ROUSES_NovDec2021_Magazine-Pages-NEW

take on a life of its own as a “flavor.” Red velvet pancakes, red velvet ice cream, red velvet cheesecake — even red velvet-scented candles! — are now out there in the wild, ready and waiting for fans of the ruby-hued original.

the hummingbird, or as it was known in Jamaica, Dr. Bird. Press parties were held in New York and Miami to unveil a new promotional cake... [with] tropical flavors to conjure up some idyllic beach holiday in the islands. Who would have thought that a marketing promotion by Jamaica Airlines would evolve into one of America’s best-loved cakes?” The cake’s popularity also points to a larger trend in midcentury baking: canned fruit. Canning technologies advanced rapidly after World War II, meaning that fruits that were rare and difficult-to-find for the average consumer before — like, say, a fresh pineapple — were now stocked on grocery shelves, making them prime ingredients for featuring in celebration cakes. But there’s nothing dated about the hummingbird cake, with a banana- pineapple-cream cheese trifecta that ensured the recipe was not only a hit 50 years ago but remains a frequent flyer on potluck tables and cake stands across the Southeast. It’s even earned the impressive nickname “the cake that doesn’t last.”

It also has an origin story complex enough to match its “how does it work?” baking magic. The elements that make up a baked Alaska are nothing new. Marie Antionette loved to eat meringue by the spoonful. Frozen trifles and ice cream bombes were all the range in Victorian Europe. Thomas Jefferson even served warm, wasn’t until Sir Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumsford) — an American in exile who also invented, among other things, the double-boiler and kitchen range — made a fascinating discovery that baked Alaska could take shape in earnest. Thompson’s kitchen tinkering led to the realization that, because of the air pockets in whipped egg whites, meringue has low thermal conductivity and serves as a great insulator, meaning that if you wrapped ice cream in meringue and baked it, the frozen interior wouldn’t melt in an oven. (Science is delicious sometimes.) This eureka moment led to the creation of baked Alaska’s spiritual — if not direct — predecessor, omelette à la norvégienne , which was first made sometime in the 1830s and served as an edible “scientific” treat at the Paris World’s Far in 1867. The original name is a bit confounding; what is a “Norwegian omelette”? Much like Alaska is to Americans, Norway was considered the ultimate in snowy northern climates was, quite literally, encased in eggs. The dish — a genoise sponge cake covered with ice cream and meringue — was a sensation. It comes as little surprise, then, that when ex-pat Parisian Charles Ranhofer — chef at the Delmonico in New York City — wanted to create a dish to commemorate Alaska’s purchase, he took a page from the omelette à la norvégienne’s playbook. Ranhofer’s original version of the dessert he called “Alaska, Florida” (for obvious reasons) consisted of banana ice cream, walnut spice cake, and meringue, baked in the oven. pastry-covered ice cream balls at a dinner party in 1802. But it for Parisians. It was likely called “omelette” because the ice cream

HUMMINGBIRD CAKE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW: A dense, layered spice cake featuring a mixture of mashed bananas and canned pineapple covered in cream ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: Hummingbirds might be zippy little delicate creatures flitting from one flower to the next, but hummingbird cake is a thick dessert so chocked full of tropically-inspired ingredients that it definitely lacks any of the buoyancy of its namesake — even if it does share an island connection. The cake’s rise to fame in the United States is also directly linked to Southern Living , where it remains the magazine’s most requested recipe of all time. The story goes that a reader — Mrs. L.H. Wiggins of Greensboro, North Carolina — submitted the recipe, which was published to great fanfare in February 1978. There are records of it appearing before then in small-town papers and county fair bakeoffs, though, so where did the idea originally come from? A sweetly ingenious ad campaign. Hummingbird cake “began as the Dr. Bird Cake [and was] created to bring exposure to Jamaica Airlines and Jamaica as a travel destination in 1969,” writes Anne Bryn in her 2016 book, American Cake . “The airline’s symbol, emblazoned on the jets, was cheese frosting and, optionally, decorated with toasted pecans.

BAKED ALASKA ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT DISPLAY CASE VIEW: A bombe of ice cream atop a piece of sponge cake or pound cake covered in a shell of tufted meringue and baked in the oven until golden. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT THE SWEET STORY: When Sen. William H. Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867, he not only ushered in the arrival of the United States’ 49th state, but also one of the most scientifically fascinating desserts still wowing diners with its interplay of hot-and-cold: baked Alaska.

40 ROUSES NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2021