---
title: 'Election Cake with Q&A'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=1hHYk2evUZQ'
video_id: '1hHYk2evUZQ'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 3631
---

# Election Cake with Q&A

> Source: [Election Cake with Q&A](https://youtube.com/watch?v=1hHYk2evUZQ)

## Summary

In this live stream, Max Miller makes a modernized election cake based on Fannie Farmer's 1896 Boston Cooking School Cookbook, while exploring the history of election day cake in colonial New England. The cake, originally a yeasted sourdough that took days to prepare, is simplified with baking powder and buttermilk, and features spices like cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, plus dried figs and raisins. The video also covers the evolution of election day from a Puritan muster day to a drunken festival, and the tradition of baking large community cakes in Hartford, Connecticut.

### Key Points

- **Modernized Recipe Base** [01:45] — Max bases the election cake on Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook, using a modernized version with baking powder and baking soda instead of the original sourdough yeast.
- **Key Spices** [04:55] — The cake uses 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/4 tsp mace, and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Cloves should not be increased as they are already strong.
- **Origins of Election Day** [14:40] — Election day cake originated from Puritan muster day (training day) and election day traditions in New England, where communities would gather for sermons, voting, and festivities.
- **First Recorded Mention** [24:53] — The first recorded mention of election cake is from 1771 in Connecticut General Assembly notes, reimbursing Ezekiel Williams for ingredients and Miss Leslie for making a large cake.
- **Amelia Simmons' 1796 Recipe** [25:50] — The second edition of American Cookery (1796) includes a massive recipe: 30 quarts flour, 10 lbs butter, 14 lbs sugar, 12 lbs raisins, 3 dozen eggs, wine, brandy, and spices, requiring a quart of yeast and overnight rising.
- **Black Governors in Connecticut** [30:58] — From 1755 until the Civil War, Connecticut had separate white and black elections with a black governor, a largely ceremonial but historically significant practice.
- **George Washington's Election Loss** [33:55] — In 1755, George Washington lost his first election for Virginia's House of Burgesses with only 40 votes, but won in 1758 after plying voters with large amounts of alcohol.

## Transcript

hello tastorians happy sunday
can you all hear me can you all see me
it's from harry potter is it working
we got you comments
wrong all right cool uh well
today we're making election cake
in honor of our presidential election
coming up on tuesday
um hope everyone had a wonderful
halloween
we did we didn't do anything except
watch some scary movies which i don't
really like
and ate pizza which i do like and
handed out zero candy zip we didn't get
any trick-or-treaters did anyone get any
trick-or-treaters
i don't know we never get any
trick-or-treaters though so i'm not
blaming it on anything other than
that we live in a condo
cool so jose is going to be monitoring
the comments today
uh i implore you to make his job
a little bit easier by keeping
everything
history and food based and talking about
the wonderful elections of
1755 and 1826
that's all i'm going to say about that
for today make his life easy
i beg you um all right
so we're going to go into the history
of election cake but first let's get it
started because this does take a little
bit of time to make
that said we are doing a modern a
modernized
version because and we'll get into it
but the original cake would take
days to make um rather than an hour and
since this is a live stream
that's not really doable but let's get
to it all right so
i am basing this off of fannie farmer's
the boston cooking school cookbook from
1896.
which i have right here
so what we'll need is one half cup of
butter or one stick for us americans you
want that softened really everything
should be at about room temperature
it's not going to kill you if it's not
but it does help
so uh there is that and then two
eggs which i actually have been keeping
in here just to
leave at room temperature uh two eggs
pre-cracked
don't microwave your eggs
one cup or 200 grams of brown sugar
definitely stick to brown sugar i'm
using dark brown sugar either that or
light brown sugar will work
don't use regular sugar for this it'll
it'll come out too dry you don't want
that
two-thirds cup raisins
and eight finely chopped
dried figs if you have fresh figs you
can use those
um they're they're going to be fine
they're a little bit more moist because
they're not
dried but that it actually works i i
it'll work either way but you want them
finely chopped if you're using huge
raisins as well
you actually want to chop those too you
don't want anything too too big but just
a regular old like
sun-made raisin that's fine you don't
need to chop them
then we need one and two-thirds cup or
210 grams of
flour all-purpose flour is fine you can
use
pastry flour for this as well whole
wheat
whole wheat pastry flour is actually
really great for this um
but you can also use just plain
all-purpose flour
and then our raising agents and this is
this is where things
are going to differ from from the
original recipes and i'll talk about
that
we're going to use one uh we'll go with
the
one-half teaspoon of baking powder oh
sorry one teaspoon of baking powder
and one half teaspoon of baking soda do
you like my new bowls
it's got these um hey max can you
substitute
the brown sugar for white sugar and
molasses you
can substitute the brown sugar brown
sugar for white sugar and molasses
it kind of throws off the the uh the
measurements exactly so
you want to cut back a little bit on on
maybe another liquid
that you're going to be using um just
don't
use two you don't need too much molasses
if you add probably
i'd say two tablespoons of molasses in
there
that's actually fine now you don't have
to change anything else just
add a couple tablespoons of molasses
it'll be fine
can everyone hear jose when he talks i
think that we've
figured out i'm using a better camera
i'm using a better microphone than our
previous live streams so
hopefully that's showing so let me know
if you cannot hear him
because then i'll just repeat everything
that he says and then
a teaspoon of salt regular old
salt and then spices
which is really what this cake is all
about we're doing
a calls for one teaspoon of cinnamon
ground up
uh i pre-ground everything a quarter
teaspoon of cloves
do not use more than a quarter teaspoon
if you want to add more of any spices
great don't add any more cloves they're
already
pretty strong in the cake um one quarter
teaspoon of mace
that's actually the one that i would add
a little bit more if i could and then
as john townsend would always double
this we're doing one quarter teaspoon of
nutmeg
uh grated nutmeg he'd probably use a
half teaspoon or more
um and that would be okay he loves his
nutmeg
and then buttermilk so
one half cup or 118 milliliters of
buttermilk
so the buttermilk is if if anyone makes
like soda bread like irish soda bread
the way that it usually gets its
leavening is from buttermilk and
baking soda which is what we have and
that is in the original recipe
the acid and the baking soda they
you know create a leavening but the
original recipe and most of the early
recipes for this were made
before there were a lot of leaveners
quality leaveners at least and so it was
a sour dough
yeasted cake i've tried them
they're people today they're not they're
not the most popular thing one because
they're a lot of work but two
they tend to not have the that cake-like
or
or even bread like quality that we want
um
one of these days i'm i should do it
maybe in four years uh i'll do another
i'll do amelia simmons election cake and
we'll get into that um
but it takes days days to make so
that is why i have added the one
teaspoon
of baking powder seems like a lot but it
works
and then we'll get into the whiskey
sauce later
uh you can also do a brandy sauce just
swap out the whiskey for the brandy just
real quick you have a thousand people
watching along a thousand and you have
uh quite a few people sending your love
starting with juan carlo who is our
local neighbor
ah fluffy monkey thank you fluffy monkey
thank you juan carlo
senor mr giggles thank you senor mr
giggles
and the senor oh senor and mr giggles
and then felix asked for valentine's day
if you could make a capizzoli
i'm gonna have to look that one up for
valentine's day um yeah i haven't
actually started to plan out i've pretty
much got the rest of the year planned
uh what i'm going to be doing but
starting january 1st
i'm taking suggestions so if you got
suggestions
don't leave them in the in the feed
because i will probably never
get to see it but send me an email or
shoot me a instagram message or or
twitter message
that's going to be the best way to do it
taking suggestions
all right so let's do this
so what we first need to do is mix
together our
dry ingredients and it's super easy this
cake is actually super easy to make
the way that i'm doing it so you take
the flour
dump that in there oh if you haven't
turned on your oven
turn on your oven i kind of like these i
love the look of my wooden bowls but
they um they tend to like hold
they're hard to get some of the
ingredients out so i kind of like these
nice smooth ones they're terracot on the
outside
and then all of your spices we've got
our nutmeg i'm going backwards here
get all of you out we've got our mace
uh so how many i'm curious how many
people are actually making this
few days and then whisk all of these
together so the
the first recipe that we have for
something called election cake
actually comes from amelia simmons
american cookery which is often
satirical writers coming out of yale
university
who were writing satire
at first the government in connecticut
but later on they were
a connecticut form of government to be
adopted
uh as part of the u.s constitution and
making up their laws
as as a colony um and we're going to get
into
going way way back uh um
why they were this cake is really
associated with hartford
that will actually start not with
hartford but with
massachusetts um then we need a big bowl
you can do this by hand i don't suggest
it
uh but i'm going to use my stand mixer
because i got it
and mix basically everything else
together but we have to do it in a
certain order so you want to do is
add your sugar powdered sugar
it's french for some reason today and
your butter and really
if i had been prepared i would have
sliced this butter up you want at room
temperature but even if you
don't put the whole stick in there i'd
slice it into maybe you know
like tablespoons so between four
and eight little
issues lagging issues
is it lagging is my voice not matched
with the
the video is that what it is
i think it's just freezing
a ramp is there any way to
lower the ability
i don't know what that means lower the
ability
what if it's our internet we have
terrible internet
for some reason all of like los angeles
county
now has fiber pretty much except for
burbank
no fiber for us we get the worst
internet
i'm going to keep going on and hopefully
the lagging isn't too too bad so we want
to cream this
together so butter and sugar
just cream it together until it's nice
and smooth
probably not probably can pick this up
so i'll try not to
talk about anything too important while
this is going on
i did want to um mention that a bunch of
people have asked me to make merchandise
um and i've been putting it off it's you
know
something i haven't done but i finally
got some up
um it's you can see it actually below
the video but i'm kind of curious what
people want
um there's a really i think it's really
cool that you can get
aprons and shirts and stuff with the
garum bottle on it
and with that painting that is at the
end of my opening which is called de
fille
with the rotund gentleman
who keeps eating um so
let me know you know what else you you'd
like to see because
because i'm curious how are the lagging
issues uh it's
it's kind of a little better uh asians
and uh jordy and her husband love your
show
and has anyone told you that you look
like rich for community a lot of people
have told me that i look like rich from
community i
i didn't know who that was until i
started getting comments and we actually
started watching it
because everyone was like you look like
rich from community
um and i don't mind that because he's a
good looking fella
all right so once the butter and sugar
is beat in
then just add your eggs but really it's
always a good plan
to i'm going to use a buttered knife to
break them up give them a little whisk
just kind of mix them before they go
in it's not obligatory but
any pastry chef would would say do this
i'm not a pastry chef but i watch a lot
of pastry chef
do things and i learn from them i try to
understand
so add your eggs and then
mix
you want to mix until fairly well
incorporated not very difficult
but there it is um
and then add in your buttermilk when you
add this
in it might look curdled
uh especially if your buttermilk is cold
it might look curdled and that's okay
it does not matter um
it's fine it will not look curdled later
on
i promise
we mix that in until well incorporated
and then we mix in our fruits
uh i got my figs
and a little piece left and my raisins
so um
one one thing about election day cake is
you know we're making this for our
presidential election but when
election day cake started we didn't have
a president
so it was actually not even done in uh
november
so first we have to figure out what is
election day
when it comes to election day cake
and for that we have to go back to two
traditions
of election day and muster day or
training day
so the holiday and it was a holiday
though they wouldn't have called it a
holiday because they were
completely anti-holiday the puritans in
when they came to new england brought
this tradition of
muster day which is used to happen in
england when
in a small town all of the local
militiamen would come together
uh once or twice a year and and train so
it was also training day not the
denzel washington movie but maybe it
comes from the same place i don't know
um and and so they brought that
tradition over because the puritans did
not have
easter or new year's or birthdays or
christmas
or any lovely holidays
they were all um is this mustard
day no mustard so like when a mustard
day
is a totally different holiday uh now
muster day
m-u-s-t-e-r so that would be like
when when a militia musters
or or a regiment musters it means they
they all come together and get ready and
present
um and it can actually mean different
things at different times in history
specifically with
regarding different military units and
everything but
in this case it would mean that they
came together
presented themselves and readied
themselves to train
uh and surely the training was more than
a day
i don't know maybe not um because
i imagine that it's hard to fire learn
how to fire a
musket which is what they would have
been fighting with at the time
anyway we're going to do this next part
by hand so as you can see kind of looks
looks kind of gross i don't know if you
can see that but it's it's it's kind of
muddled but as soon as we take our dry
ingredients and put them in
the mottling goes away and it'll look
nice and smooth
but before we do that we have to prepare
our pan
the best thing to do to prepare a
bread pan you can use a cake pan or
bread loaf these would have been served
in
loaves like this you can also double the
recipe and use like a bundt cake
they wouldn't have done that but it's
much prettier but i'm going to use
a standard bread loaf pan um and i'm
going to cheat and use this uh
baking with flour pam stuff but the best
thing to do is actually
put butter on the inside think of butter
then
dump out the flour and then freeze it
for about 15 minutes
that's the best thing to get stuff to
not stick but
i didn't remember to do that so i'm
using i'm cheating
there you go anyway muster day where was
i
so when they would when they would get
so they brought the
the tradition of mustard a to the new
world uh to new
new england and that was their
equivalent of a holiday
muster day and election day because
they would elect certain certain members
of their their groups in the different
you know that you had boston and
braintree and all of these
little areas were very very separated
and they would elect
different people um once a year to kind
of
represent them and we can actually see
this
in the very closing scene
of the scarlet letter if you've ever
read the scarlet letter
um the the last scene
is it's election day and
what was his name dimsdale who was
spoiler alert uh he was the one who
had the illegitimate child with hester
prynne who had the scarlet letter the a
well he was also the minister so he was
giving what was known as
the election day sermon or the election
sermon
and they were a big deal they were long
and kind of rambling because
while obviously that's a fake one
because it's you know
a book uh we have
election day so i'm adding the dry
ingredients you can do this in one or
two it's probably better to do it in two
but i just didn't one
and then fold it in you don't want to
work it very
hard that's why you want to do this part
by hand uh
rather than with a with a machine um so
anyway we
have one of these long-winded sermons we
actually have a bunch of them
from 17 uh sorry
1676 an election day sermon
by increase mather who was the father of
cotton mather who was
uh much more well-known but increased
mather gave one of these he was
in boston on election day and
just the title of this sermon was
big breath an earnest exhortation to the
inhabitants of new england to hearken to
the voice of god
in his late and present dispensations as
ever they desire to escape
another judgment seven times greater
than anything which has
which as yet hath been that's the title
the sermon goes on for quite some time
it was actually published
in a in a local uh publication at the
time it's like
30 pages it's long um questions for you
two questions edward asks uh do you need
to sift
the flower you can always zip the flour
it's good to sift the flour
you don't need to with this if you're
making
something really delicate like pastry or
cookies
i would always sift the flour with
breads
and even cakes like this you don't need
to
if you're making something like like a
chiffon cake
you definitely want to sift it um
but with this one it's just not going to
you're not going to notice a difference
um so now that we have that
and the second question was would you
compare this to a fruitcake
i would not compare it to a fruitcake
it's not going to be as dense i would
actually compare this
the way that we are making it closer to
like
banana bread should have more that
consistency
not as dense there isn't nearly as much
fruit as a fruitcake first of all
the original recipes that were leavened
with sourdough
they're going to be a lot more dense
again still not like a fruit cake
but more like bread um more like a fruit
bread a little bit like the soul cakes
that if you if you watch the episode on
soul cakes that came out on friday
more of that texture a little bit
chewier less less cake-like so it's
election cake but the term cake then
we would not we would be very
disappointed in
if you've ever had leavened cakes that
way
they just aren't the same as our modern
lemoners so i'm going to put this
i'm going to spoon this in here you're
probably not going to be able to see it
because
i don't have three hands but that's what
we're going to do
anyway so now we have election day
uh that was going to be in may that's
when they tended to
to hold it was election day was always
in may and that was the case
with all of the colonies uh in new
england
that had election day ceremonies
they started to we have been having
cakes at these but the puritans
not huge on the cakes not huge on the
drinking
but as you know as less
as the colonies changed from being all
puritan to a little bit more mixed as
more english settlers came over they
brought the idea of
adding cake and they really brought the
idea of adding booze
and election day ended up becoming
a drunken festival
of sorts they would still have the
sermon they would still have the
election they would still count the
votes
but then afterward they would usually
have a big ball
big party everybody would get drunk um
there are actually uh
there are stories that they would the
people would get so drunk that by the
time
the governor was elected people were
just passing out
uh kind of a mess um
and we'll get into that more as well all
right so i'm smoothing it out
i don't wanna it is smooth it's not so
easy now i have it on my finger as well
um there it is there's our election cake
batter
because it is more of a batter than
anything else and then we just
pop it in the oven
for about 50 minutes uh
you really want to you know everybody's
oven is different
it's going to be about 45 to 55 minutes
i would start checking it about 45
um because
you want it you want it you don't want
it to dry out but you want it to be done
in the center so take a
a wooden skewer or a knife and stick it
in the center at about 45 minutes
and if it pulls out clean and it's done
if it does not pull out clean then it is
not done keep it baking
can you set i'll set it i will settle
alarm for 55 minutes
the thing is we're not going to be here
for 55 minutes i promise uh sorry 45
minutes
i promise i actually movie magic
i baked one earlier so i'm going to be
icing that one
so you don't have to sit here and wait
for 45 minutes
anyway um let's get back to elections
so these election cakes started
really getting popular in hartford and
they ended up becoming
very associated with heart etiquette
uh the first actual mention that we have
of an election day cake doesn't come
until 1771
we know that they were doing this long
before that but in 1771
from the connecticut uh general
assembly's notes
they were repaying an ezekiel williams
two pounds
[ __ ] seven shillings and nine pence for
the raisins clove
mace sugar etc for the cake and they
were paying another two pounds five
shillings to miss leslie
for making it if you know anything about
money in the 18th century
that is a lot of money it's hard to
uh to make an exact you know
currency translation it's the word i'm
looking for
i don't know it was between
twelve hundred and eighteen hundred
dollars for this cake
because it was a huge cake so i'm going
to read you
one of the the first recipe that we have
from 1796 from american cookery the
second
edition so the first edition did not
have this most people
that's what you're going to usually find
if you buy this book you're going to
have the first edition this cake will
not be in there but in the second
edition
she calls for 30 quarts flour 10 pounds
butter
14 pounds of sugar 12 pounds of raisins
three dozen eggs one pint of wine
one quart of brandy four ounces of
cinnamon four ounces fine colander seed
or coriander
three ounces of allspice then wet the
flour
and mix the consistency of bread
overnight add a quart of yeast
so this is why it takes days because
then you also have to have the yeast a
quart of yeast which is the sour dough
the next morning
then work in the butter and sugar for
half an hour
which will render the cake much lighter
and whiter when it has risen
work ever in every other ingredient
except the plums
back then plums simply meant dried
fruits hence
uh the raisins which work
uh in when going into the oven so that
is a
big cake and it actually probably would
have been made into 12
smaller cakes because these cakes
would were meant to feed an entire
community
it wasn't you didn't have this cake just
for your house
all of the women of a community would
come together and bake these cakes
and give them out on election day
because
the election day had people coming in
from all other
all the other villages and they would
come into one
one town and have to stay the night
sometimes a couple nights
and so this cake was kind of a way to to
welcome everyone and
uh you know it was part of the
festivities they actually had
other baked goods from the time period
from the late 1700s
uh that had very patriotic names um
like franklin gingerbread democratic t
tea cakes small d
independence cake they were you know it
was it was a brand new democracy um
brand new country so they were very very
patriotic and excited about that which
i think we should i want to make that
franklin gingerbread that's that's
something i want to make
um there is a really cool so
there's a historian that um i actually
have a link to his book
called creating connecticut down in the
description of this video
if you want to learn more about
connecticut history you should get it
there's also a lot in there about
election cake he's fantastic
uh william walter woodward is his name
and he found in a hartford current
article from 1867 titled
hartford ladies reminiscences uh a
description of what election day
used to be like now she's so this is in
the 1860s she's talking about elections
back in
like the 1820s um and she says
and i'm shortening this it's very very
long it's a whole article
so i'm shortening this and it's still
going to be take me a minute to read
will someone who remembers it all tell
about election in
old times in hartford how every house
was in
how every house was in apple pie order
summer arrangements all completed i love
that
apple pie order and everything was you
know put put in its place
there was a grand ball in the evening
then and in those times two
there was an election sermon preached at
the meeting house
oh the quantities of cake a batch of
election cake was
12 loaves but there but there had to be
many more than one batch and plenty of
sponge cake with it
the best clothes go on as soon as
possible after breakfast
white frock to be pure new bonnet pink
ash
and the red shoes i left my bonnet in
pink pink sash upstairs
shame on me lots of money to spend
children could have a scent any time
they asked for it in election day
and cake a big piece not not a slice
every time they would run into the house
nobody dared refuse them it stands ready
all day for wagons full of country
friends and acquaintances
come to see the parade all must eat loaf
cake and tell what luck they had with
theirs
if you go to the neighbors you must eat
a piece of course
it is next in importance to the governor
and the stars and stripes
and wherever there is a connecticut man
or woman man especially
not sure why because they only had the
vote probably
there is one who will not refuse a piece
of election cake
and there are recipes from the 1800s
everybody's cake was a little bit
different so there isn't a standard
election cake
because um in in one collection of
recipes you've got 20 different
different election cakes all a little
bit different you've got miss rebecca
butler's election cake
mrs lewis welds mrs nathaniel terry and
mrs
henry hudson i think it's so
i i think it's so weird still that they
would basically just give up their name
first and last in writing when they got
married mrs henry hudson
i don't know glad we don't do that
anymore um what's interesting
about connecticut elections
is that starting in 1755
there were two sets of elections and
there were two
governors and it went all the way pretty
much up until the civil war
because there was a white election with
a
white governor and a black election with
a
black governor and it
it was of course largely um
ceremonial but it was actually a
big deal at the time it didn't happen
anywhere else uh it was
it was just in connecticut and
connecticut was on the forefront
not in 1755 but but soon after of of
abolition and everything and
the history around the uh around the
black governors is really
interesting because sometimes sometimes
you read about it and it's like oh
this is you know this this is a step in
the right direction then sometimes you
read about it and
they were often used by
uh by the the rest of the people
um to in
in less than than nice ways to kind of
um keep order and everything but
it's a fascinating subject and uh i i
encourage you to
to look it up because it's a part of
american history that i
had no idea about um
it's just it's an interesting time so in
that same year that they started
uh those um the the two elections
1755 down in the house of burgesses
in virginia they were having elections
and
this has nothing to do with election day
cake because they did not celebrate
election day
the same way that they did in new
england and they didn't have cake
but the story of this election
and the following election is so great
um i just had to share it
so in may of 1755 uh
when he heard about an open seat in the
house of burgesses down in virginia
george washington who was fighting in
the
french and indian war i believe at the
time uh wrote to his brother
brother john i should be glad if you
could come at
colonel fairfax's intentions and let me
know whether he
proposes to offer himself as a candidate
if he does not i should be glad to take
a poll
if i thought my chance tolerably good so
he wanted to be in the house of
burgesses makes sense
and his brother and his friends ended up
kind of you know putting his name out
there and
and trying to get him uh to be elected
that december
though washington wasn't actually there
for the vote and the votes then were
taken by voice so you knew
what people voted as and they would
write them down on a piece of paper
and there were three people running hugh
west who received 271 votes
tom swearingen 270 and george washington
the great
george washington 40 votes
wiped out did not win so you know you
can
you can feel good that if if at first
you do not succeed
try try again obviously george
washington uh did pretty well for
himself
so he ended up keeping that that paper
that had everybody's vote and how they
voted on it
for the rest of his life uh first i was
like oh that seems a little petty but i
think it was actually maybe
like as a i'm gonna show you kind of
thing you know it was a
encouragement for him um
a few years later in november of 1757 he
decided to run again when another seat
opened up
and he still wasn't in virginia at the
time but
he had a plan he sent his friends a
bunch of money
and they campaigned around frederick
county plying the voters and remember
there are only like
600 people in the county who can vote
because you have to be a
a male who owns land property owner
they applied them with 46 gallons of
beer
40 gallons one hog's head one barrel and
ten bowls of rum punch
35 gallons of wine two gallons of cider
and three and a half
pints of brandy and when the result came
in on july 24th
1758 george washington won with 370
307 votes so he learned what the people
want um and
you know now we would be like well that
that doesn't really seem
seem right but that was tame in
comparison
with what was happening in elections
around the same time
in other parts of the country in new
york city
it was customary for the the people who
were being
uh who were up for office the candidates
to
be there at the polls as people came
onto the green to vote
and heckle them and badger them and
yell like horrible stuff um
and and then whoever won had to take
all of the voters to a nearby tavern and
treat them to drinks
regardless of how the voters ended up
voting uh so you know
maybe maybe we should bring that that
back
do we have questions uh people are
asking about a cooking book
a cookbook it is forthcoming uh
i can't give any details about it but i
am working on it
um there's going to be something still
kind of figuring out exactly what it's
going to be
but it will come i promise you that
people always curious about the pokemon
what's your favorite
so today's pokemon so there was no like
american pokemon or election pokemon so
we have
election electo over here
um he's adorable but definitely not my
favorite pokemon i've got to go with
blastoise or blastoise
but i say blastoise i also like whale
mer
and snorlax i like the big like
pokemon i don't know why i find them
less
less intimidating
um all right so
the next thing we need to do is make our
icing
and for that we need now you can do this
again by hand
i'm going to use my uh electric
mixer for it but it's super super easy
and the amounts don't really
you can vary them uh kind of depending
on what on what you want
to do um
depending on how how liquidy you want if
you want it more like a thick sauce or
like a frosting you can do that
or if you want it more like a glaze you
can do that the thing is
the closer to a glaze you get the more
alcoholic it's going to be
closer to a frosting the less alcoholic
it's going to be you can also make this
non-alcoholic
by just using milk instead of
whiskey or brandy and note that the
early
election cakes used to actually have a
lot of
alcohol in them they would uh
often like have it sit for a day or so
and pour alcohol over it and let it soak
in and pour some alcohol over and let it
soak in
as we get through the 19th century
in new england there starts to be a lot
more um kind of this idea of temperance
you know it was kind of the precursor to
the 1920s when they
had prohibition that whole idea is
coming about and so all of these
election cakes which used to be huge
now they're being baked by a single
person in their household so they're
much smaller
and they get rid of the alcohol
typically but there's still often
alcohol in the glaze and that's why
we're making this anyway two cups 240
grams of
powdered sugar they would have had
powdered sugar in the 1890s though
would have been a little bit different
than our powdered sugar today
but it is what it is and then
one teaspoon of vanilla and you can use
more than that if you want and just pour
it right in
i wouldn't use much more than that but a
little bit and then
three tablespoons i'm using three
tablespoons and probably gonna add some
more
of uh whiskey or brandy i actually
decided today to use brandy
because we're out of whiskey and then
again you can do it by hand or you're
going to lose you could you can use an
electric mixer and that's what i'm going
to be doing
and do it slow at first because it is
powdered sugar and it will go
everywhere so as you can see
it's maybe you can't see as you can see
it's coming together and um
and will eventually become rather thick
and this
so this amount of liquor that i put in
is perfect for like a frosting if you
want to
you could either kind of spoon it on
with a spatula
or a spoon or you could put it into a
bag and pipe it on
that'd be lovely if you want it more
like a glaze
just start adding alcohol or cream or
milk
either one will work so i'm going to add
a little bit because i want it a little
bit more like a glaze
we'll just take some brandy here gave a
song to go for that with that whiskey
i don't have a song to go with that
whiskey i don't know what
i'm trying to think of what's a good
election day song
i really don't know um
i think that this is a you know i think
that election day
cake is something that really should
come back
we should have election day cake at the
polls um
what's also interesting about election
day uh the early election day is
often you know the election and the
counting and
everything would happen all at once and
it would happen
you know out loud and everyone would be
there it's a lot easier when you have
you know when you're a small town or or
village
and like 10 of the population can vote
because you had to be of a certain age
and you had to be a land holder and you
had to be male and you had to be white
so
you know you have 5 000 people but only
maybe
200 could vote you can go a lot quicker
but i i just love the idea of you know
that
that tradition happening i guess it's
just kind of
outdated and quaint but i think it's
interesting so
what what is interesting too is that
when when they ended up moving election
day so first they moved election day
from may
to uh
so presidential election day was always
um you know
was november but election day what they
still considered election day
in connecticut and much of new england
was
still in may all through the the 1800s
until
they started changing in the mid-1800s
and i think hartford and connecticut
did it in like 1871 might not be right
uh they changed it to january
and well now it's too cold to have any
of these outside
festivities and it was right after
christmas because by now they're
celebrating christmas
and and new year's and everything and so
they didn't the festivities kind of fell
apart
and the parades didn't happen anymore
but
they said you know the one thing that
we're keeping
is election cake and they did keep it
for a while
but as an influx of new people from
europe started coming in
in you know the 1890s and the early
1900s
it wasn't uh it wasn't important to this
to this it wasn't part of their
tradition so the tradition of election
cake kind of faded away and
really by the 19 teens and 1920s
you stopped seeing election cake in
in a lot of cookbooks um it's kind of
sad
plus and right right about the time that
fanny farmer
and i should do a show on on on her
is writing her cookbook in 1896
the way that cooking in the household
was was changing
because now you've got kind of a
burgeoning middle class
that can they can't afford uh to have
a maid or or servants cooking because
most cookbooks during the 19th century
had kind of been written for
that for for someone who was cooking all
day
that was their job they couldn't really
afford that
so now it's for the housewife and that's
what the boston cooking school was for
it was
to teach housewives how to cook
so things are starting to change recipes
are getting a lot
smaller and then not long after that
world war one women start kind of
entering the workforce
and it's it's interesting to see how
cookbooks through the late 19th century
and early 20th century
change as society changes and
that yeah that could be a whole episode
um i won't go into it all right now but
um it's just interesting you know hey
max
uh yami sent you the good guy to wine
from your amazon wishlist
thank you yummy i i can't wait to uh
to get that there are actually a few
books i need to look into okay so this
once you take your cake out of the oven
it would be like this
um you want to let it cool in the pan
for about five maybe 10 minutes and then
you want to flip it out
onto a wire rack
at which point if you want a glaze you
can actually put a little bit of glaze
on there while it's still warm but i
would wait until
it's it's pretty much room temperature
otherwise it can slide off it's not
pretty
but i'm going to just um i'm going to
just pour this on here
see see what see what happens it's still
pretty
pretty thick can you see
oh pretty thick but i'm pointing it on
there
it's like ribbons almost i love that uh
this was
totally not on purpose but the um
it's plenty you can save a little bit
and put it on an individual piece maybe
um so there
as you as you see election day cake
it's all ready i'm going to cut myself a
slice because i haven't eaten this
clearly
i did it earlier but i haven't eaten
this one um
what was i saying i was saying something
i just ramble uh
i honestly can't remember what i was
saying
i don't know it'll come back to me let
me grab a knife here
can you talk a little bit about what's
coming for november december yes i can
talk about what's coming for november
and december so
for november well on tuesday
this tuesday on the real election day um
i have an episode that a lot of people
have been asking about
which is silphium i talk about silphium
and go into the history of
that lost roman aphrodisiac uh
silphium really interesting history i've
also been
maybe toying with some mead making uh
we've got some pumpkin pie
from the 17th century coming
some interesting history there uh and
then
you know a lot of holiday recipes i'm
not gonna i'm gonna try not to do every
single episode
a holiday recipe save some for next year
hopefully i'm still around
um but i'm not saying i'm going to be
dead i'm saying
hopefully this show is still around this
is a little more of it
um but you know i'm going to be doing
gingerbread
and one thing
so i had some mishaps with uh
christmas pudding the first recipe for
something actually called christmas
pudding before that it was
plum pit pudding or figgy pudding but
for christmas pudding
uh it needs to be boiled in a
cloth and it is hard and so easy to
mess up and i messed up and had some
very expensive
um mishaps so i'm going to cut this cake
hey max chris asks if you can add food
coloring to that glaze so you can make
it
look like an american flag absolutely
you can
you can add food coloring to everything
so
so i didn't want to um completely change
the texture of the cake i wanted it to
be
you know akin to what a yeasted cake is
going to be so it is
a fairly tight crumb that's why i'm
saying like it's not going to be like a
chiffon or angel food cake or anything
like that it's more like a
banana bready cake um but
it's still a looks really good and it's
just chock full
of fruit and the nice thing is because
it's a little bit thicker
the fruit stays nicely um
spread out it doesn't all fall to the
bottom
okay that brandy is really strong
maybe not use as much brandy as i did
maybe i should have put a little bit of
milk in there
i like it but it's strong
let me show you i can
[Music]
around up here
how incorporated that fruit should be
see it's it's all very nicely
incorporated i guess i'm saying the same
word
um it was funny we were watching the
great british bake off the other
the other day and we've watched every
episode it was actually the 100th
episode that paul hollywood had done
100th episode of
great british bake off and never once
has he used the term what was the term
oh god uh concertina
in response to a cake when you make a
layer cake sometimes you know they can
get squished down or
or whatever and so he used the term
concertina
which is correct you know but he uses it
like
20 times during the episode every time
he's looking at a cake oh it didn't
concertina or it did concentrate
it's just funny and i do the same thing
i'm like i never use this word and then
all of a sudden i've just said
incorporated like five times in a row
because i'm not a human thesaurus um
it is what it is anyway do we have any
more questions because i think that
we're
we're about out of time how about five
minutes
let me know if you have questions
comments concerns
also just a reminder that i would love
to
have some uh suggestions
on on episodes for next year um
i've i've got tons but i want more
uh you know so as we go i'm also going
to keep trying to do these live streams
maybe once a month or so
um and i just started uh patreon
my my 10 20 and 25
uh patrons we're getting together once a
month and doing a cocktail hour so we
pick a historic cocktail
and you know just chat about history and
food and it's
you know a nice small small gathering uh
which is
which is really lovely kind of kind of
nice to to actually get to
because right now we're still doing it
it's like a zoom so we're
face to face actually talking with each
other which is which is cool
you know people sometimes bring up the
60s and 70s
weird jello foods but why do you
kind of shy away from that so a few
reasons why i shy away from
really from foods from the from the 40s
50s 60s 70s all of that
one reason is because
uh public domain it's i use a lot of
images
in my in my videos and
if you use older images their public
domain i need permission
the later you get it gets a little bit
harder uh
so there's that but it's also
it's it's just not my my [ __ ] as as
musicians would say it's not my
my wheelhouse that said i would actually
love to try some of these um especially
like the the right post world war ii
things um and and some of those 50s kind
of
weirder the aspects and stuff like that
but
there are other people who who do that
and they do that well
um i'm actually going to be uh i i
worked on the the pumpkin pie
episode the one that i did is from the
1670s
but then i'll point you in the direction
of my friend jill who has a channel
called yester kitchen where she really
focuses on the 50s 60s 70s and 80s
american recipes kind of some of those
weirder things and she does a more
modern
pumpkin pie i think from the 60s um
so there are other people doing it but
that doesn't mean i'm not going to do it
so uh if if that's something that people
want to watch
i will do it uh i trick and join light
but he wants
after lockdown maybe like a fan meter
grip some kind of get together
yeah no after lockdown i i mean
i would love to get to meet
people and and have more of you know
build that
build that community and and travel so
you know we could do it in in several
different places which would be really
cool
and then i would love you know they have
cons like vidcon and and all these
different things where
it just tends to have you know people
get together so it's kind of like a
on purpose get together i guess uh so i
hope to do those
um but it's kind of like when when is
the world gonna be back to normal i
don't know
uh this is the only world i know now
because i've been doing this only
since lockdown so
uh ian crowe sends us thanks they're all
gathered and suggests that for next year
you do pierogies
i will do pierogies and one of these
days
i'm going to do jose's favorite thing
that i make
which is it's it's not pro but it's a
little bit similar to pierogies in a way
called beerox uh and the history behind
the people who made them
the uh they were the volga germans
who came over to russia from germany
invited by catherine the great such an
interesting story so i will be making
those
they are amazing they're basically
ground beef cabbage uh
cheese and onion kind of like
cooked and then into the most pillowy
soft dough that you have
ever had in your life it's like almost
like japanese milk bread but
filled with food oh so good and i will
do that
one of these days any more questions uh
native american foods
food some turkey yes well
i was going to be doing saleb which is
from from uh
turkey but one of the ingredients that
was supposed to come
never came it's not legal in the united
states to
have it imported and so i was having
anyway
that's hopefully i'll be able to do that
eventually and i do want to do some
turkish food
i actually love turkish food um
and and there's some interesting history
and how turkish food in
in germany actually became a thing
um a native american cuisine i
definitely want to
to do it i'm still looking to partner
with someone
who really knows the history behind it a
little bit more than i do because
there hasn't been a lot written about it
and i'm
i i feel like i could screw it up all
too easily
especially because they didn't write
down recipes and so a lot of it
you know was was transmitted orally and
a lot of what we do have written down
is not authentic so i'm i'm looking for
people to work with i have some names
i just haven't gotten around to it but
it is on the docket sounds of sushi sent
you a benjamin
thank you sounds of sushi appreciate
that
more live streams more live streams
probably once a month um i would like to
do more
but this is actually a lot of work
um and you know putting putting each
episode together is a lot of work so
unless they were just q and a's which we
could be um
maybe a little bit of history uh they'll
probably have to stick to once a month
but maybe we have some of those where
i'm not actually cooking
a dish which means i haven't had to
develop a recipe
because that's what takes a long time to
do um
i'll try to get more maybe after the new
year
loaded question but people want to know
about the books you are using
the books i'm using tons of books for
for this
specifically so
this recipe came from fannie farmer's
1896 cookbook i also definitely went to
well i went to that amelia simmons
american cookery
and let me tell you it was so
frustrating because all online if you
look up election cake everybody's using
amelia simmons
recipe and then i have her book and it's
not in there
and i was like what is going on because
a lot of times you find things online
that are not true so i was like is this
one of those things that isn't true it's
not actually her recipe
turns out it's from the second uh
edition
so i don't have that very few people do
i guess
um but so i referenced her first edition
as well for some of her techniques
um and then for this i i relied a lot on
the uh historical society the
connecticut historical society the new
england historical society they're not
books they're
wonderful you know websites and
then the one book that i did really
delve into is
uh walter woodward i believe the the one
that i mentioned
creating connecticut it's fantastic um
really just some interesting stuff he
knows connecticut history like
the back of his hand um really
interesting guy
outside of that you know i have tons of
cookbooks that i rely on but a lot of
what i try to do is find primary sources
and the best way to do that is by there
are some online
and and sometimes i have trouble because
they're behind paywalls or you have to
belong to a university or something like
that
um but a lot of online like
i don't know how to say it jstor jstor
is one website that has all of these
uh academic papers and if you read in
the academic paper and then go to
the bibliography they often have their
sources and sometimes those are primary
sources so
i'll pick up you know one of these uh
articles and go straight to the
bibliography and be like okay
where are you getting your where are you
getting your stuff and then i go find
that stuff either online or have it sent
to me
and then a lot of books lately i've been
having viewers sent to me which has been
really awesome i've had several recipes
that i've already done
and several more that i'm going to be
doing the makshufa
the arabic candy was one of them um so
tons of places lots and lots of places
the chat is asking about
armored turnips do you know what those
are armored turnips you know what i've
heard of that but i don't know what that
is
i don't have to look it up armored
turnips
um too far doug asks are there any
drunken toasts or quotes from your
research on election day drunken toasts
or quotes you know what
if i'd come across any they would have
been in the episode
would have been a nice way to close
things out i didn't come across anything
they didn't write it down you know which
is okay
what they did write down were these long
sermons so
but they're not i don't think they're
drunken they didn't drink
and that's it good place to wrap up
all right well there is election cake
wonderful history behind it wonderful
history about
our elections and you know how they've
changed and
you should definitely go out vote on
tuesday if you haven't already i think
most people already have
um and i'll see you on tuesday for an
episode of tasting history
thank you everyone until next time
you