Election cake with glaze; we’re going with a lemony version this year.
In the early days of the free republic, elections were a celebratory occasion. Voters would travel long distances by horse, wagon or on foot to their polling places and linger to have a festive meal, quite possibly involving strong liquor, after casting their ballot. The election cake came from this tradition. It’s a yeasted baked good halfway between sweet and savory that will keep for several days on your journey back to the farm.
We first featured Election Cake in 2016, when a number of artisanal bakers publicized an historical recipe updated to “Make America CAKE Again”. The base recipe, by Richard Miscovich, is here. We modified it, reducing the amount of preferment and adding an option to use yeast vs sourdough starter, here.
We recently discovered that Marion Burros did an article on election cake back in 1988, which you can read paywall free here. Her recipe was called “Hartford Election Cake” and came from the Fanny Farmer cookbook. An updated version was recently published, with modernized instructions and ingredients, on NYT Cooking. It’s simpler with no preferment, uses brown sugar instead of molasses and gets its tang from lemon, not sourdough. It also has a lot more brandy, which seems appropriate in 2024. (One reader’s comment: I suggest killing the rest of the bottle as the results come in. In this case, straight out the bottle is acceptable.)
We’re going to give it a shot. Stay tuned for the results. Update: mission accomplished, finished version here. It’s denser with more fruit than our original version and we think we like it better.
