Today, February 1st, is the first anniversary (or is it birthday?) of this newsletter. When I decided to give Substack a try last year, I had just quit my middle school teaching job, which was an interim position anyway. I had also graduated with my PhD just over half a year before. I was suddenly, for the first time in all my life, completely free of any job or school responsibilities. It felt both freeing and terrifying. I was job hunting, of course, and I do have hobbies, but one can only sew or knit so much. I decided to dedicate some of that newfound free time to making myself write consistently, building on the work I had been doing on my website (www.historicalfoodways.com) for years.
While I loved writing on the website, there was never really any sort of feedback mechanism, especially at a time when blog readership in general had been declining. I didn’t know who was reading or if anyone was reading. As someone who thrives on deadlines, I found being consistent with no one to answer to monumentally difficult. In my defense, Historical Foodways was a fun side project. My main job, if you will, through most of that time was being a PhD student.
So, out of the need for structure, accountability, and the desire to write more regularly on a topic I enjoy, this Substack publication was born. At first, I decided to make it a monthly publication since I didn’t want to overcommit. I didn’t want to set the bar too high and fail, if I’m being honest. Then, almost immediately after the first post, I went on a five-week trip around Southeast Asia. I thought that that was the end of consistency in publishing the newsletter, but, to my own surprise, I remained consistent. I found ways to write about food in history and culture that didn’t tie me to a kitchen. That, in itself, was one of the main reasons I moved from the website to Substack. On the website, I had built the expectation that every post was a recipe, and I wanted a clean slate. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good historical recipe, but there is so much more to food writing than recipes and I wanted to feel free to explore those other avenues. Never mind that no one but myself was holding me back.
Job hunting in the current economy, as I’m sure many of you know, is the stuff of nightmares. Countless of applications later and very little traction (I am moving away from education and trying to break into food and travel media/journalism), I decided to add a second post every month and monetize the newsletter starting in August, 2023. I had no expectations that I would be able to make any sort of real income from this, at least not for a while, but you have to start somewhere. I am deeply thankful to those of you who have upgraded to paid subscriptions since then.
The last year has been both great in some ways (lots of travel), and awful in others (unemployed and job hunting), but through it all I’ve managed to keep the standard I set for myself in this publication; at least in terms of publishing consistency. It has been really, really difficult but, clearly, not impossible. Most importantly, despite my doubts that such a niche publication would get any traction, many of you have decided my writing is worth reading and subscribed. I’ve found community here and for that I thank you.
I know I said I wanted to move away from the expectation of a recipe in every post, but it felt wrong to not have a cake in an anniversary – or birthday – post, so cake I’ll give you.
This “Sunshine Cake” comes from the 1886 book Mrs. Rorer’s Philadelphia Cook Book, by Sarah Tyson Rorer. Rorer was the founder of the Philadelphia School of Cookery and some scholars have described her as the first American dietitian.
When I first read the recipe, I was intrigued by the use of egg yolks in an otherwise egg white foam cake not dissimilar to angel food cake. You may have heard that fats, which egg yolks contain, interfere with the foaming process in meringue, which is why meringues are made with whites and not yolks. But yolks can also be whipped into a foam, albeit not quite as fluffy and light as whites can. That is, after all, how genoise sponge cake is made, by whipping the egg yolks and egg whites together. Granted, genoise cake also contains butter, which foam cakes like angel food cake, and sunshine cake, do not.
I also like the name of the recipe, Sunshine Cake. It evoked something in me that kept bringing me back to this recipe as I searched for other, fancier ones, for this post. Maybe it’s because it was January and the weather had been largely overcast and miserable. I’d take my sunshine in any form, even it i had to bake it into shape.
A cursory search for “sunshine cake” on Google brought up a host of modern cakes using cake mixes, pineapple, and oranges, but nothing like this one. They are entirely different cakes. At that point, I just had to make this sunshine cake and see what it was all about.
I followed the recipe as written, which is very well explained. The only guesswork for the modern cook is figuring out what a “moderate oven” is. Technically, a moderate oven is about 350°F-375°F, but I chose to bake the cake at 325°F, which is the temperature at which I bake my angel food cakes. The cake was done after 45 minutes, just as the recipe said.
The part of the recipe that made me certain this was a cake similar to angel food cake is the description of the baking pan and how to cool the cake. The recipe says it is best to bake this cake “in a tin Turk’s-head, the center tube being longer than the sides, so that when it is turned over it rests on the tube.” This is exactly what an angel food cake pan looks like. Many of these pans today also have little feet on the rim that put space between the rim of the pan and the surface it rests on when turned over. Cooling these cakes upside down – that is, the opposite way they are placed in the oven – ensures they don’t collapse as the foam structure cools. Once cool, the structure is set and there is little risk damage under its own weight.
I had never heard the term “tin Turk’s-head,” but I had a pretty good idea what it was. I was right, they look just like modern Bundt pans do. Most modern Bundt pans are nonstick, however, and you do not want to bake foam cakes in a nonstick pan as the foam will have nothing to grab onto as it rises. This is why the recipe calls for baking in an ungreased pan. So obviously the only choice was an angel food cake pan.
Making the cake was pretty simple, but is definitely one of those instances in which modern technology helps immensely. Beating eleven egg whites to stiff peaks by hand is a chore I imagine most people are not interested in doing. I certainly am not. An electric mixer, whether the stand type or handheld, is the best tool for the job. A mixer also helps with beating the yolks until fluffy. In my case, I whipped the whites in a stand mixer and used an electric hand mixer to whip the yolks in a separate bowl.
I was pleasantly surprised with this cake. It wasn’t as tall as an angel food cake usually is, but it tasted better. Oddly, the flavor was less eggy than angel food cake. The crumb was light, bouncy, and tender. The color was a pale yellow that, I imagine, gives the cake its name. This sunshine cake is a blend of angel food cake and genoise sponge in the best possible way.
I think if more people knew about THIS sunshine cake, angel food cakes the world over would quiver in their pans in fear of replacement.
What I’ve Published
In January, I published a piece with Gastro Obscura, the food vertical of Atlas Obscura, about gorkons, a cooking pot of the mountains of Pakistan. “One Man’s Fight to Preserve Pakistan’s Perfect Cooking Pot.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-gorkon-pakistan-cooking-pot
What I’ve Been Watching and Reading
I recently watched this interesting video about the history of sriracha and who actually came up with it. It’s on a YouTube channel called OTR, which has a lot of videos about food history and food culture. “Everything You Know about Sriracha is a Lie.”
I’m currently reading Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, by Fuchsia Dunlop. I’ve only just started it after weeks of waiting for a library copy but I’m enjoying it so far.
The method for making sunshine cake is quite interesting. I imagine the egg whites makes the cake tastes less eggy. I'll have to give this cake a try!