Blast from the Past

As I have mentioned, my mother was (and remains to this day) an avid cook and baker, and much of my childhood was spent in the kitchen, watching her leaf through her notebooks to refresh her memory of some recipe. This spring, when she came to help me with my newborn, I asked her to bring along her recipe notebooks and together we took a trip down memory lane.

Among the notes were the recipes for Paul Robeson layer cake and Angela Davis cake. The Angela Davis cake I remembered, although it wasn’t made often (as my mom commented, “It required a whole cup of blackcurrant jam, and I was too stingy to use it in baking”). The Paul Robeson concoction didn’t ring a bell, so I did some online searching, and here’s the story.

Paul Robeson, born in April of 1898, was an American singer and actor and a political activist, whose sympathies for the Soviet Union and communism caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He first visited the Soviet Union in 1934, and toured the country giving concerts. In 1952 he received the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples. Even though the last time he visited Soviet Union was in 1961, he was lionized by Soviet propaganda for his pro-Soviet views and his criticism of the way the blacks were treated in the United States. The Soviet Ministry of Culture released his records, and he had a tanker, a breed of tomatoes, and even lilacs named in his honor, along with a huge stone near Abkhazia’s Lake Ritsa, where he supposedly performed. Another sign of his popularity was a chocolate layer cake beloved by Soviet amateur bakers.

I have been unable to find any information about when this cake was created or by whom. Some sources claim that its popularity began to wane after Robeson’s death in 1976, while others put its peak in the 1980s. The latter version seems more plausible, because the late 1970s and early 1980s are, in my mind, the heyday of domestic Soviet baking. In the 1960s, most Soviets were still too poor, and the late 1980s were a time of such scarcity that it likely did not engender any sort of creative baking spree among Soviet housewives. But earlier in this decade was when people often exchanged recipes and actually baked at home.

In the US today this recipe would probably be branded racist, because it was obviously called “Paul Robeson” on account of the dark color of its layers and the whiteness of its cream filling (meant to signify the whiteness of Robeson’s teeth), but in the late Soviet Union, where, officially at least, there was no outward racism and the propaganda proclaimed equality of all peoples, this seemed like a natural way to celebrate the popular singer. Like most Soviet recipes, it calls for simple ingredients that would be available to anyone, but the result is quite sumptuous.

Paul Robeson Layer Cake

Batter

2 cups flour
3-4 Tbsp cocoa
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
6 Tbsp butter
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 cup kefir (you may also use plain yogurt)

Frosting

2 cups heavy sour cream
approx. 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
¼ cup walnuts, briefly pulsed in a blender

All the ingredients for the batter should be at room temperature, so remove the eggs and kefir from the refrigerator a few hours before you start, and melt the butter, so that it has time to cool to room temperature.

Whisk 2 eggs with the sugar for 4-5 minutes, until the sugar dissolves. Add in the melted butter and beat for another 15-20 seconds. Then mix in the kefir.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and cocoa. Mix the dry and wet ingredients thoroughly and add the baking soda. To avoid the soda’s aftertaste in the dough, Soviet cooks would hydrate it with vinegar (hold the spoon with baking soda above a bowl, pour some vinegar into the spoon, pour off the bubbling mixture into the bowl, pour more vinegar onto the remaining soda, repeat).

Bake the cake in a single 8-9 inch springform pan lined with parchment. Make sure that the parchment extends above the edges, because the cake will be rather high. Bake at 350° F for at least 40 minutes, but it may take longer, due to the thickness of the cake. Don’t worry about the dome and cracks on top as the top layer will be cut off and made into crumbs.

Once the cake is baked, take it out of the springform pan and cool it fully on a rack.

For the frosting, beat together the sour cream and confectioner’s sugar, then mix in the walnuts. Cool in the refrigerator for at least ½ hour.

Assembly: Use a long, sharp knife or a piece of string to cut the cake into three flat layers of equal thickness, and one thinner top layer. Break up the domed top layer into crumbs. Frost between the layers and on top of the cake, and then decorate the top with the crumbs. Refrigerate overnight. Enjoy in the morning with coffee or tea.