The Great Smith Island Cake Disaster

Shock and Awe: Celtic-Roman Stonework from Neuchatel.

     It began innocently and with good intentions: food historian Michael Twitty suggested a sacrificial dish for my specific sin of over-complicating things. Making the multi-layered Smith Island Cake from Tidewater Maryland sure proved complicated for me.

     It is only a slight exaggeration to say I'd never baked a cake. The Smith Island was not the one to start, not with a strange oven with metric temperature settings, with instructions in ounces and cups, and implements in liters. Did I mention too small cake pans?

     

Still she persisted.

     If we must conduct a postmortem, the first fatal error was not measuring out the batter into ten equal portions. The second was leaving wrinkles in the parchment lining of the pans. This resulted in lovely unintended flutes around the completely uneven layers.

    On the upside, I can say that the purest darkest eating chocolate from Switzerland can be substituted for unsweetened and semi-sweetened.  

    The cake's fate should be to be fed to the fishes, helping me to dispense with my sin. Instead my husband will have a slice, and then take the rest to be shared with faculty and students at the University.

    I have only one question, and I'm afraid it suggests I'm willfully persisting in my sin. Wikipedia gives the first mention of a Smith Island Cake to an early 20th Century cookbook. Does anyone know more about it?

     

The Great Smith Island Cake Disaster.