Mary Todd Lincoln's White Almond Cake recipe!

Mary Todd Lincoln grew up in comfortable surroundings. As was typical for well-to-do Kentuckians, her family owned slaves. Mary had 12 years of schooling, including finishing school. The vivacious young woman spoke fluent French. She had several suitors when she moved to Springfield to stay with her sister Elizabeth Edwards. One was the popular Stephen Douglas who was later a political opponent of Abraham Lincoln. But it was the rough lawyer and fellow Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln who caught her fancy at a party held at the Edwards’ home.  Both enjoyed politics and reading.  The fact that Mary was a family friend of Lincoln’s idol, Henry Clay, enhanced her charms for Lincoln.

On July 3,1863, Mrs. Lincoln was thrown from her carriage near Mount Pleasant Hospital, hit her head and was seriously injured. Doctors from the hospital responded and returned her to the White House, where she recovered from a serious gash to her head. Whenever possible, she got her husband out for a drive in the fresh air at four in the afternoon. Together, they sometimes stopped at army hospitals and greeted wounded and sick soldiers. On their last drive together on the afternoon he was assassinated, he told his wife, "I consider this day, the war has come to a close. We must both be more cheerful in the future - between the war & the loss of our darling Willie - we have both, been very miserable."²⁰

The Civil War and the White House years had strained their marriage. Historian Matthew Pinsker wrote: “Frustrated by her private grief and poor health, nineteenth-century gender conventions, and her husband’s near-constant state of exhaustion, the First Lady found it difficult to connect to him and to support him in his enormous endeavors.”Biographer Catherine Clinton noted that by 1865 Mary Lincoln "had been all but excluded from his circle of trusted advisers because of her troubling mood swings, her prolonged absences, and her capricious behavior.

Mrs. Lincoln’s trip to the Richmond front in late March 1865 was marked by several explosions of temper. Naval officer John S. Barnes wrote that Mary Lincoln “was at no time well; the mental strain upon her was great, betrayed by extreme nervousness approaching hysteria, causing misapprehensions, extreme sensitiveness as to slights, or want of politeness or consideration. I had the greatest sympathy for her, and for Mr. Lincoln, who I am sure felt deep anxiety for her. His manner toward her was always that of the most affectionate solicitude, so marked, so gentle and unaffected that no one could see them together without being impressed by it. I remember that in several telegrams from Mr. Stanton, he always inquired for Mrs. Lincoln and requested his remembrances to her.

Her husband's death and her financial debts from shopping sprees immobilized her. It took over a month for her to recover enough from the president's death to leave the White House finally on May 22, 1865. For the next 17 years, she assumed the role of the martyr-widow, consumed by physical and mental illness, bedeviled by personal tragedy and personal torment, and shamed by family and country. She exiled herself to Europe in 1868 after public controversies over her finances and remained there until 1871 when she returned to Chicago. She was committed to an insane asylum by her son Robert in 1875 although she later won her release. On July 16, 1882, Mary Todd Lincoln died at the home of her sister in Springfield.

AND this is my favorite picture of her !!!! 

My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I, a poor nobody then, fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out.  Abraham Lincoln

 

 

Back in 1825, the esteemed Marquis de Lafayette was paying a visit to Lexington, Ky., home to the upper-crust, slave-owning Todd family. In honor of the auspicious occasion, a French baker, by the name of Monsieur Giron, was commissioned to bake a cake. The almond-scented vanilla cake wassuch a hit, that the Todd women begged him for the recipe which became part of the family’s repertoire.

Apparently, the white cake was part of Mary’s seduction tactics while she was courting one Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. in late 1839. Did Abe like the cake? “Well, he did marry her," The couple tied the knot in 1842 in Springfield.

That the cake remained a mainstay in the Todd Lincoln household in Springfield and even when the family moved to the White House in 1861. Mary had to do all her own cooking in Springfield. Lincoln was poor, so they couldn't afford servants, and she came from a family that had slaves. So she had to learn how to cook on her own and take care of her house on her own.


The French caterer in Lexington, Kentucky, Monsieur Giron, was commissioned to bake a cake , he developed this wonderful white cake in honor of his countrymen, who were to pay a visit to the city. The cake was beautifully decorated with flags made of color sugar, and with marvelous icing, but the cake itself contained only the whites of eggs and when cut the cake was snow-white. Thereupon the famous cake baker in the Blue-Grass region immediately began making white cakes; and the recipe for the most famous of all was originated in the household of the ancestors of Mary Todd who many years afterward made the cake for Abraham Lincoln after she became his wife, he declared this white cake was the best in Kentucky. Here is Mary Todd's recipe with modern baking instructions included:

    1 cupful of butter         Whites of 6 eggs
    2 cupfuls of Sugar         1 Teaspoonful of Vanilla
    1 cupful of milk             or other flavoring as
    3 cupfuls of flour           as preferred
    3 teaspoonsful of          1 Cupful of chopped blanched
      baking powder              Almonds

Cream the butter well, add the sugar and cream again, sift flour and baking powder together, add to butter and sugar alternately with milk. Then stir in the chopped nut meats and beat well, finally fold in the stiffly beaten whites of the eggs, pour into a well greases, paper-lined pan and bake one hour in a moderate oven.




Using a MORTAR & PESTAL , pulverize almonds until they resemble coarse flour.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a cake pan.
With a wooden spoon , cream butter and sugar until light yellow in color and fluffy.
Sift flour and baking powder three times. (I don’t make a rule of this practice, but with three cups of flour, it seemed like a good idea to incorporate some air and help make this cake as light as possible.
Fold flour mix into creamed butter and sugar, alternating with milk, until well blended. Stir in almonds and beat well.
In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until they have stiff, firm peaks. (Use egg yolks for another use – French toast, possibly?) Your FORK  or WHISK  must be washed and dried thoroughly before whipping egg whites or they will not stiffen properly. Fold egg whites gently into batter with a wooden spatula. Add vanilla extract.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for one hour, or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Cool for at least 20 minutes before inverting, then allow to completely cool before serving. Sift confectioners’ sugar on top.
Makes about 12 slices.