? Taste wasn’t the objective in baking Election Cake.
It was reversion to childhood hoodoo. Fearful of my candidate’s defeat, my reasoning—if it can be called that—went like this: Antebellum Election Cake>Old South>Racism> Fruits of old order inverted>Election Cake>Obama Victory.
So I made the cake. And, hey. You can’t argue with the result.
But here’s the best part: Election Cake is absolutely divine. Especially with the real buttercream icing I made.
Yeah, buttercream—with its boiled sugar syrup, candy thermometer and 2nd degree finger burns—is difficult to make. But the President, Mrs. O., Sasha and Malia are worth it.
Election Cake
½ cup bourbon
¾ cup raisins
1 ½ cups butter—3 sticks
2 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 ¼ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
1 ½ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup milk
1 tablespoon butter and 2 tablespoons flour for greasing baking pan.
Powdered sugar or buttercream frosting to finish
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- Prepare baking pan. Cut wax paper circle to fit bottom of a 10’” springform pan. Butter pan. Place wax paper circle in bottom of pan. Butter wax paper. Sprinkle pan with flour and shake to coat bottom and sides.
- In small bowl, mix bourbon and raisins. Set aside.
- In large bowl, cream butter on low speed of mixer.
- Gradually beat in sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
- Beat in vanilla.
- Sift, or mix well in a medium-sized bowl, flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.
- Add flour mixture to butter/sugar mixture in three portions alternating with milk starting and ending with flour mixture. Beat well after each addition.
- Fold in raisins and bourbon mixture.
- Add pecans and stir gently to incorporate.
- Spoon batter into prepared pan, smoothing top evenly.
- Bake for 45-50 minutes until tester comes out clean.
- Cool in pan for about 10 minutes. Run knife around sides of pan, invert onto rack and cool completely before icing.
For a simple presentation, sprinkle with powdered sugar. For a more festive occasion—such as Inaugural Day!!—frost with Classic Buttercream icing, see recipe below.
Classic Buttercream Icing
This recipe is adapted from The Cake Bible by Rose Beranbaum.
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
2 cups unsalted butter softened to room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
- Grease a Pyrex measuring cup with butter. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, beat egg yolks until light in color and double in volume, see photos, below.
- In a small saucepan, combine sugar and water. Clip a candy thermometer onto the saucepan. For accurate temperature reading, the tip of the thermometer must be in the syrup—but not touching the bottom of the pan, see photo, right.
- Heat sugar syrup, stirring constantly until mixture boils.
- Stop stirring the syrup and heat until it comes to the softball stage, 238 degrees. It takes about five minutes.
- Immediately pour syrup into the glass measure to stop cooking.
- If using a hand-held mixer, pour syrup into egg yolks in a steady stream, beating constantly. Don’t let the syrup hit the mixer blades—it will spin off onto the sides of the bowl. Continue beating at high speed until egg yolk mixture is thick, pale yellow and cool to the touch. To speed cooling, put a layer of ice cubes in a bowl and place the bowl holding the syrup/egg yolk mixture inside the ice cube-filled bowl.
- When mixture is completely cool, beat in butter, one cube at a time. Whip after each addition to aerate and smooth any butter curds.
- Add vanilla and whip to incorporate.
To frost cake
- Cut four 2” strips of wax paper.
- Place wax paper strips on top of plate to form square frame, see photo, below.
- Invert cake onto wax paper square. Frost sides, then top of cake. Dip spatula in water to smooth final frosting.
- Carefully pull out wax paper strips, decorate with tiny flags, etc., and serve.
Note: The bourbon in this recipe helps preserve it and the cake will keep well for several days. Place in refrigerator—the buttercream is perishable—then bring to room temperature before serving.
