A Bakehouse favorite for many, many years, this one’s named after Co-Managing Partner Amy Emberling’s son, Jake—who’s all grown up now with a couple kids of his own, and is a Bakehouse manager in his own right, but who still loves this cake.
Jake’s Cake is soft, fluffy, sweet, and light, or “pillowy,” as the bakers at the Bakehouse like to say—a heavenly angel food cake made with lots of fresh egg whites, cane sugar, a small bit of flour, a touch of cream of tartar, and plenty of vanilla extract and vanilla bean. It’s a summertime favorite because of how marvelously it pairs with the peaches, blueberries, and plums that are all out in the farmers’ markets right now around Ann Arbor.
The lightness of angel food cake led to its name—a cake angels might eat. Although some will say, I’m sure, it must have come down from heaven, culinary historians don’t seem to agree on its origins. Many credit Pennsylvania Dutch bakers. Others argue it was invented in the American South. Mrs.Porter’s New Southern Cookery Book, and Companion for Frugal and EconomicalHousekeepers, published by M. E. Porter in 1871, has a recipe for “Snow-drift Cake,” which was pretty much the same thing. Many historians do agree that the invention of the egg beater in the 1860s increased the cake’s popularity. And if it did come from the South, it’s likely that it was developed and perfected by enslaved women. In The American Pastry Cook from 1894, Jessup Whitehead says that angel food cake came from St. Louis and was shipped from there all over the country, and even overseas to London.
In her 1881 cookbook, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc., Abby Fisher, a former slave who’d moved to San Francisco after Emancipation, calls it “Silver Cake.” I love that. To get the full context, the recipe on the top of the same page is “Gold Cake.” Gold Cake is made with egg yolks, while Silver Cake starts with the egg whites you’d have set aside when you were “going for the gold.” Her recipe uses butter and calls for almond or peach extract. Mrs. Fisher had quite a business selling pickles and sauces in San Francisco and was a well-known local culinary authority. She had been awarded a “diploma” from the state fair in Sacramento a few years before her book came out. It was published by the very progressive Women’s Co-operative Printing Union.
Coming back to our present moment: Jake’s Cake is fantastic with fruit. Just clean your blueberries or wash your peaches, cut them in half, add a small bit of sugar, and let the juices run out for an hour or so. Then ladle the fruit-sugar mix over slices of the cake. If you want to live on the edge, add a little black pepper. They don’t do it in St. Louis, and Mrs. Fisher didn’t mention it, but I think strawberries and pepper make a really fine combination. Either way, eat up and enjoy!
