Lucinda lives in West Virginia now, but she grew up in Sweet Home Alabama – and don’t you know…we have so many things in common. Why, I checked just now and she even put up a post about sweet Eugene Walter last week! And how can you not like a person who has a blog called Cookbook of the Day. Seriously. A week or two ago she did a whole series of cookbooks from Alabama chefs. Lately? She’s been on Ina Garten cookbooks.
When I was a little girl in Alabama …
my great aunts baked a cake nearly every day. They always saved some batter to make a little cake for me. Once Aunt Ruth found an old wood cheese box with three compartments. She lined it with an old grocery sack and poured in the extra batter for my little cake, three cakes this time. They were almost too beautiful to eat!
Years later I found a piece of that old box and looked for a replacement. I found the same Cloverleaf cheese box. When I baked in it, my cake was as beautiful as the ones I remembered. I started baking in any wood box I could find.
Friends loved the boxes and asked me where to get their own. So Lucinda’s Wood Cake Boxes was born. I hope you love baking in them as much as I do.
So of course I had to try it. Thing is, you can’t bake in the box above 300* so any recipe will have to have its time increased (which is not a bad thing – when you cook at 300*, if you have anything like chocolate chips in the batter, they are a lot better about retaining their shape rather than just completely melting into nothingness. It’s a preference thing, but fun to play with.).
