1900 to 1916 Cake # 11

Japanese Fruit Cake

Even though this cake is called the Japanese Fruit Cake, it originated in the south in the early 1900's. America had a fascination with the Far East at the time and this cake could be made with oranges or the Japanese fruit; the satsuma. Kate Brew Vaughn, from Nashville, traveled around the country between 1912 and 1914 showing cooks how to make this cake, which included spices, nuts, extracts, and dried fruits. Supposedly, she told people a story about receiving the recipe from a Japanese chef because it made the cake more intriguing to her crowds.

Henrietta Dull, a food editor for the Atalanta Journal, was known for her Japanese fruit cake and it was one of the most requested recipes at the time. Mrs Dull was known as the Queen of Southern Cake Baking. The Atlanta Gas Light Company hired her to show customers how to cook with gas. At the time she compared a gas range to a husband- "you couldn't get the best out of either until you learned how to manage them." In 1928, her landmark cookbook Southern Cooking got published.

My Experience

When I looked at the recipe I winced slightly. It has 11 steps and each step is a paragraph long. It also warns you right away that the cake takes 5 hours to complete. Oh and the cake is topped with my NEMESIS: Seven-minute Frosting. Well my filling was a little dry and I baked the layers unevenly and of course the frosting was still an issue as usual!

Despite the flaws and difficulty, the cake had decent reviews. Three neighbors all said, "that was pretty yummy!" So if I had made everything just right they probably would have taken out the "pretty" :)

I personally thought it was pretty yummy too and my favorite thing was the quote above from Henrietta Dull; can't you just picture a strong woman saying that in a southern drawl, haha!