Ship a Cake and Memories, too - No. 65
The best cakes for sending are sturdy and rich, like Stacy’s Chocolate Chip Cake
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the surprise morning attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. naval base near Honolulu, by Japanese forces. It was “a date which will live in infamy” according to President Franklin D. Roosevelt who asked Congress to declare war on Japan, marking the U.S. entry into World War II. Baking and shipping food isn’t as popular today as it was during war years when our soldiers abroad were recipients of food boxes shipped from home. But it’s still doable.
MARGARET ARRIVED AT MY BOOK SIGNING outside Memphis for more than just a book. She wanted my opinion of a cookie she planned to bake and ship her son in Germany. It was a family recipe, dark, moist, heavy, full of fruit.
I told her it was perfect.
Those heavy cookies wouldn’t shift or crumble and would stay fragrant and moist until her son opened the box.
This is the time of year that if you’ve got a loved one many time zones away, the thought may have crossed your mind to bake and send them something to remind them of home. It’s no wonder when distance separates us, we try to soothe the heartache with something from the oven.
That’s what Lucile Plowden Harvey of Tampa, FL, tried to do during World War II. She shipped fruitcake to her sons and other servicemen in 13 foreign countries, something I learned while researching my book, American Cake. To Mrs. Harvey, as she was known in Tampa fruitcake circles, it was more than love. It was duty.
Even after the war, Mrs. Harvey still baked fruitcakes, winning the local newspaper recipe contest in 1956. According to her daughter-in-law Betty Harvey of Bradenton, Mrs. Harvey wrapped her loaves in foil, not too tightly, and placed them in a chest of drawers to wait until Christmas. Betty herself bakes four fruitcakes each year, sending one to her sister in Atlanta, one to her daughter in town, and two to serve during the holidays.
Butter Cake, Fruit Cake, Pound Cake, Tea Cakes - they’re all made to ship
When did we stop baking cakes to send to people? The catalogs full of decadent cakes to order are enticing, but you know and I know that those cakes will never look or taste as good as home baked.
I think we’d bake and ship more often if we had been on the receiving end. If we had opened the box even once and smelled home.
Several times during my freshman year in college, my friend Helen received care packages filled with fried peach and apple pies from her mother in Franklin, TN. The pies were wrapped in brown paper grocery bags, and I can remember how we watched Helen open that box just hoping she was feeling generous.
In truth, fried pies aren’t the best food to ship because they get soggy in transit and the wrapping becomes soaked in oil, but freshman girls cared little for those details. We all got terribly homesick from the taste of them - even if our mothers never fried pies!
What is it about shipped food that appeals to us so viscerally? It’s more than just sustenance. Could it be the deep memories associated with the particular food being shipped? The apples plucked from the tree on the farm? Or the care of the sender to enclose a note inside, written in the same handwriting you remember seeing on grocery lists and recipe cards back home?
No doubt, baked goods - cakes, breads, cookies - are better shippers than a sandwich, or a roast, or chicken casserole, which is why we send them. Baked goods travel well.
Even small, sweet, soft tea cakes became emblematic of the African American migration as they were shipped to family members who had left the South. Elbert Mackey created what he called the Tea Cake Project more than a decade ago to preserve the lore of the tea cake, which he describes as ‘’a lovely, warm bite of hope, optimism, and the promise of a better tomorrow.’’
My Favorite Cakes to Ship
We live in an old house my grandfather built in 1928, and we bought it from a couple - Boo and Bob Collins - who had lived here for 50 years, raising their children who would move away to other parts of the country.
Mrs. Collins and her husband grew sweet potatoes in the garden out back. Those were happy years for them, and their children helped with the gardening. She once told me that she baked a spice cake with the sweet potatoes and shipped this cake to her sons on their birthdays. She said for the cake to taste fresh when it reached California, she would cool and freeze the cake after baking, and then place it in a FedEx box frozen so it would thaw en route. (I’ll share that recipe with subscribers this Thursday!)
I ship cakes to friends and family, especially when I am promoting a new book. And this is how I do it. I choose unfrosted Bundt or pound cakes, and like Mrs. Collins, I try to ship them frozen. I wrap them in plastic wrap and then foil and place them in a box that just fits the cake with little wiggle room. Surround with peanuts or popcorn or crinkled paper, anything to buffer the cake from the ups and downs of transit. Or pad the box with bubble wrap.
And then I send the cake by the fastest means I can afford. Domestically that means overnight or two-day, either by UPS or FedEx or fitting the cake into a flat-rate USPS box. If the cake is traveling to an international destination, check those shipping schedules as some of those deadlines have passed and few remain. And check into military rates, too, especially if you are shipping to a U.S. military base.
The cakes I ship are Stacy’s Chocolate Chip Cake or the Hershey’s Bar Pound Cake from my new book, A New Take on Cake. Or from American Cake, Chez Panisse Almond Torte - what with the eggs and butter and almond paste, it stays moist for a week! Or I ship a pound cake or fruitcake such as the Martha Washington Great Cake, in which currants are soaked in white wine and keep the cake moist and lovely.
So that when the box is opened, the recipient gets more than just a cake. They get the nostalgic whiff of home.
Do you have memories of shipping or receiving food?
For Subscribers this Thursday
Mrs. Collins’ Sweet Potato Cake and the best cookbooks to gift everyone on your list, thanks to my friend Susan Puckett who reviews cookbooks for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
Welcome to the new subscribers! My offer to send 5 autographed copies of my new book to 5 lucky new subscribers continues through Dec. 15. Buy an annual subscription to this newsletter for yourself if you’ve been tempted or for someone on your list!
Stacy’s Chocolate Chip Cake
This is one of the Cake Mix Doctor’s favorite recipes, and I updated it for A New Take on Cake. Stacy Ross of Nashville, the cake’s creator, not only has been baking this cake since 1976, but she’s been gifting it, too! The first time she shipped this cake was to her fiance, now husband, who was a Naval officer stationed in California. Stacy sends this chocolate chip cake to her children but also to people in need. For example, her husband hand-delivered this cake to the mother of Kelsee Lainhart, a Marine Corporal who was severely injured in the Kabul attack during the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in August. Stacy surrounded the cake with bubble wrap, and her husband carried it on his flight to Washington, D.C. This cake has been spotted in Wyoming, in Colorado, and in Alabama post Hurricane Michael, as a gift to relief workers there. And Stacy routinely packed this cake in the car to tote on summer vacations, which isn’t really shipping, but with all the packing of the car and four children, it sure feels like it!
Makes 12 servings
Prep: 15 to 20 minutes
Bake: 45 to 50 minutes
Cake:
Vegetable cooking spray or shortening, for greasing the pan
All-purpose flour, for dusting the pan
1 bar (4 ounces) German’s sweet chocolate
1 package (15.25 ounces) yellow or butter recipe cake mix
4 tablespoons (half a 3.4-ounce package) vanilla instant pudding mix
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (6 ounces) regular or miniature semisweet chocolate chips
Garnish:
1 teaspoon confectioners’ sugar or 1 teaspoon each confectioners’ sugar and unsweetened cocoa
Place a rack in the center of the oven, and heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan. Set the pan aside.
Break the German’s chocolate into four pieces. Finely grate the bar using a food processor (drop the pieces one at a time into the processor fitted with a steel blade) or hand grater. Set the grated chocolate aside.
Place the cake mix and pudding mix in a large mixing bowl, and stir to combine. Add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until blended, 30 seconds. Stop the machine, and scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat for 1 minute longer until the batter is smooth and fluffy. Fold in the grated German’s chocolate and the chocolate chips. Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula, and place the pan in the oven.
Bake the cake until the top springs back when lightly pressed with a finger, 42 to 47 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes.
Run a long sharp knife around the edges of the cake, shake the pan gently, and invert the cake onto a wire rack or cake plate. Let the cake cool at least 20 minutes longer. Sift the top with confectioners’ sugar, if desired. Slice and serve.
I recall my mom making popcorn cakes, decorated with orange slices and gumdrops, when my brothers were enlisted during the Vietnam War. She was determined to do her ‘bit’ so the boys had enough to share with their buddies. Lovely lady.
My grandmother would always make pound cake. As a matter of fact that was the only cake she would make. My grand father’s favorite. After she passed away I asked my Aunts if they had the recipe. No one had it. It took me about three years and the baking of many pound cakes. I finally found the taste and texture I remembered. Everyone request I make this cake for them. It’s a real old fashion recipe.