Black Cake

Laurie Colwin, whom I have mentioned here recently, is one of the friendliest possible food writers. She understands that people want to eat well quickly, or cheaply, or both, and she understands that things go wrong and that extremely ornate food is rather more liable to go wrong than the simple kind. She has multiple essays devoted to the worst things she ever perpetrated in a kitchen, and an essay on the worst meals she has ever been served which makes me laugh every time I so much as think about it.*

It is therefore probably ironic that the most time-consuming cake I have ever made comes straight out of one of her essays. It is not her recipe; it comes from her daughter's nanny, who came from St. Vincent. The nanny brought in a slice of her homemade Black Cake at a holiday, and Colwin, after rhapsodizing about the taste of the cake for approximately fifteen hundred well-chosen words, got the recipe written down, stared at it glumly, and decided it was just a tad intimidating. Which it is.

The thing is, though, she chose her words very well. I have had many fruitcakes in my life, some terrible, some good, and a couple (from Jamaica, with rum in) verging on the sublime, but two things became obvious to me the first time I read Colwin's essay on Black Cake: 1) I had never in my life eaten anything which could even be considered a relation of Black Cake, not ever; and 2) if I wanted to taste this specific cake, I was going to have to gather my powers and bake it myself, as, even though I have been to St. Vincent and was looking, I did not happen across any for sale.

I read the essay for the first time somewhere between five and ten years ago. This summer, I finally baked a Black Cake, for my birthday, and this is how I did it.

( July, or The Fruit )

( Late August, or Baking. )

( The End of August, or Icing and Serving )

And that is Black Cake.


* In brief, Colwin's hostess says that dinner will be a variation on starry-gazey pie, a medieval dish named after the eels whose unskinned heads can be seen poking up out of the top crust. "In what way," Colwin asks cautiously, "does it vary?" "Well", says the hostess, "I couldn't find eels at the marketplace this morning. So I bought squid."

Colwin does not say anything else about this dinner. No more needs to be, or could be, said.

** Recipe quotations taken from Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin, Vintage Books, 2010, pp. 181-3.

Black Cake

Laurie Colwin, whom I have mentioned here recently, is one of the friendliest possible food writers. She understands that people want to eat well quickly, or cheaply, or both, and she understands that things go wrong and that extremely ornate food is rather more liable to go wrong than the simple kind. She has multiple essays devoted to the worst things she ever perpetrated in a kitchen, and an essay on the worst meals she has ever been served which makes me laugh every time I so much as think about it.*

It is therefore probably ironic that the most time-consuming cake I have ever made comes straight out of one of her essays. It is not her recipe; it comes from her daughter's nanny, who came from St. Vincent. The nanny brought in a slice of her homemade Black Cake at a holiday, and Colwin, after rhapsodizing about the taste of the cake for approximately fifteen hundred well-chosen words, got the recipe written down, stared at it glumly, and decided it was just a tad intimidating. Which it is.

The thing is, though, she chose her words very well. I have had many fruitcakes in my life, some terrible, some good, and a couple (from Jamaica, with rum in) verging on the sublime, but two things became obvious to me the first time I read Colwin's essay on Black Cake: 1) I had never in my life eaten anything which could even be considered a relation of Black Cake, not ever; and 2) if I wanted to taste this specific cake, I was going to have to gather my powers and bake it myself, as, even though I have been to St. Vincent and was looking, I did not happen across any for sale.

I read the essay for the first time somewhere between five and ten years ago. This summer, I finally baked a Black Cake, for my birthday, and this is how I did it.

( July, or The Fruit )

( Late August, or Baking. )

( The End of August, or Icing and Serving )

And that is Black Cake.


* In brief, Colwin's hostess says that dinner will be a variation on starry-gazey pie, a medieval dish named after the eels whose unskinned heads can be seen poking up out of the top crust. "In what way," Colwin asks cautiously, "does it vary?" "Well", says the hostess, "I couldn't find eels at the marketplace this morning. So I bought squid."

Colwin does not say anything else about this dinner. No more needs to be, or could be, said.

** Recipe quotations taken from Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin, Vintage Books, 2010, pp. 181-3.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.