Lane Cake - Recipe

Recipe

Although the cake has a reputation as being difficult to make, this is no longer true. When the recipe originated, there were no stand mixers, nor electric hand mixers, and even hand-crank eggbeaters were not universally available, which meant a lot of hard labor beating egg whites to frothy soft peaks. The wood-fired ovens of the time had no thermostats, making it difficult to produce a white cake. Modern refrigeration also makes it easier to produce a stiff filling, allowing one to build an orderly multi-layer cake, rather than a sticky, lopsided dessert.

Krystina Castella and Terry Lee Stone include a recipe for Lane Cake in their cookbook Booze Cakes: Confections Spiked With Spirits, Wine, and Beer which uses 2 tablespoons of bourbon in the cake, 1 cup in the filling, and a buttercream frosting made from 1 cup unsalted butter, 1/4 cup half-and-half, 3 cups confectioner's sugar, 1/4 cup bourbon, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.