Today in 2008, the state of Maryland formally recognized its official state dessert.
It’s called Smith Island Cake, yellow cake and chocolate frosting in layers and layers and layers.
And the story of the island has plenty of layers too.
Smith Island is in southeastern Maryland; it’s the only inhabited island in the Chesapeake Bay that’s only accessible by boat.
There are no bridges from the mainland and there’s no airport; water is the only way in or out.
There’s a story about a deep freeze in 1977 that froze the Bay for seven weeks.
They had to send food and supplies to the islanders by helicopter.
Pocomoke and Assateague people lived on Smith Island before English, Welsh and Cornish settlers arrived in the 1600s.
There’s a Smith Island dialect that has a lot in common with the dialects those settlers would have heard back home.
A lot of island families have depended upon fish, crabs and oysters to make a living, and that brings us back to the Smith Island Cake.
The story goes that before the men went out on the water, for days or weeks at a time, their wives would bake up fancy cakes, with eight or ten thin layers, and send slices with the fellows.
It was a little bit of home away from home, and a point of pride for local bakers, since it takes time and skill to put a cake like that together.
But, as is fitting for an official state symbol, the Smith Island Cake isn’t exclusive to locals.
There’s a bakery on the island that ships cakes out to anywhere in the country.
Today is National Homemade Cookies Day.
For baking inspiration, you might head to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
The gravestone for Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson includes a full list of ingredients for baking spitz cookies.
That recipe may be a reason why the gravestone says she was a “beloved mother, aunt, grandmother & great-grandmother.”
Maryland’s Smith Island Cake Has A Romantic History (Southern Living)
Cemetery Recipes: Spritz Cookies (Chantal Larochelle)