1900 to 1916 Cake #5

The Lane Cake

The Lane Cake's biggest claim to fame is an honorable mention in the literary classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. The following is an excerpt from the American Cake book:

When a recipe like the Lane Cake is written about in literature, you take notice. This isn't your average 1-2-3-4 Cake. It is a white layer cake filled with a distinctive boozy bourbon custard and crammed full of raisins, chopped pecans, and cherries. So to write about it, the author must have experienced it in her lifetime. Harper lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, lived just 3 hours away from Clayton, Alabama, the home of the Lane Cake, when she wrote the famous novel published in 1960. In the book, the Finches' neighbor Maudie Atkinson gets competitive about baking her Lane Cake and accuses another Maycomb baker of wanting to steal her bourbon loaded recipe. As Scout said of the generous amount of bourbon in the cake, "Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane Cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight."

My experience:

The Lane Cake has so many textures and flavors in it from crunchy pecans and juicy cherries to a vanilla cake and bourbon custard. It is a cake for all of your senses. I think the verdict on this one is that if you like bourbon then you will probably like the cake, if not then it might not be for you. A couple of my cake testers said it was not their favorite but we did have one fan. The following review is from a pregnant neighbor of mine:

" My take on the bourbon one is that I love it! I think my babies going to be a little bit of a drinker!"

I very much enjoyed that response:)

The cake itself was not too difficult to make, but as you can see in the pictures, I did not let my custard thicken up enough, it got a little sloppy, but looked kind of cool.