Food, history, and celebrating, as reflected in our most recent cookbook, Zingerman’s Bakehouse Celebrate Every Day, inform our baking choices. We’re always seeking to revive lost food traditions, so this year we’re celebrating the freedom to vote with our rendition of an old American tradition, Election Day Cake. We’ll be serving free slices of cake in the Bakeshop on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5th, so come celebrate the American electoral process!
A Largely Forgotten American Tradition
You may be wondering what’s the connection between Election Day and a celebratory cake. Well, it’s an old and largely forgotten American tradition that dates back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Back then, Election Day in America was a festive holiday, featuring parades, dancing, and lots of food and drink. Open to the citizenry, festivities drew large crowds of voters and revelers alike. And the culinary pièce de résistance of these well-attended celebrations was a sweetened, fruit-filled, yeast bread called Election Cake. These bread-like cakes were enormous in size, designed to sustain voters at the polls and feed crowds of revelers on Election Day.
The origin of American Election Cake can be traced back to the Colonial Era and more specifically to the gubernatorial elections held in Hartford, Connecticut in the early 1770s. In colonial Connecticut, Election Day was a big deal, since it was one of only 2 British American colonies allowed to elect their own governors democratically versus having one appointed for them by the British King. When the springtime election rolled around, town representatives throughout the colony traveled by horseback and carriage to Hartford to cast their votes. They often stayed several nights, partaking in festive dinners and public “drinkings.” Bonfires, barbecues, whiskey, and, yes, cake helped to amplify the revelry and encourage voting.
Election Day in Philadelphia by John Lewis Krimmel (1787-1821). Oil on canvas, 1815. Collection of the Winterthur Museum of Art, Winterthur, Delaware. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
A Great Cake for a Grand Occasion
As for the cake itself, it was essentially a derivation of the English “great cakes” made for grand occasions. Bread-like in its composition, Election Cake began as a yeasted dough sponge, which was left to ferment and rise overnight. It was then enriched with butter, molasses or sugar, eggs, dried fruits, spices, and any combination of wine, whiskey, and brandy. Made mostly by women and served to the community, these Election Day celebration cakes were huge! The historian Stephen Schmidt notes that in the late 18th century, “they typically measured a yard across and a foot high” and “were so big they had to be baked on the oven floor, not in pans.”
The Oldest Known Recipe for American Election Cake
The oldest known recorded recipe for American Election Cake appears in the first cookbook published in America. It commemorated the new nation by highlighting its unique ingredients and dishes: American Cookery by Ameilia Simmons, originally published in Hartford, Connecticut in 1796. Simply titled “Election cake,” Simmons’ rendition was massive in size, highly enriched, and clearly designed to feed a large crowd:
Thirty quarts flour, 10 pound butter, 14 pound sugar, 12 pound raisins, 3 doz eggs, one pint wine, one quart brandy, 4 ounces cinnamon, 4 ounces fine colander [coriander] seed, 3 ounces ground alspice [allspice]; wet the flour with milk to the consistence of bread overnight, adding one quart yeast; the next morning work the butter and sugar together for half an hour, which will render the cake much lighter and whiter; when it has rise light work in every other ingredient except the plumbs [raisins], which work in when going into the oven.
Frontispiece to American Cookery by Amelia Simmons (Hartford, Connecticut: 1796)
The American Election Cake Tradition in the 19th Century
Early 1800s
Following the American Revolution and into the 1800s, Election Cake was a common tradition throughout New England and farther west. And in an era when voting was a privilege granted only to elite, property-owning white men, the historian and baker Maia Surdam notes that, “preparing, sharing, and consuming election cake was an informal way for some non voting American women to participate in the revelry surrounding election season. Unable to cast their own votes, they nevertheless contributed to the civic culture of celebrating the young republic through food.”
American Election Cake continued to evolve well into the nineteenth century with recipes reflecting new ingredients and altered techniques. By the early 1800s, they were relatively smaller, baked in large pans versus freestanding on the oven floor or open hearth. Eventually, baking them in standard-size loaf pans became the norm. As the century progressed, people served Election Cakes to friends or sold them at polling places. They also made them for town meetings. Ingredients evolved as well. In addition to a variety of sugars and spices, Election Cakes were made with candied citron and nuts, many were frosted or glazed, and what was once essentially a bread dough was now a batter that became richer and sweeter over time, making the finished confection less like bread and more like cake.
Late 1800s
By the late 19th century, perhaps nowhere was the changing variety of Election Cake and its popularity more prevalent than in Hartford, Connecticut, where it seemingly all began. In her cookbook, Hartford Election Cake and Other Receipts [Recipes], published in Hartford in 1889, Ellen Wadsworth Johnson included a compilation of 11 varied recipes for Election Cake collected from women, presumably in her community, whom she credited by name above each recipe.
Election Day, Main Street, Hartford, 1867. Photograph. Connecticut Historical Society. Photo source: ConnecticutHistory.org.Election Cake Recipes (No. 2 – No. 5) in Hartford Election Cake and Other Receipts by Ellen Wadsworth Johnson (Hartford, Connecticut, 1889).
Yet, as popular as Election Cake continued to be throughout the 19th century, it had virtually vanished from political traditions by the early 20th century. As Maia Surdam notes, “The reasons for this are many. Baking methods changed. Flavor preferences expanded. New immigrants brought with them new food traditions.” Also, attitudes surrounding the electoral process and the casting of one’s vote became less public and celebratory and more private.
(If you’re curious about what an old-fashioned Election Cake tasted like, a more familiar reference might be our Christmas Stollen. Like the Election Cakes, our Stollen is an enriched yeasted sweet bread. It’s studded with dried fruits soaked in booze—in this case rum versus wine, brandy, or whisky. To complete this flavorful frame of reference, simply imagine our Stollen spiced up with any combination of nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, coriander and allspice, and you’ll have a pretty good idea.)
Election Day Cake Comes to the Bakehouse
Here at the Bakehouse, we’re happy to carry on a modern-day tradition celebrating the freedom to vote. We tested traditional recipes and understand why they fell out of favor. After much consideration, we decided to mark the tradition in spirit rather than in actuality. We’ll be serving our most popular cake, Chocolate Buttermilk. And we’ve been developing a new Ermine Frosting which we’ll debut on the cake. Just like “ermine” suggests, it has a luscious mouth feel resulting from the icing’s cooked flour roux base. Our cake may be wholly different than the historical Election Day Cakes, but the celebratory spirit is the same.
As with the origins of Election Day Cake, it’s not necessary to vote to have a slice. All are welcome! Join us at the Bakeshop on Tuesday, November 5th to celebrate the electoral process with a taste of rich sweetness.
After a long, established career as a Ph.D. art history scholar and art museum curator, Lee, a Michigan native, came to the Bakehouse in 2017 eager to pursue her passion for artisanal baking and to apply her love of history, research, writing, and editing in a new exciting arena. Her first turn at the Bakehouse was as a day pastry baker. She then moved on to retail sales in the Bakeshop, followed by joining the Marketing Team and becoming the Bakehouse’s designated culinary historian. In addition to her retail sales and marketing work, she’s a member of the Bakehouse’s Grain Commission, co-author and editor of the Bakehouse's series of cookbooklets, and a regular contributor to the BAKE! Blog and Zingerman’s Newsletter, where she explores the culinary, cultural, and social history and evolution of the Bakehouse’s artisan baked goods.
