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aency. He also made it possible to bake the birthday cake as we know it today by bringing the vanilla bean from France in 1789.
Colonial Cakes
“Mamma made six mince pies and seven custards, twelve tarts, one chicking pie and four puddings for the ball."—Sdlljr* Fairfax in her 1771 diary.
Baking a cake during colonial times was a day-long project. If Martha made one of her famous currant cakes for George’s birthday or if Dolly Madison baked one of her whimsical rose-water flavored confections, the ordeal was a real labor of love.
Sugar was imported from the West Indies in hard blocks weighing about ten pounds each. The housewife had to break off hunks of the costly substance and pound it in a mortar to pulverize it before it could be sifted. Whole spices also wrere powdered by putting them :hrough the mortar.
Cakes in those days had the virtue of being kept indefinitely. Old Virginia cookbooks praised “little alum cakes to last long” or
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