In my never ending quest to sprinkle a touch of class on our dinner table conversation, I approached the topic of current events and informed my son and husband that the Lane cake had recently been named the official State Dessert of Alabama, to which my son replied, “Lame cake?” and my husband said, “Is that all the legislature has to do?” Sigh . . . here we go again.
But after I pondered my son’s misinterpretation I had to agree this cake is kind of “lame” when it comes to representing the spirit of sweetness found in Alabama. I’m sure some consider Lane cake to be a marvelous concoction, but there have to be others like me, who view it more as a “no thank you” kind of treat.
Yes, the recipe, which originated in Clayton, Alabama and was created by Emma Lane, who I’m sure was a darling, charming and caring lady — not to mention a marvelous cook, uses native Alabama pecans, but the version I’m familiar with also includes coconut, which when shredded, always makes me think I’m eating Easter basket grass, and anyway, it screams “Hawaii” or “South Florida,” not Alabama.
The other ingredient I take great issue with, is the addition of raisins, from California no doubt. Only shifty people think it’s okay to sneak raisins into any sort of dessert. How many innocent people have mistaken raisins for chocolate chips in cookies, only to gag on the rotten, shriveled up little grape? Who as a child didn’t suck the chocolate off and spit the raisin out?
My mother tried to get me to eat raisins by telling me they would give me, “thick blood.” Mmm. Nothing like freaking out your little girl to trick her into eating rubbery beads of goo. And even though I can’t imagine eating a raisin on purpose, I too fell into the Mom trap of trying to convince my own children to eat raisins. I put the tiny little red boxes in their lunches every day, and when they came home unopened, I just left them in there for the next day. My sons now claim they had the same two boxes of raisins for eight years in a row.
Another great concern and reason to question the Lane cake as our state dessert is that it also contains enough hooch that if it were used as a birthday cake, the candles would spark a small explosion, which could prove to be risky in a state full of (public) teetotalers. When Alabama’s largest religious denomination can’t openly carry this cake to the . . . click HERE to finish the story at al.com.