American Baking

The smell of fresh pastry dough being rolled out swirls of frosted sugar, the heady aroma of baking apples, the spicy hints of cinnamon and nutmeg wafting from the oven…American baking is a foodie's delight with its wide variety of tastes, textures, and flavors. Christmas cookies, Valentine's tarts, Thanksgiving pies, birthday cakes, family favorites…..the list is endless. Delicious swirls of whipped cream, tart fresh fruit filling, the glimmer of chocolate glaze and the taste of powdered sugar off the first bite of a doughnut...it's enough to make even the fullest person sit up and ask for more!

Christmas is not just about Santa, the Christmas tree or the holly and mistletoe. Christmas is about food, and it's one of the most important holidays in American baking.  Christmas cookies drizzled with icing and sugar; Yule logs brought over by the French which consist of soft melt-in-the-mouth chocolate sponge cake liberally interspersed with candied cranberries and whipped cream; the Italian version of the Christmas cake, the pan forte, replete with fruits and spices; the Austrian Linzer Torte with its ruby red preserves peeking through its golden lattice crust… the list goes on.

Then there are Easter recipes beginning with the quintessential hot cross buns flavored with a unique blend of cinnamon, raisins, nutmeg and currants. There are special Easter cookies and Easter macaroon tarts, there are Easter carrot cupcakes and the average American kitchen is warm with the delicious smells of American baking. Halloween which is the American way of celebrating the darker forces in Nature, all that is Gothic and noir, is incomplete without its explosion of sweet delights like the pumpkin cookies and little ghosts made of light flaky meringue. And of course no Thanksgiving is complete without flaky apple pie, gooey pecan pie, pumpkin cheesecake and pumpkin bread.

There are some recipes that are so typical of American baking, like the chocolate chip cookie. No American home is complete without a cookie jar full of these treats. There's a history to this recipe. It's said that this recipe, that is so very popular across the world today, was discovered by happenstance. A Mrs. Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, was at a loss as to what she could add to her cookie dough, as she was flat out of currants and raisins. The only thing handy was a Nestle chocolate bar, which she chopped into chunks and dropped into her butter cookie dough. And voila…the chocolate chip cookie was born. It became a huge hit with her customers and in 1939 Nestle bought the rights to her recipe and named their first batches of chocolate cookies 'Famous Toll House Cookies'. Another typically American baking recipe is the peanut butter cookie. It came into the American baking lexicon in the 1940s.

Angel food cake is another such recipe: it is so named because its airy, fluffy lightness was deemed food fit for the angels. But a large number of eggs went into this feather light cake. In fact Mrs. J.Chadwick in her 1953 "Home Cookery" book specified 32 egg yolks were needed for one single cake. Another famous cookbook Mrs. Horace Mann's 'Christianity in the Kitchen' wrote that 20 eggs were needed with around 3 hours of beating required!

There are so many vignettes behind each recipe, every home has their own special zealously guarded ingredient for their cakes, there are variations, different permutations and combinations, and elements added from other nations, elements assimilated sand Americanized. But the bottom line is….American Baking is a foodie's paradise.

Roger Murray is a community writer who likes to experiment on various American cuisines. He likes to research on American baking and list down popular American recipes to much delight of other community members.

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