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baking spirits bright

Reflected on-screen as a Louisiana staple and with an entry in every church cookbook from Beaumont to Raleigh, red velvet cake has created a public persona that’s fully Southern. It’s origin story, however, is not. During the Victorian Era, “velvet” cake referred to a specific category of “fancy” baked cake that incorporated cocoa powder, an ingredient which is naturally very acidic and helped create a light, soft — dare I say velvety ? — crumb in comparison to more common, coarser cakes of the era. In the early part of the 20th century, a combination of “velvet cake” and “devil’s food cake” grew in popularity in the United States, ultimately resulting in a ruddy-brown — not exactly red — “velvet” cake that is the prototype for what we eat today. “As it drifted south, the [red velvet] recipe was often executed with buttermilk. In that time period, most cocoa powder was not only natural, it was also raw. (In modern cocoa powder, the beans are roasted.) The combined effect of the acidic buttermilk and the acidic cocoa powder created a density in the texture of the cake, which amplified its velvetiness,” Stella Park, author of BraveTart: Iconic America Desserts , told Splendid Table in 2017. “Simultaneously, the pH of the cake helped some of the [red] color pigments in the raw cocoa powder shine through. That’s why the trick doesn’t really work today. You can’t do it at home unless you get raw cocoa powder, because the type of cocoa you’re picking up at the store is going to be a roasted product, not raw.” With unprocessed cocoa falling out of favor, bakers are constantly experimenting with all sorts of methods that will — hopefully — ensure their red velvet cakes are a rich, fire engine red. Beet juice was a popular choice during World War II (it also helped to moisten the cake) and, of course, food coloring is the most popular choice today. During the 2010s, there was something of a frenzy around red velvet cake as the dessert moved from “cake” to

glass of whatever you’re cooking with as a reward when the finished product finally goes in the oven.

next thing I knew, I was in business,” she explained to the Times-Picayune in 1980. The doberge cake — which she gave an appropriately Francophone- sounding name — was an immediate hit, and quickly became a birthday party staple in neighborhoods across the city. But after a series of health issues in 1946, Ledner sold the doberge name and recipe to Joe Gambino’s Bakery under the agreement that she wouldn’t open a bakery to compete against him in New Orleans within the next five years. But the allure of that sponge-meets- pudding combination was too strong, and Ledner returned to doberge- making at a new bakery in Metairie — a loophole in the non-compete! — just a few short years later. So, native New Orleanians: Are you a chocolate, lemon, or half-and-half?

DOBERGE CAKE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW:

A dense cake — typically between 6 and 9 layers — made from thin slices of sponge cake cushioned by layers of dessert pudding. The most common (and popular) puddings are chocolate and lemon, with poured fondant glaze icing in the corresponding flavor. “Half-and- half” doberge cakes split down the center, half chocolate and half lemon, are also a local bakery staple. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: New Orleanians love to argue about all-things-food — the best po’boy, oyster shucking techniques, the “curse” of eating king cake outside of Carnival season — but if locals were to name the signature cake of the city, a consensus could assuredly be reached the doberge cake is it. Invented by St. Charles Parish-native Beulah Ledner in 1932, the cake is a spin on the Hungarian Dobos torte, a similarly wafer-thin, tightly stacked cake with layers of genoise cake and chocolate buttercream topped with caramel. Like many now-legendary dessert inventors of the 20th century, Ledner wasn’t a professional baker, but at the insistence of friends and family, began baking her lemon pies, miniature kuchens and this unique spin on the Dobos torte for the public under the name Mrs. Charles Ledner’s Superior Home Baking. “I never intended to go into business. Then friends started asking me to make lemon pies for their friends and the

RED VELVET CAKE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW:

A multi-tiered, deep red, lightly sweetened chocolate cake coated in cream cheese frosting. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: There are few food moments in film lore more infamous than the armadillo cake scene in the 1989’s tearjerker classic, Steel Magnolias . Bride-to-be Shelley (Julia Roberts) is lamenting the fact that the groom’s cake for their wedding has been baked into the shape of an armadillo — grey icing and all. “Worse, the cake part is red velvet cake. Blood red,” she says, exasperated. “People are going to be hacking into this poor animal that looks like it’s bleeding to death!”

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