Abraham Lincoln's " Best Cake I Ever Tasted" - a White

"This is Mary Todd Lincoln's recipe for vanilla almond cake - 150 years ago! --with a classic 7-minute frosting."
 
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Ready In:
1hr 30mins
Ingredients:
14
Yields:
1 cake
Serves:
10
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ingredients

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directions

  • Preheat oven to 375°.
  • Beat the 6 eggs whites until stiffly beaten.
  • Cream together the softened butter, sugar and vanilla.
  • Sift together the cake flour and baking powder.
  • Add flour mixture alternately with milk to the creamed butter and sugar.
  • Stir in the finely chopped almonds.
  • Gently fold in the egg whites.
  • Pour into 2 greased and floured 9-inch cake pans.
  • Bake at 375° for 28-30 minutes.
  • Cool 10 minutes and remove from pans.
  • Frost with White Frosting.
  • WHITE FROSTING: In a saucepan combine 1 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water and 1/4 tsp cream of tartar and dash of salt.
  • Bring mixture to boiling, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
  • Place 2 egg whites in a mixing bowl and very slowly pour the hot sugar syrup over, beating CONSTANTLY with a mixer until stiff peaks form - this takes about 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla and frost cake.

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Reviews

  1. I found this recipe in Recipes of the GOP but with slightly different proportions as listed so I thought I'd list it here as a FYI: 2 cups sugar 1 cup milk 2 tsp. baking powder and there is also listed 1/4 tsp salt (added to the egg whites) *Sherry Ward submitted it and noted that Florence McMurty published this many, many years ago. Mary Todd baked this cake before their marriage and Lincoln declared it "the best in Kentucky"
     
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

56, an Army brat who has lived in 20 different locations [born in germany, went to kindergarten in japan] including new york city, palo alto CA, maine, georgia, chicago, after growing up in small-town kansas... have some fabulous recipes from well-traveled army people... recently started adding just a splash of bourbon or brandy to real maple syrup - and it really gives french toast or pancakes a special, more sophisticated flavor... a friend jokes that bourbon is my new "secret ingredient" that i'll be adding to everything - it's not true but i'm telling you - you should try it! it's really very good [for adults, anyway] sugarpea's apple pancake recipe is a deadringer for Walker Brothers Pancake House in north shore Chicago - i've searchd for this for 34 years - and it's easy as well as To Die For!!! the Dutch Baby pancake is a huge seller there too - with the same gooey comfort-food but elegant batter... also if you search for lettuce wrap - the 2 recipes for PF Chang's come up... this is also SO GOOD, truly a memorable entree... for cookbooks: With a Jug of Wine, More Recipes With a Jug of Wine were written by the San Francisco Chronicle food writer decades ago - and most everything in them is superb - and i learned a lot as a new cook, young wife, from reading through them in the late 1970s... i got a [very French] sense of food as a way of life
 
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