Baking Democracy: The History and Future of Election Cakes
Have you ever considered cake to be an instrumental part of a flourishing democracy? Women in the late 1700s through the early 1900s did, baking and bringing cakes to voting sites to encourage voter turnout.
In a time when they didn’t have the right to vote themselves, these “election cakes” as they were called, were an indirect way of “influencing the culture of voting and democracy,” says Maia Surdam, historian, baker, and co-owner of OWL Bakery in Asheville, North Carolina.
These cakes had their roots in colonial New England, when English immigrants would make naturally leavened cakes heavy with spices and fruit. During this time, men were summoned by the British for militia training. Large crowds would gather around the revelry of the militia training days, and women would make these cakes for the crowds, earning them the name “muster cakes.” According to Surdam, “these militia training days had a lively, carnival-like feel. There was lots of booze and cake to soak up the alcohol.” Later, after the American Revolution and in an attempt to “muster” votes, the celebratory cake tradition continued, and women would bake them around election day. The “election cake” was born.
It was in the lead up to the 2016 election that Surdam and her business partner Susannah Gebhart decided that they should revive the tradition. The bakery had just opened a few months before, and, “it felt so important to be telling that story at that time,” says Surdam, noting that she and Gebhart were excited about, “using the bakery as a platform to talk about history and women’s history, specifically.”
Before women’s suffrage, while they couldn’t vote, baking election cakes allowed women to participate in society by way of food. “It was a contribution, a way to celebrate democracy,” says Surdam.
The first published recipe of the cake dates back to 1796 in Amelia Simmons’ book, American Cookery. It was “massive in size,” as Surdam has written. The recipe called for “30 quarts of flour, 10 pounds of butter, 14 pounds of sugar, 12 pounds of raisins, a dozen eggs, and copious amounts of wine, brandy, spices, and fruit,” Surdam wrote for the American Historical Association. “Clearly, this cake was meant for a crowd—those who milled about polling places casting or counting votes, those who stayed overnight at boarding houses in villages far from home, or those who celebrated Election Day at fashionable, high-society balls.”
For the 2016 election, OWL Bakery challenged other bakeries to join in on the project, baking their own version of the original election cake, and they adapted their recipe for home bakers too (which you can find below). She and Gebhart wanted to “help resuscitate a lost tradition,” says Surdam, and the election cake efforts have continued ever since. OWL Bakery has made election cake for every local and midterm elections since, and has even given away free slices for people who came in with a voting sticker. Just last weekend they offered slices to people at their tailgate market booth, generating donations for their local chapter of League of Women Voters.
Through baking election cakes, Surdam has been reminded of how symbolic the cake can be. For one, “the cake itself is always going to be reflective of the place that it’s made,” says Surdam. Alcohol and ale yeast were traditional in early English cakes, and in Colonial America where apples were in abundance, often they were made with cider, and in thinking of more modern versions, Surdam notes that “revitalizing the cake means that it could take so many shapes, and forms and flavors.”
Most importantly, that means identifying local ingredients based on wherever the baker is making their own election cake. “Think about the flour,” says Surdam. “Most tend to think about flour as this stable ingredient rather than a substance that might have living enzymatic activity, or flavor that reflects the place that it was grown. As Surdam sees it, one of the most important things happening in the baking world right now is the development of a regionalized grain economy. Surdam points out that rethinking what flour goes into the election cake is an opportunity to learn about your local grain economy. She challenges bakers to find flour “ground by a mill that works within a regional context,” making a more direct link between farmer, miller, baker, and consumer.
Baking the cake is a vehicle for rethinking not just our connections to democracy, but our connections to each other. “This is a chance to support the smaller organizations or individuals who really dedicate their work to producing,” says Surdam. “Taking something from the past, learning from it, and figuring out how it can serve us today.”
Surdam wants to see more people baking cake, not just for the 2020 election, but all elections. As an educator, she sees the potential of the cake as a teaching tool. “Think about the context in which you share the cake,” says Surdam, “Maybe it’s a way for you to teach your kids that we have to celebrate and protect our right to vote. It wasn’t guaranteed, people lost their lives for it, and this is how we honor it.”
In a way, this “living project” as Surdam calls it, is yet another way to influence culture and society and challenge how we think about elections and the democratic process.
As voting laws have changed, so have our election traditions. While once a celebratory affair, nowadays, election day feels more like an uphill battle that requires a lot of energy to fight. That’s partially by design. Ever since the founding fathers refused to give U.S. citizens an explicit constitutional right to vote, states have been evading voter protections, and that has come with an assortment of cultural and political consequences. “The more and more people who gained access to the vote the more backlash there has been to voting,” says Surdam. “Now that all women and people of color technically have the right to vote, we’re watching our democracy floundering because there are people in power who are actively trying to prevent them from exercising their right.”
The history of voter suppression is a long one, and today there are still a variety of ways in which people across the country are prohibited from voting. The aggressive suppression is already on display in the 2020 election, with people clocking long hours in line at early voting lines. But these lines have also sparked a celebratory feeling, with music, dancing, and playlists. After all, joy is an act of resistance. As we work to support organizations and individuals committed to dismantling voter suppression, perhaps the cake can also provide an avenue for finding our way back to celebrating civic institutions and democracy.
Surdam, like many, believes that election day should be a national holiday, not only allowing for better participation and decreasing some of the barriers that currently keep people from going to the polls (getting out of work is a big one), but also to revive some sense of celebration in taking part of a democratic process. Surdam concludes, “and there should be cake there.”
Bake your own Election Cake
Want to bake an election cake? Check out OWL Bakery’s Election Cake for home bakers recipe. You might even want to make your cake a little more “local” by adapting with your own regional ingredients. As Surdam notes, “the quality of the ingredients has a direct translation to the quality of the flavor of the cake you are making.” Maybe your neighbor has some chickens and you can borrow eggs, or maybe you have local orchards who offer dried fruit. Think about what ingredients you could source close to home to make the cake a little more special and give it a regional context to where you live.
You can also follow our Comestible recipe for Election Cake made for us by Sarah Owens.
If you do bake an election cake, please be sure to share a picture with us on Instagram. Happy baking and voting!
Papercut illustration by Anna Brones
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