Tag Archives: 1650-1799

VGNMOFO 2018: American Cakes: Fraunces Tavern Carrot Tea Cake

September 8, 2018

It’s November 25, 1783, and the last of the British troops leave New York City. Washing crosses the Harlem River and settles in Manhattan. This the Evacuation Day, the bookend to the Revolutionary War. I could describe it, but I swear my brain can’t process information regarding wars. Washington strutted his horse down Broadway and ate at Fraunces Tavern, supposedly eating this cake. Today the Tavern still stands, and is a historical landmark. If you ever visit New York City, it would be a interesting visit as it looks like the place is steeped in history and isn’t your normal tourist place (at least in NYC.) It even has a restaurant still open, but it is very much NOT vegan.

This cake is the first one for me to hit some roadblocks. Mostly because I wasn’t really thinking. I thought okay, replace the eggs, sub the butter, BAM DONE! I didn’t notice that there wasn’t any baking soda or powder. The cake would normally rise because it uses a creaming method that we see in pound cake- using sugar, butter, and eggs. Every vegan pound cake I’ve found uses baking soda or powder. I ended up with a cake that’s texture felt under baked.

So it was back to the drawing board. I tweaked the recipe, added baking powder or soda (I can’t remember now) and it still didn’t work. Yikes. I was getting really discouraged, although the flavor was really good. I was just trying to figure out how to balance the baking soda and oil with the existing recipe.

But then I made my Martha Washington Great Cake. The creaming method works with aquafaba! Amazing! I was over the moon from the news. I went back into the kitchen and pretty much just copied the cake from the book using the aquafaba, and wham bam! Done! No sweat what-so-ever! Crazy. But to add insult to injury, I re-read the description of the recipe, apparently an oil based recipe using baking soda has been floating around for years. In fact, you can try it right here, just sub the eggs.

So what makes this carrot cake (MY carrot cake) worth your time? Well, it is VERY different from most carrots cakes we eat today. Most modern carrot have a grated carrot in the mix, and almost always has cream cheese frosting. A style that is very American in it’s own right, and a recipe like this appears later in the book. But this cake uses boiled carrots that pureed, and folded into the batter. This gives the cake a beautiful color and flavor. Plus, Natalie Brown from Buzzfeed apparently fucking loves this cake.

I hope you take a chance on this cake as it is really yummy. Boiling and mashing 4 carrots take very little time, and it doesn’t need to be a perfect puree. And I specify Earth Balance butter since I am unsure how well this creaming method stands up to different styles.

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Posted by Jennifer in Recipe, Vegan Mofo, Vegan Mofo 2018 Tags: 1650-1799, American Cake Off, American Cakes, carrot cake, carrots, Vegan MOFO, vegan mofo 2018

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VGNMOFO 2018: American Cakes: Martha Washington Great Cake

September 3, 2018

This is a cake I was very excited to try out. I never really had too many fruit cakes, but I found the photos very interesting. There was something very pretty about a pretty golden cake with lots of little berries baked inside. And there was also booze in the cake. I am always down with that. This cake has been altered quite a bit in the American Cakes cookbook. Many changes I am happy about, omitting the citron and lemon peels, and using white wine instead of the more heavy sweet fortified wines like brandy or madeira. Many online recipes also offer a frosting/icing to go on top of the cake, which I think it is too much. This is a rich dense cake, very similar to a pound cake with spiked fruit inside. I think it stands very well by itself.

This cake was made by Martha Washington– the first First Lady. She supposedly made this cake when George was returning home from serving as president, making it in time for Christmas. The recipe was written down by her Great Granddaughter Martha Parke Custis and is the main reason why the recipe still survives today.

Another thing that I liked from it’s modern adaptation is how much it has been scaled down. Part of the “great” in “great cake” is the sheer size. Readers of the blog might remember me describing the massive size of Election Cakes, and this cake was quite large as well.

Take 40 eggs & divide the whites from the yolks & beat them to a froth then work 4 pounds of butter to a cream & put the whites of eggs to it a spoon full at a time till it is well work’d then put 4 pounds of sugar finely powder’d to it in the same manner than put in the Youlks of eggs and 5 pounds of flower and 5 pounds of fruit, 2 hours will bake it add to it half an ounce of mace and nutmeg half a pint of wine & some fresh brandy.

I’ve even taken the size of the recipe down even further! The original recipe calls for a pound of currants, and I had to buy bulk organic currants. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but I found that the currants were quite old, and very dry. So they soaked up a LOT of wine. I later found that it was easier to find 10 oz boxes. The original recipe calls for a larger than normal loaf pan, so I figured I would scale the 16 oz currants to one box. I crunched the numbers and worked out well.

When I first baked the cake I replaced the butter for oil thinking that it would be dense enough to handle the softer texture. I added some baking soda to the mix for some rise, as the original recipe didn’t. And finally I replaced the eggs with aquafaba since the cake was light in color and I wanted to keep it flax fleck free. As I started to mix the aquafaba to the sugar-oil mix, I noticed it acting very similar to a pound cake. It made me wonder if I could skip the leavening agent all together.

So the second time making the cake was when I scaled down the size, and baked like a normal pound cake. I was VERY nervous. But it worked! Surprising I know! The photos might look like the cake is under baked, and it might of been just a smidge. I think I over soaked the currants (I did it overnight) making the cake a little too moist. But the texture was definitely cooked!

So here are some important notes about the ingredients. You will want a nice white wine. Pick something you would drink, but still have it be on the lower end of cost. I omitted the mace from the recipe, but it should traditionally be in there. I also used Earth Balance and specified it in the recipe. It worked for this, but I can not promise how homemade butters would work.

The oven is also on low and slow! This cake takes over 2 hours to bake! Plus 2 hours of soaking! This is going to take a loooong time to make, but very hands off. I hope this doesn’t scare off too many people, because this does make a great cake for the holiday season. One that might get people to question what they think of a “fruit cake.”

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Posted by Jennifer in Recipe, Vegan Mofo, Vegan Mofo 2018 Tags: 1650-1799, American Cake Off, American Cakes, booze, currants, fruit cake, Vegan MOFO, vegan mofo 2018, white wine

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American Cakes: Election Cake

November 6, 2017

I did a lot of debating if I should save this recipe till next Vegan MOFO or not. I do want to continue my Vegan MOFO theme of American Cake Off for 2018, but this one I wanted to post this year. Why? THERE ARE STILL ELECTIONS GOING ON IN THE UNITED STATES!

Some of these elections are big deals. In New Jersey we are voting for a new governor (thank god), state legislator, and freeholder. And in my case, I have the questions to vote on, and people who are running locally for the board of education. This election is a pretty big deal as it can get more democrats into the senate, possibly getting the majority.

Part of the reason why there isn’t much coverage about the election is because it really depends on where you live. I am voting for some stuff that no one else is voting on outside of my town. There are lots of important mayor elections, and not every state even has an election going on.

So let’s talk about this election cake! I first read about it in American Cakes, but there isn’t a recipe. Perhaps it is because most people steer away from fruit cakes, or because the author didn’t find it unique enough compared to other recipes? Not sure. But I was very excited about the idea.

Back before women could vote- ladies would slave away in the kitchen baking cakes. They would use this as a way to encourage men to go out and vote. And boy did the original recipes feed many men. An original recipe called for thirty quarts flour, ten pounds butter, fourteen pounds sugar, twelve pounds raisins, and my favorites one pint wine and one quart brandy. This might make your jaw drop but this was intended to feed MANY people.

Sourced from Bon Appetit’s article about Election Cakes

For the 2016 presidential election OWL Bakery decided to start a campaign calls #MakeAmericaCakeAgain. The bakery posted a recipe on Google Docs for anyone to make, but sold the cake in their stores. Proceeds went to League of Women Voters, with many other bakeries across the USA contributing. There is already a vegan version of the cake out there by Yum Universe. But I don’t know about it, it is gluten free but uses bourbon to soak the fruit. Then she has the audacity to recommend tequila or gin to soak the fruit to make it 100% gluten free?! 1) not all gin are gluten free, and 2) what about wine based spirits?

The other problem with the OWL and Yum Universe recipes is that the cake needs the starter to go overnight. That is a lot of time. But I found a recipe from Food52 that only has your starter go for 3 hours. That is a lot more manageable, and the recipe looks a lot less scary in comparison.

This recipe isn’t perfect. I wish I tried using only oil in the recipe, but I had a lot of little bits of shortening and an almost empty butter container in the fridge, so I used a mix of the three. I also didn’t have sherry wine or brandy, so I used amaretto and marsala. You can use whatever you want, but I recommend something sweet. So if you aren’t using booze, maybe a juice, kombucha, sweetened tea, whatever. Think about what flavors will go with figs, raisins, and the spices.

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Posted by Jennifer in Recipe Tags: 1650-1799, alcohol, amaretto, American Cake Off, booze, cake, dessert, election cake, elections, figs, marsala, politics

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American Cakes: Blackstrap Spiced Cake

April 21, 2017

If you read my earlier post, you know I am baking my way through the American Cake cookbook. If I can make a good vegan version, I’ll post it on the blog. If I fail, well, I will still talk about the history and how badly I failed. XD But I have good news- this cake was successful!

First lets talk about the history of this cake. Before getting the American Cake book I never knew how American molasses is. Sure it is used in European recipes, but it is used more often in the American colonies since it was so cheap. White sugar was reserved for the upper classes and special occasions. So most Americans bought molasses to sweeten their baked goods.

But there is another aspect of Americaness to molasses. Many Quaker residences boycotted sugar. The sugar industry relied on slave labor, and conditions were considerably worse than slaves in the thirteen colonies. Most slaves were literally worked to death (while in the United States we cruelly let our slaves live long enough to have children and enslave them.) This sugar boycott makes me think about how vegans boycott animal products, and sometimes products that have unethical standards, like chocolate and palm oil. I love learning about historical activism!

In that spirit I TRIED to make the cake palm oil free, but the a lot of the flavor depended on butter. So if you want to be like the colonial quakers, you can try out some palm oil free margarine (which in the states mean Miyoko’s Cultured Butter.) If anyone tries using their own homemade vegan butter, please tell me how the recipe turned out!

Now as usually I can never just make a recipe. No, I had to make this recipes “healthier.” How? Simply using blackstrap molasses instead of regular molasses. You may have heard that blackstrap molasses is much more pungent and it has more vitamins in it. In fact, there is a good amount of calcium in blackstrap. How does this happen? Pretty much molasses is the by product of refined sugar after being boiled a second time. Blackstrap molasses is the result from the third boiling. That means less sugar, and more nutritional goodies.

Although I wouldn’t say this is the most healthy snack, it definitely is helping you out nutritionally. One slice (an eighth of a cake) has almost half of calcium in your daily requirements and almost all of the copper you need! If you want to make it even MORE healthful you could use part whole wheat flour or sub with whole wheat pastry flour or spelt flour. I used all purpose unbleached flour.

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Posted by Jennifer in Book Review, Recipe Tags: 1650-1799, American Cake Off, blackstrap molasses, gingerbread cake

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