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named after a confectioner named Samuel German, who invented the style while working for Baker’s Chocolate way back in 1852. What’s more, it calls for the use of buttermilk in making the layer cakes: a clear giveaway that a Southern recipe is afoot. When syndicated, the cake’s popularity spread from coast to coast, losing the possessive name along the way and leaving us with the sticky, nutty dessert we now know as German chocolate cake. People forgot so quickly about the cake’s origin that — in a truly bizarre twist of fate — proud Texan former President Lyndon B. Johnson served the cake to German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard as a “German” dessert at his Johnson City ranch during a 1963 meeting. (There is no official report on how that went over.) Perhaps to make the cake appear more authentically German, in the middle part of the 20th century, bakeries decorated the top of the cake not only with the coconut-pecan mixture, but also with maraschino cherries and shards of chocolate, a la the Black Forest cake. But there’s no hiding it. This cake is a decadent, larger-than-life Texan, through and through.

cultural fabric and national literary history, Lane Cake is an old-fashioned baked good that’s taken on a mythology all its own. Lane cake’s story starts — like so many Southern confections — at the county fair. Emma Rylander Lane of Clayton, Alabama, won first prize for her dessert, which she called “prize cake” at a nearby county fair in Georgia. (She was confident in its abilities, it appears, and rightfully so.) Friends eventually convinced her to include “prize cake” as an entry in her 1898 self-published cookbook, A Few Good Things to Eat , but give credit where credit is due by christening it with her own name: Lane cake. With its combination of bourbon and raisins (additional ingredient riffs like chopped nuts and coconut came later), Lane cake became a regional staple at church potlucks and family reunions across the region. But it wasn’t until Monroeville, Alabama’s own Harper Lee included a reference to it in her 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird , that the recipe reached icon status. In the book, six-year-old narrator Scout Finch eats a slice of the boozy cake baked by a neighbor and — as the classic line goes — muses, “Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight.” Now we all know that “shinny” is slang for liquor, and “tight” is slang for tipsy, but the bourbon in Lane cake isn’t just for the buzzy effect. It was initially used to keep the cake moist so that it would last longer in the event guests popped by a few days after baking. (This also solves the problem posed by that old Southern saying, “If I had known you were coming, I would’ve baked you a cake!”) Plus, the way the layers of the cake absorb the caramelized, rich notes of the bourbon make this a creation to bake a couple of days in advance of an event: It only gets better when it sits overnight. Many recipes allow for some flexibility on the liquid used to moisten the cake — like wine, brandy, or even apple cider — but the cake-making process for Lane cake is an involved one, so you might want to save yourself an extra

inspiration for the cake’s appearance, but they are pretty similar. In 2021, the festival went virtual, allowing more than 100 bakers to have their cakes judged remotely by a panel of regional pastry experts. If you want to compete next year, I’d suggest distilling your cherries now (and making your own bollenhut) .

GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW: A three- or four-tiered chocolate cake layered with a boiled custard coconut-pecan filling — which also traditionally decorates the top of the cake — and (maybe) chocolate frosting. A lot of things in this world have misleading labels. A jellyfish is neither made of jelly nor a fish. A peanut isn’t a nut; it’s a legume. And German chocolate cake isn’t German; it’s from Texas. Yes, despite having “German” right there in the name, German chocolate cake has no European roots — but does have plenty of ties to the Lone Star State. recipe for German chocolate cake ran in their pages as part of famed food editor Julie Bendell’s “Recipe of the Day” column in June 1957. In the submission from Mrs. George Clay of Southeast Dallas, the local homemaker called the cake “German’s Sweet Chocolate Cake” (note the possessive form) after the type of chocolate used to create it: Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. The chocolate itself was ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: A little sleuthing by the Dallas Morning News found that the first-ever printed

LANE CAKE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW:

A three- or four-tiered, bourbon- soaked sponge cake featuring a rich custard filling with raisins, coconut, dried fruit or chopped nuts, and boiled icing (or a fluffy white icing) around the outside. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: A cake deeply woven into Alabama’s

38 ROUSES NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2021