to kill a mockingbird characters miss maudie

The whiskey did serve a purpose, though - it preserved the cake so that a thin slice could be served whenever visitors stopped by. Staunch, churchgoing Lane cake bakers have been known to substitute grape juice or apple cider for the liquor. The Lane cake is actually one of her most popular items at Christmas time, she says. For families without domestic help, Lane cake was reserved only for wintertime celebrations like Christmas when Southern kitchens were cooler.īut Lexi Ginsburg Mota, owner of The Cakerie in Birmingham, has carved out a niche as one of the few bakers in the city that makes the traditional cake. My lopsided yet delicious Lane cake ultimately took two full afternoons to make. It required mixing and baking the cake layers, slowly stirring egg yolks on the stovetop, making the boiled icing and letting all of the components cool completely before assembly. Determined to commune with my ancestors, I once baked it at home. Perhaps the extravagant dessert is just too difficult to make in these busy times. Wesley Vaughn, a city planner for the City of Birmingham and blogger for All Alabama, wrote that he had never heard of Lane cake after Slate named it the state's unofficial dessert in 2014. Many other native Alabamians also say they are unfamiliar with the cake from the state's most famous novel. A local baker from Clayton recently told me she'd never even heard of it.īook News & Features How Harper Lee Went From Wannabe Writer To The Jane Austen Of Alabama During my travels across Alabama, I've always been on the lookout for it but never spotted it in the wild.

But it's now difficult to find this layered sponge cake filled with a rich mixture of egg yolks, butter, sugar, raisins and whiskey anywhere. I was determined to try a slice of Lane cake after learning it was invented in Clayton, Ala., around the same time my ancestors lived there during the late 19th century. Scout gets buzzed from the whiskey in it and comments, 'Miss Maudie Atkinson baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight.' She bakes one for Aunt Alexandra when she moves in with the Finch Family. In it, Scout Finch's neighbor, Maudie Atkinson, is known for her Lane cakes and guards her recipe closely.

To mark this week's release of Harper Lee's long-awaited second novel, Go Set a Watchman, why not try an old-fashioned cake from Alabama, featured prominently in Lee's classic first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. A Lane cake is a layered sponge cake filled with a rich mixture of egg yolks, butter, sugar, raisins and whiskey and topped with boiled icing.

To kill a mockingbird characters miss maudie