Name: Lady Baltimore Cake
Yield: Makes 10 to 12 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: ⅓ cup cold water; 4 large egg whites; 1 teaspoon almond extract; 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract; 2 large egg whites; 1½ cups whole milk; 3 cups cake flour; 1½ cups sugar; 3 teaspoons baking powder; ¼ cup diced seedless figs; ½ cup seedless golden raisins; ¾ cup coarsely chopped pecans; ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon almond extract; 1½ sticks butter, softened

Preparation info

Makes
10 to 12
servings

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

The Glory of Southern Cooking

By James Villas

Published 2007

About

It’s debatable which of the South’s elaborate cakes is more ceremonial: Lane cake or Lady Baltimore cake. What is for sure is that the latter is in no way connected with the city of Baltimore but, rather, with Owen Wister’s 1906 romantic novel entitled Lady Baltimore, in which the cake is described. In reality, the luscious cake was most probably created in Charleston, South Carolina, by Alicia Rhett Mayberry around the turn of the twentieth century and not named til