A Lane Cake, also known as a 'Prize Cake' or an 'Alabama Lane Cake' is a bourbon-laden baked cake traditional in the American South. According to food scholar Neil Ravenna, the inventor was Emma Rylander Lane, of Clayton, Alabama, who won first prize with it at the county fair in Columbus, Georgia. She called it Prize Cake when she self-published a cookbook, "Some Good Things To Eat" in 1898. Her published recipe included raisins, pecans, and coconut, and called for the layers to be baked in pie tins lined with ungreased brown paper rather than in cake pans.
The Lane Cake is sometimes confused with the Lady Baltimore cake, which also is a liquor-laden fruit-filled cake, but of different pedigree.
Many variations of the Lane Cake now exist, with as many as thirteen layers of white sponge cake, separated by a filling that typically includes candied fruit soaked in a generous amount of bourbon or sometimes brandy. It may be frosted on the top, on the sides, or both.
Read more about Lane Cake: Recipe, Lane Cakes in American Culture
Famous quotes containing the words lane and/or cake:
“Making the best of things is ... a damn poor way of dealing with them.... My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand [ellipses in source].”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
“We had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)