American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes: A Baking Book - Hardcover

"If you like cakes, you're not alone. For 250 years, Americans have been making whatever cake they could with whatever they could find. Anne Byrn's impressive, big-hearted, historical tribute to the genre is a must-have for its dizzying diversity. (You surely haven't heard of Oregon prune cake, Texas sheath cake or Scripture Cake, have you?) You can trace America's gastronomic evolution and geographic expansion from cornmeal and molasses to Hershey bars and pineapples. Both the cakes and their stories are obscure, unexpected, delightful and worth getting to know, one sweet slice of history at a time." -- T. Susan Chang, NPR Kitchen Window "Readers will find decade-defining information, such as the popularity of using baby food fruit purees in baking in the 1970s, and sidebars on prominent baking figures who have made their marks in kitchens across the country, including Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart. These well researched and written pages go far beyond the average baking guide." --Publisher's Weekly "Fascinating, delightfully original, American Cake [is] author Anne Byrn's can't-stop-reading history lesson that's masquerading as a cookbook. One that's bound to be a prizewinner." --Rick Nelson, Star Tribune "Byrn digs deep into America's archives, including everyday recipe boxes, to find the history behind some of the country's most popular cakes." --Addie Broyles, Austin American-Statesman

Cakes in America aren't just about sugar, flour, and frosting. They have a deep, rich history that developed as our country grew. The American people, their home towns, good times, and hard times played a role in creating our country and its new and distinctive cakes. In American Cake, author Anne Byrn takes readers on a journey through American history via cake, beginning with the early colonies and continuing to the present. It is a collection of stories behind well-known cakes such as the Angel Food, Red Velvet, Pineapple Upside-Down, and the Brownie, as well as an introduction to lesser known cakes such as the Burnt Leather, Cold Oven Pound Cake, Tres Leches, and more. The recipes reveal what was happening in our nation's history at the time they were first baked, and have been adapted to the modern kitchen. From the dark, moist gingerbread of New England, to the elegant pound cake of Virginia, to the hard-scrabble apple stack cake of Appalachia, to deep-south Caramel, Hawaiian Chantilly, Alaskan rhubarb, and modern California cakes of orange and olive oil, cake in America is fascinating to the cook, the traveller, the historian, and anyone who loves a good story. And in addition to the stories, American Cake contains more than 100 recipes, colour photographs, and historical photos that help transport the reader back in time.