The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society featured an array of ‘Fruity Wonders‘ cakes from participants as young as 14, as well as entries by four different members of the same family who love to bake. Yum! Thank you to all who participated. Winners in multiple categories were announced at the meeting.
Always a popular annual event, this year’s entries included one cake which gave a nod to the speaker’s topic on Ancient Life in Alabama and was crawling with dinosaurs instead of fruit. The young baker explained that the dinosaurs were eating the fruit layer because it came into being during the age of dinosaurs! A special thanks to Trustee Carolanne Roberts who organized this event.
Please join us on Monday, February 26 at 7 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens for the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Birmingham Historical Society. President Wayne Hester will preside.
Recorded history is said to have begun with the drafting of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, approximately 5,000 years ago. Beginning in the 19th century, the study of fossils has evolved to tell a significantly longer span of earth’s history: 500 million years, i.e. “Deep Time.” Per our speaker Bill Deutsch: “Alabama has been part of this unfolding story since the modern science of Paleontology began, and fossil richness will keep it center stage.”
Deutsch will take us on a mesmerizing“Walk Through Deep Time”, unfurling Alabama’s rich fossil legacy and its connections to our history, geology, and world-class biodiversity. (Add to your FB calendar HERE)
Following Dr. Deutsch’s talk, Carolanne Roberts will announce the winners of the Fruity Wonders Cake Competition, praising our members’ creations and sharing comments from our esteemed judges.
Then, we invite you to get a copy of Ancient Life in Alabama, to chat with Bill Deutsch, sample cake, and pay 2024 Society dues. Copies of Deutsch’s book will be available for sale for $30 cash, check, or charge.
About the Author
Dr. William (“Bill”) Deutsch is a Research Fellow Emeritus in the Auburn University School of Fisheries, Agriculture, and Aquatic Sciences. The New York native holds degrees in Biology, Anthropology and Zoology, and Aquatic Ecology, the later a PhD from Auburn. During his 26 years as an aquatic ecologist in Alabama, With a longstanding interest in fossils, Deutsch participated in fossils hunting expeditions across the nation He has taught, lectured, and written widely about the natural wonders of our state, especially its rivers and its fossilsand what they can tell us about the present and times long past.
“Since moving to Alabama nearly 40 years ago, I’ve learned about its rich variety of fossils. Rock outcrops are fanned out in a relatively discernible pattern, with bands of fossils representing each geological era. The story of more than 500 million years of life is here, just under our feet. Tropical seas teemed with sharks, mosasaurs, and reef life. Coal-forming swamps ringed coastlines with huge dragonflies and millipedes, slithering amphibians, and towering horsetail plants. Dinosaurs of several types were here along with toothed birds, legged whales, rhinoceroses, mastodons, and giant sloths—the highest fossil diversity of any state east of the Mississippi River! In Alabama? Who knew? How and when did this happen?”
–-Bill Deutsch, “Preface,” Ancient Life in Alabama : The Fossils, The Finders & Why It Matters, July 2022.
“Fruit came with the flowering plants in the Mesozoic age [145 to 66 million years ago]. Late dinosaurs probably imbibed.” Bill Deutsch.
THE RULES: Bake your cake and bring the form and your cake for judging to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens Auditorium between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. on February 26.
JUDGING CATEGORIES: Most Colorful + Best Creative Use of Fruit + Best Visual Presentation +Best Flavor Profiles + Best Memory Statement + Best Overall
The annual Birmingham Historical Society meeting next year will be February 26th, 2024, at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. As always, it will include a popular cake contest (and tasting!) after the featured speaker. Judges select multiple winners with 2024 categories listed below. Memorable family recipes are always a big hit with the judges! The meeting is FREE and open to the public. So start thinking of your best recipes that are filled with fruit! Need inspiration? Lots of ideas below…
Thank you to all who shared cakes, stories, and recipes at our Annual Meeting last night. While our judges selected winners in five categories, all participants received a BLUE RIBBON for sharing a cake, as well as much appreciation from all those who attended the meeting and were able to taste them! There was a big variety and remarkably, no two cakes were alike.
Special thanks also goes to our two judges, Susan Swagler and Pam Lolley for a difficult job selecting winners. Susan is a Food, Books & Lifestyle Writer and a founding member & past president of Les Dames d’Escoffier International Birmingham and you can follow her at Savor.blog. Pam is retired from twenty years in the Southern Living test kitchen, a free lance cook, and also a member of Les Dames D’Escoffier. Thank you, judges!
Clockwise from top left on full screen: Potato Caramel Cake (most unusual cake), Caramel Cake (most vintage cake), Napoleon (most beautiful cake), Grand Aunt Mrytle’s Lane Cake (best memory cake), Miss Tinsley’s Sour Cream Pound Cake (best overall cake)
Most Unusual Cake: Potato Caramel Cake (Alleen Cater) – secret ingredient, mashed potatoes! Pam Lolley said her 20 years in the Southern Living test kitchen, she’d never heard of using mashed potatoes in a cake and it was delicious!
Most Vintage Cake: Caramel Cake (Elizabeth Hester) – this brought back wonderful childhood memories for the judges and was considered a standard in most southern kitchens
Most Beautiful Cake: Napoleon (Vasilisa Strelnikova) – the judges appreciated the care with which this cake was decorated and said the baby’s breath was a beautiful addition
Best Overall Cake: Miss Tinsley’s Sour Cream Pound Cake (Wilson Green) – the judges agreed that you can’t beat a good pound cake and this was delicious. One BHS attendee stated that Myrtle Tinsley was one of her church members and friend, a former schoolteacher, and a dynamite cook!
Best Memory Statement: Grand Aunt Mrytle’s Lane Cake (Don Cosper) -the secret ingredient was a cup of whiskey, somewhat scandalous among these Baptist bakers! This original cake recipe is one of the oldest in Alabama and was immortalized in To Kill a Mockingbird.
All the cakes were accompanied by childhood stories and we hope that one day the Birmingham Historical Society can assemble these recipes and stories into a book!
Several members of the audience recalled when President Franklin Roosevelt came to Jasper, Alabama to attend the funeral of William Bankhead. The thousands (estimated 40,000) who attended can attest to the importance of the Bankhead family’s political influence in Alabama for several generations,
While most of us know a cake walk to be a joyful celebration where the best bakers have an opportunity to show off their skills, it wasn’t always that way! In fact, the cake walk had its origins in Afro-American history:
The cakewalk was a pre-Civil War dance originally performed by slaves on plantation grounds. The uniquely American dance was first known as the “prize walk”; the prize was an elaborately decorated cake. Hence, “prize walk” is the original source for the phrases “takes the cake” and “cakewalk.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “a black American entertainment having a cake as prize for the most accomplished steps and figures in walking; a stage dance developed from walking steps and figures typically involving a high prance with backward tilt; an easy task.”
The Cakewalk seems to have begun in the days of slavery, when black folks strutted along in a fanciful manner in imitation of formal white dancing. Supposedly the name comes from the custom of the master awarding a cake to the couple who put on the best performance. The dance came back around in the twentieth century when white folks started to imitate the black version.
Drop off cakes prior to Birmingham Historical Society annual meeting on February 27th. Taste testing will follow meeting! Be sure to include a card with your name and description. More information here.
Birmingham Historical Society 