Lady Baltimore Cake

January has settled in with its particular gray quiet and I have accepted it, which is not the same as enjoying it. I am not a winter person. I cook through winter. I read through winter. I count down to February and then March without shame.

This week I have been working on something I have been meaning to do since the fall: I am writing down my mother's recipes. Not the ones I know well — those I have in my head or have already given to the church cookbook — but the ones that I only know partially, the ones she made only occasionally, the ones I have to reach for and reconstruct from sense memory. The chicken and dumplings she made when someone was sick. The tomato preserves that required a whole summer morning and smelled like something being saved from loss. The stack cake she made for special occasions, seven thin layers built from apple butter, that took two days and was only for birthdays.

I am doing this for Destiny and CJ first, because someday they will want these things, and I am doing it for Kezia second, because she is building a vocabulary of cooking that deserves to include the whole inheritance. And I am doing it for myself, because the act of reconstruction is itself a kind of visitation — in trying to remember how my mother made the stack cake I am in her kitchen again, watching her hands, smelling the apple butter warming on the stove.

I called my cousin Rosemary in Memphis this week because she had Mama's recipe for tomato preserves written somewhere and I needed a reference point. We talked for two hours about food and memory and the women who made us. That is a call I should have made years ago. Rosemary is the last living person who cooked beside our grandmother, and she is seventy-three years old, and I need to write down everything she knows before that knowledge goes with her. I told her I'd come to Memphis in the spring. She said she'd get the cast iron ready.

When I sat down to think about what recipe to share alongside all of this, I kept coming back to the Lady Baltimore Cake — because it is the kind of cake that requires intention, the kind you do not make on a Tuesday out of convenience, the kind that honors the occasion of making it. It is a Southern layer cake with deep roots, and it reminded me of everything I have been reaching toward this week: the stack cake, the women who built them, the inheritance that lives in the doing. If you are going to preserve something, let it be something worth the effort. This one is.

Prep Time: 45 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
8 large egg whites, room temperature
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
For the Filling:
1/2 cup raisins, chopped
1/2 cup dried figs or dates, finely chopped
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
1/4 cup maraschino cherries, chopped
2 cups boiled white icing (see below), divided
For the Boiled White Icing:
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 large egg whites, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Prepare the pans. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans and line with parchment paper.
Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar together on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 4–5 minutes.
Alternate wet and dry ingredients. Add the milk and extracts to the butter mixture alternately with the flour mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until just combined.
Fold in egg whites. In a clean bowl, beat the 8 egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold them into the batter in three additions, taking care not to deflate them.
Bake the layers. Divide the batter evenly among the three prepared pans. Bake 25–30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.
Make the boiled icing. Combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cook without stirring until syrup reaches 240°F on a candy thermometer. Meanwhile, beat the 4 egg whites to soft peaks. With the mixer running, pour the hot syrup in a thin, steady stream into the egg whites and continue beating until the icing is thick, glossy, and holds stiff peaks. Beat in vanilla.
Make the filling. Stir together the raisins, figs, pecans, and cherries. Fold in about 1 cup of the boiled icing until the fruit and nuts are well coated and the mixture is spreadable.
Assemble the cake. Place the first cake layer on a serving plate. Spread half the fruit filling over the top. Add the second layer and spread the remaining filling. Place the third layer on top.
Frost the cake. Use the remaining boiled icing to frost the top and sides of the cake in swooping, generous swirls. Let set at room temperature at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lady Baltimore Cake — Some Recipes Carry the Whole Inheritance