South Carolina - The Palmetto State, State flower: Carolina Jessamin

1. Mixed Green and Watercress Salad
2. Charleston Benne Chicken
3. Green Peas with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms
4. Lady Baltimore Cake

Lady Baltimore Cake

½ lb sweet butter
2 cups sugar
3-½ cups cake flour
4 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 cup milk
¼ tsp almond extract
8 egg whites
Pinch of cream of tartar, not if using copper bowl
Butter and flour for cake tins

FILLING:

1 cup chopped mixed nuts
½ cups raisins, brown and yellow mixed
8 dried figs
¼ cup sherry or rum (optional)

ICING:

3 egg whites
1-1/8 cups sugar
4 Tbsp cold water or substitute with 1 Tbsp rum or brandy
½ tsp cream of tartar, not if using copper bowl
1-½ tsp vanilla extract, less if liquor is used

GARNISH:

Pecan halves

Preheat oven to 375ºIn a large bowl cream the butter, add the sugar slowly and beat until fluffy. Sift the flour before measuring; then sift again with the baking powder and salt. Add flour alternately with the milk and finally the almond extract and beat batter until smooth and light. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar (unless using a copper egg whites bowl) until stiff but not dry. Mix well one fourth of the whites into the batter, then fold in the rest.

Butter well three 9" cake tins, dust with flour and sake out excess. Turn equal amounts of the batter into the tins and bake for 25 minutes. Cool on racks.

Prepare the filling: Chop nuts, raisins and figs together; if you like, steep them in sherry or rum for awhile, then drain. Spread equal amounts of filling on the top of two layers, then, place one over the other. Add the third layer.

Prepare the icing: Mix egg whites, sugar, water (with rum or brandy if desired), cream of tartar and salt in the top of a double boiler and place over boiling water. Beat continuously for 7 minutes, maybe a bit more, until the mixture will stand in peaks when beater is lifted and turned up. Remove from heat. When cool, add vanilla. Spread generously over the top and sides of cake. Decorate cake with halved pecans and a little wheel of pecans in the middle.

NOTE: It seems to be true that novelist Owen Wister, tarrying in Charleston, was so taken by the city and a cake he first ate there that he borrowed the name of the cake for the title of his 1906 romance, Lady Baltimore. It may also be true that the Lady Baltimore Tea Room for a quarter century annually baked and shipped to Owen Wister one of the cakes his novel had helped to make famous.

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