Nancie McDermott - Southern Cakes: Sweet and Irresistible Recipes for Everyday Celebrations

Text copyright 2007 by NANCIE McDERMOTT .

Photographs copyright 2007 by BECKY LUIGART-STAYNER .

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
eISBN: 978-1-4521-1282-4

Designed by ALICE CHAU .

Food styling by JAN MOON and ANA KELLY .

Prop styling by FONDA SHAIA .

Photo assistance by BOO GILDER .

CHRONICLE BOOKS LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

For their excellent, insightful, and creative work on behalf of this book, I am grateful beyond measure to Bill LeBlond, my editor, and Amy Treadwell of Chronicle Books.

For their extraordinary and thoughtful efforts on my behalf, I am thankful to Lisa Ekus, my literary agent, and Jane Falla of Lisa Ekus Public Relations.

For their generosity in sharing recipes, baking knowledge, and wisdom, I offer my deepest gratitude to Cornelia Walker Bailey, Jackie Bays, Waddad Habeeb Buttross, Edna Faust, Marcie Cohen Ferris, Carmen Flowers, Trish Good, Libbie Hall, Edna Hall Gambling, Frances Fleming Hunter, Virginia Dockery McDermott, Verna Suitt McDermott, James McNair, Robert Mullis, Lily Nichols, Suzanne OHara, Sybil Pressly, Marilyn Meacham Price, George Pyne, Milo Pyne, Sallie Ann Robinson, Amy Rogers, Ann Romines, Kathy Starr, John C. Whitener, Helen Hudson Whiting, and Blanche Williams.

For their energy, enthusiasm, and humor, I thank my wonderful and cherished friends, Harvey Bolgla, Phillis Carey, Deb Gooch, Karen Johnson, Rob Lehmann, Dean Nichols, Jill OConnor, and Bob and Vada Satterfield.

For their love, patience, wisdom, and encouragement, I thank my parents; my sisters, Linda Lloyd McDermott and Susanne McDermott Settle; and my wonderful family, Will, Camellia, and Isabelle Lee.

To my wonderful daughters,
CAMELLIA DAO-LING McDERMOTT LEE and
ISABELLE DAO-AHN McDERMOTT LEE ,
who make my life a piece of cake:
delicious, rich, and sweet.

Writing this book has been an extraordinary journey. Born and raised in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, I grew up nurtured, body and soul, by wonderful Southern home cooking. I come from a family of home cooks, for whom baking was neither a remarkable skill nor a hobby, but rather, a task of home life. It was messier than laundry, more creative than ironing, less fun than gardening for my mother, and satisfying to all of us, being a family captivated by food.

My mother was raised on a dairy farm by a mother who cooked a hot breakfast well before dawn every day of the year, fed the entire farm crew a huge, hearty lunch at noon, and regularly put on a fine Sunday dinner for a dozen people. And my grandmother didnt miss church or serve anything cold except milk.

My mother had a gifted teacher in my grandmother, right there in the kitchen. But by the time she was cooking for a family in a kitchen of her own, the world had spun, as it always does, to a new configuration. Instead of cooking for a crew of family members and employees, she was putting three square meals together for a fifties-era family. Unlike her mother, who learned to cook the food she had grown up eating from the women in her family, my mother paid attention to books and magazines full of recipes and kitchen wisdom.

I felt quite at home in my grandparents farmhouse, just as I did in my familys brick house with carport, breakfast nook, swing set, and pine-paneled den. In my everyday life, I enjoyed the television set, coloring books, peanut butter sandwiches, and meatloaf at home, just as I loved the fishing pond, rope swing, hayloft, and chicken coop on my grandparents farm. Since we lived only 30 miles away, my sisters and I lingered and lounged around the farm on weekends and during the summer, never far from the kitchen and ever eager to see what good things the huge kitchen table might hold at the next meal. Watching, and eventually helping, my grandmother bake was one of my greatest treats.

She made biscuits in a shallow wooden dough tray, transforming flour, lard, and buttermilk into perfect little pillows of hot bread, exquisite with butter and divine with honey or preserves from the pantry. She mixed cakes in a deep, wide, lightweight, red-rimmed white-enamel bowl, which doubled as the dishpan. One piece of kitchen equipment that did two jobs saved time and money, two resources my grandmother used with care.

My grandmother flung flour about with abandon, not afraid to make a mess since it would be simple to clean up once the job was done right. Rich milk from their dairy went in right from the bottle, home-churned butter from the crock, fresh eggs from a basket on the counter, sugar scooped from a canisterall landed in the big bowl without measuring implements of any kind other than eyes and practiced hands. Now I know thats how professional restaurant chefs do much of their work, with confidence born of knowledge and practice, but at the time I didnt think of her as a master cook and baker feeding a crowd. Neither did she. She loved to bake, especially cakes. From her I learned the pleasure of making a little magic happen by transforming the simplest of ingredients into beautiful, inviting cakes, ready to be savored with family and friends.

I started baking at home when I was nine or ten. I still remember the thrill of making something and bringing it out to my family, who, bless them, always crowed with joy and surprise that little me could make such a magnificent cake or pie or pan of brownies or gingerbread. I never thought of cakes as special or particularly Southern, just as something I loved to make and eat.

My professional life in the kitchen began years later, when I started teaching and writing about the food of Thailand, where I had spent three years as a Peace Corps volunteer. Baking and Southern cooking remained part of my life, but not in a conscious way. If we had company, I might make green chicken curry with rice, or Southern fried chicken with corn on the cob. I learned to make spring rolls and dumplings and spicy Thai salads, but I didnt try to learn new Southern dishes. I just kept on doing what I knew how to do.

Since I have had my own children, now ten and fourteen years old, Ive been returning to the Southern foods of my childhood more often, partly to share my history with them, and partly because having a family at home means cooking every day, and usually more than once. It also means that lots of cakes need baking, since we have four birthdays a year, plus those of grandparents, sisters, and friends. Not to mention school festivals, covered dish suppers, family reunions, and church dinners, all of which keep me refilling the sugar and flour canisters and wearing out a mixer now and then.

Not only did baking come back to the forefront of my life; I also moved back to where my earliest baking, cooking, and eating took place. Six years ago, we moved from Southern California, where our daughters were born, back to North Carolina, settling down about an hour away from the kitchens of my childhood.