May 21, 2009
How to Eat a Book Posted by John F. Ross at 05:00 PM EST American Heritage's Editorial Assistant Madeline Kelty (seated in the picture) displayed unheralded skills when she baked a "book" cake to celebrate the publication of my book War on the Run: the Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier on Tuesday, May 19. We all broke from work to gather in our Rockville office conference room to enjoy the chocolate cake, which Ms. Kelty baked from a recipe that her grandmother had discovered during World War II in the Boston Globe. You'll notice that the recipe doesn't use butter, which was being rationed then.
Here's the recipe:The Hundred Dollar Cake 2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsps baking soda
3 tbsps cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup water or cold black coffee Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cocoa and salt. Then add mayo, vanilla and coffee. Beat until the batter is smooth. Do not over beat. Pour into greased baking tins (we always make this a 2 layer 8" round cake-so I know the batter fits nicely into 2 tins). Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool and frost! Ms. Kelty says the most difficult part is creating the black icing, which takes a sage mixing of purple (red and blue) and yellow foodcoloring.
I can report that the cake elicited the best reviews the book has received to date. JFR
| 
