num_pages: 352
description: Cakes have become an icon of American cultureand a window to understanding ourselves. Be they vanilla lemon ginger chocolate cinnamon boozy Bundt layered marbled even checkerboard--they are etched in our psyche. Cakes relate to our lives heritage and hometowns. And as we look at the evolution of cakes in America we see the evolution of our history: cakes changed with waves of immigrants landing on ourshores with the availability (and scarcity) of ingredients with cultural trends and with political developments. In her new book American Cake Anne Byrn (creator of the New York Times bestselling series The Cake Mix Doctor) will explore this delicious evolution and teach us cake-making techniques from across the centuries all modernized for todays home cooks.Anne wonders (and answers for us) why devils food cake is not red in color how the Southern delicacy known as Japanese Fruit Cake could be so-named when there appears to be nothing Japanese about the recipe and how Depression-era cooks managed to bake cakes without eggs milk and butter. Who invented the flourless chocolate cake the St. Louis gooey butter cake the Tunnel of Fudge cake? Were these now-legendary recipes mishaps thanks to a lapse of memory frugality or being too lazy to run to the store for more flour?Join Anne for this delicious coast-to-coast journey and savor our nation's history of cake baking. From the dark moist gingerbread and blueberry cakes of New England and the elegant English-style pound cake of Virginia to the hard-scrabble apple stack cake home to Appalachia and the slow-drawl Deep South Lady Baltimore Cake you will learn the stories behind your favorite cakes and how to bake them.
language: English
title: American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes: A Baking Book
publisher: Rodale Books