Moonshine Whiskey Cake

This recipe comes from Sidney Saylor Farr's cookbook More Than Moonshine (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983). If you can find a copy of that great book, snap it up. More Than Moonshine has set a high standard for Appalachian cookbooks. The author's memoirs that help shape the book give readers an all-around view of the food and the cultures of some people in parts of Appalachia. I have referred to this book many times on this blog. You can live in Appalachia for generations and never know anyone who makes, runs, or sells moonshine.  

The first question we're going to get here is where to get moonshine from. The easy answer is that you can get a basic still and the necessary ingredients to make a passable moonshine over the mail for less than $300. You can ask around and find someone making moonshine these days without much trouble; it's more common than you might think. You can purchase products in liquor stores being marketed as moonshine, and some small-batch distillers do over-the-mail sales. Kentucky Mist in Whitesburg, KY. is one of the better companies, and buying products from that area now will help the community, but I know that someone is going to criticize me for mentioning a company supported by the reactionary Rand Paul. The last and most practical option is to not use moonshine. I'm pretty sure that a brandy will work.

None of this is to say that you should be consuming alcohol. I hardly drink at all these days, and my wallet, my mind, my body, and my spirit can tell the difference. There are plenty of other great cakes that you can make and enjoy without alcohol. I would not consider it good manners to offer this cake to guests unless the host absolutely knew beforehand that their guests drank spirits and did so without problems and in moderation and that someone who didn't touch alcohol was going to get them home. Respect sobriety and build it into our cultures.

You are going to need the following ingredients:

1 pound sugar (2 1/4 cups)
1/2 pound butter
1 pound flour (4 cups, sifted)
2 teaspoons nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 eggs, separated
1 cup (or more) moonshine
1 1/2 pounds white raisins
1 pound chopped pecans

(I have known people to soak the raisins in moonshine ahead of time, but the recipe does not call for that.)

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Cream the sugar and the butter. Put your flour in a pan and set in a slow oven until its lightly browned. (I have always taken "slow oven" to mean the oven as it is heating up.) Sift your flour with the nutmeg and baking powder. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately. Add your cup of moonshine to the egg yolks, mix that up, then stir in the butter and sugar mixture and beat until well blended. Blend your dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Stir in your raisins and nuts and pour all of that into a buttered and lightly floured tube pan. Bake this for 3 hours. Have a pan of water under the cake for the first half of the baking time.

You can add more moonshine to the cake when it comes out of the oven and is still hot, but don't drown the cake in moonshine. If you do this, do it slowly and carefully. Either way, put the cake in an airtight tin, put the tin in a cool place and out of the reach of the young ones, and leave it alone 'til we have holidays.

This is a sort-of poor person's fruitcake, I guess, but without the weight to it. My grandmother made a cake like this in the summer for Christmastime. She kept her cakes in an outbuilding that had no electricity. My father would get out there and cut a slice once in awhile when he was a boy. One year there was only a tiny square left by Christmas.