Susan Albert - The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

This recipe for sweet potato cake, perhaps descended from the many traditional recipes for sweet potato pudding, was handed down in Myra May’s family for several generations. It is now a favorite at the Darling Diner.

½ cup butter or shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup cooked, peeled, and mashed sweet potatoes

3 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon cloves

½ cup milk

1 cup chopped pecans

1 teaspoon maple or vanilla flavoring

Grease and flour 3 8-inch-round cake pans. Preheat oven to 350°F. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and sweet potatoes. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk to sweet potato mixture. (If batter seems too stiff, add 1 or 2 more tablespoons of milk.) Fold in nuts and flavoring. Spoon batter into cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes. Turn out on racks. Cool and frost with brown sugar icing.

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

¾ cup (packed) dark brown sugar

½ cup whipping cream

¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter

¼ teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Sift confectioners’ sugar into medium bowl. In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, stir brown sugar, whipping cream, and butter until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to boil. Boil 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Pour brown sugar mixture over confectioners’ sugar, whisking. Whisk until smooth and lightened in color, about 1 minute. Cool icing until lukewarm and icing falls in heavy ribbon from spoon, whisking often, about 15 minutes. Stack layers, thinly icing between. Spoon icing thickly over top, allowing it to drip down sides of cake. Serve after icing is firm, at least 1 hour.

Chess pies and pastries are a traditional Southern dessert made with a filling of eggs, sugar, and butter, cooked in (or on) a pastry crust, with some sort of topping-basically, a cheeseless cheesecake. Some recipes include cornmeal, others are made with vinegar, and flavorings (vanilla, lemon juice, chocolate) are sometimes added. Some food historians believe that the word chess is derived from the word cheese . Others believe that it is a dialect form of the word chest , referring to a pie safe or chest, where pies were often kept. And then there is the tale of the cook who, when asked the name of her pie, replied, “Oh, it’s jes’ pie.” Whatever the derivation and whatever its form, chess pastries are a treat.

2 cups flour

½ cup confectioners’ sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup butter or shortening

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons white or yellow cornmeal

½ cup melted butter

4 tablespoons lemon juice

confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350°F. To make the crust, sift together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter, using two knives or a pastry blender. Mix well and pat into a 10- x 15-inch cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.

Beat remaining ingredients and pour over baked crust. Return to oven and bake for another 15 minutes. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar when done. Cut into squares when cool.

Here are a few of the many documents I found useful as background reading for this book in the Darling Dahlias series and a very brief explanation of the reasons for their inclusion.

Daily Life in the United States 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression , by David E. Kyvig. Helpful period background.

Dry Goods , Butler Brothers 1934 general merchandise catalog. What people were wearing and using during the early thirties.

Everyday Fashions of the Thirties as Pictured in Sears Catalogs , edited by Stella Blum. Helpful period descriptions of clothing styles, fabrics, materials.

Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Famous Gangster, by Jonathan Eig. The real story of how the Feds nabbed Al Capone. Detailed, highly evocative of the life and times of gangland Chicago.

Happenings in Old Monroeville, Vol. 2 , by George Thomas Jones. Monroeville local history from the thirties.

Mae West: It Ain’t No Sin , by Simon Louvish. Life as a vaudeville burlesque queen (before becoming a movie star) wasn’t easy, even for Mae West.

Month-by-Month Gardening in Alabama , by Bob Polomski. What Alabama gardeners might be doing at different seasons of the year. The Ponder Heart , by Eudora Welty. Wonderful Southern voice.

To Kill a Mockingbird , by Harper Lee. Harper Lee grew up in Monroeville (the source for her descriptions of Maycomb, where TKM is set). Monroeville is only fifteen miles from Darling.

Ziegfeld 101, Biography Part III, by John Kenrick: http://www.musicals101.com/ziegbio3.htm. Last accessed 6.27.2010. The story of Ziegfeld’s Frolics (yes, the overhead glass walkway is real!).

Historical Documents Relating to Al Capone: http://www.irs.gov/foia/article/0,,id=179352,00.html. Background documents (letters, reports) written by the investigators who dug up the dirt on Al Capone, released and published online by the IRS in 2008.

Newspaper Archives: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/. A subscription website that allows you to search, read, clip, and save newspapers from the United States and around the world.