'Election Cake' Makes a Modern Day Resurgence

OCTOBER 17, 2016 / WRITTEN BY KEIA MASTRIANNI

It’s safe to say that sweetness is not part of the modern day election rhetoric. As this season veers off into fetid bitterness as tasty as a rusty nail, a few bakers are uniting on a platform more pleasing: for life, liberty, and election cake for all.

The official slogan, says Susannah Gebhart, baker and owner at Old World 

Levain (OWL) Bakery in Asheville, North Carolina, is “Make America Cake 

Again,” packaged neatly into a social media-friendly hashtag. Gebhart, along 

with Maia Surdam, her business partner, fellow baker, and historian, are joining in sweet solidarity with bakers nationwide to pour some sugar on this election season. With cake.

The baking duo took their inspiration from muster cake–a dense, naturally

leavened, boozy fruit and spice cake–baked by colonial women and given to the droves of men who were summoned for military training, or “mustered,” by order of British troops.

After the Revolution, the women brought the cake to early voting sites to help “muster” votes, and it became known as election cake. Back in those days, when elite white men were the only ones who could rock the vote, women claimed their place in political culture with a monstrous cake for the masses. And while it’s hard to believe now, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Election Day was a holiday just as important as Christmas, and food was central to it. Bonfires, barbecues, whiskey, and cake helped to amplify the revelry and encourage voting. Whiskey, cake, and voting, an American tradition we can get behind.

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The first recorded election cake recipe.

The first recorded recipe for election cake, written in 1796 by Amelia Simmons in her second edition book American Cookery, called for 30 quarts of flour, ten pounds of butter, 14 pounds of sugar, and heaps of brandy, raisins, and spices.

John Grinspan, in his book The Virgin Vote, describes the democratic process as a rite of passage in America for young men, building a sense of identity, and the idea that one was contributing to a common good. But by the twentieth century, enthusiasm waned as politics became more bureaucratic, and election cake fell out of favor.

The idea for #MakeAmericaCakeAgain (bakeries are participating in a rolling basis until Election Day, more info here) originated at a baking summit in June, during a nerdy discussion on muster cake between Gebhart and a few fellow bakers including William Werner of San Francisco’s Craftsman + Wolves. Over the bonding powers of whiskey, the group decided to make it a movement, with Gebhart at its helm.

“What intrigued me was the history, to grab this snippet of forgotten time to 

encourage the vote,” says Werner.

For this campaign, Richard Miscovich, author of the book From the Wood-Fired Oven and part of original election cake brain trust (he coined #MakeAmericaCakeAgain), devised a base recipe by sifting through historical records, diaries, and cookery books at the Johnson and Wales 

Culinary Museum in Providence, Rhode Island.

“It’ll be fun seeing how different people interpret this recipe,” he says, citing 

regional nuances.

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OWL Bakery’s election cake. Photo courtesy Owl Bakery

OWL Bakery’s version is a baby bundt made with Gebhart’s well-loved sourdough starter, locally milled whole wheat pastry flour, sorghum, dried apples, cherries, and raisins soaked in bourbon, and warming spices like coriander, nutmeg, white pepper, cinnamon, and others. Sarah Owens, owner of BK17 Bakery and author of Sourdough: Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories and More, whipped up a rye-based election cake with brandy-soaked dried golden figs, orange zest, spices, and orange glaze. Werner opted for an earthy rye and buckwheat base, with bourbon-bolstered stone fruits, and a toothsome mix of poppy seeds, flax seeds, and cocoa nibs. Miscovich chose an egalitarian version filled with currants and spices, minus the booze, so that everyone can partake.

Gebhart and Surdam want to reinvigorate the lost levity of the democratic process, and do some good. A portion of all election cake sales will go to the League of Women Voters in honor of the women who didn’t have access to formal channels of voting in the early days of American democracy.

And in this political season, fraught with more sideshow displays than Barnum and Bailey, it’s time for a new decision–one slice of cake? Or two?

To join the campaign, visit OWL Bakery’s website for baking formulas and more information. And don’t forget to #MakeAmericaCakeAgain

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