Little Cakes for Everyday by Candace Floyd
Company’s coming for dinner. Just a small group, three or four friends. Cake would be lovely for dessert, but the thought of all the leftovers is more than you can bear. My grandmother Queenie knew just how to handle this problem—make a little cake, just big enough to polish off at one meal.
Queenie wasn’t much on wasting food. Leftovers from a full-size cake languishing on the counter for days on end would have really set her off. While she had a boatload of children to feed, along with various nieces and nephews who dropped by from their house across the road, she never really knew how many to expect around her table. And later, when her older children had moved away and were starting families of their own, grandchildren scrambled to spend as much time as possible with her and Grandfather. I’d jump in the car with any relative passing through Nashville heading for Riddleton (or “the country” as we called it), a village of less than 500 people about 50 miles east. There, after a morning of playing croquet on Grandfather’s manicured court or “helping” Grandfather at his general store and post office, we’d all gather in the dining room for one of Queenie’s midday dinners with homemade bread and vegetables from the garden. When evening came, supper might not be much, but there was always a little cake to top it off.
In the summer, Queenie might serve One-Egg Dinner Cake, a vanilla cake topped with fresh peach slices and ice cream. In the fall, it was Fresh Apple Cake, which smells like a beautiful, crisp fall day as you pull it from the oven. Around flanks-giving or Christmas, she’d serve Jam Cake, topped with homemade Caramel Icing.
I decided to play with Queenie’s little cake concept a few years ago and started developing recipes of my own for a new cookbook, Little Everyday Cakes (Spring House Press, 2018). Some are scaled-down iterations of cakes we all love, like Spice Cake and Mocha Cake. Others are new creations, like Kahlua Cake and Chocol ate Whiskey Cream Cake. And I tinkered with Queenie’s specialties and included them as well. I developed some recipes to be made as single layers, using an eight-inch round or square pan, while others are layer cakes made in a pair of six-inch round pans. And of course, what’s breakfast without cake? A pretty sorry excuse for a meal, I’d say, and Queenie would agree.
I lost my Queenie when I was just nineteen, but she lives in my heart, in the food I make, in the way I set a table, and in the pages of Little Everyday Cakes. She taught me well: Everyday deserves a little treat.
Candace Floyd is a writer, editor, and baker in Nashville. Her book, Little Everyday Cakes is out now.
Little Everyday Cakes $22.95 Spring House Press, 2018
