Let Them Eat Cake

By Shelly Robertson Birdsong

Historically speaking, Marie Antoinette’s oft-misquoted famous line about letting the French people eat cake, has long been perceived as a sarcastic and uncaring remark, implying that starvation and misery during the French Revolution were of no concern to her. However, it is indeed misquoted or, rather, misinterpreted. Historians suggest she may have actually been calling for the people to be fed with bread, not cake. Of course, the French terminology likely got lost in translation over the years and, well… Marie Antoinette lost her head!

 

Do you find yourself losing your head over cake? Well, if you do, this is the right article for you! I found myself doing a deep dive on cakes this month—since we are all about Eat Drink & Be Merry, and I will say, of all the sweets, cake may be my favorite go-to. That is,  if it is a good cake.

 

So, what makes good cake? To me, buttercream icing atop chocolate cake wins every time, and I have found it hard to mess it up unless you are me. In which case, as I have been trying to perfect my buttercream icing for years now, you are better served to order it from one of our local fabulous bakeries. Now, I know where to go here in Williamson County for my cake fix (think Miss Daisy’s Kitchen, Puffy Muffin or Triple Crown Bakery, just to name a few), but Johnny Birdsong, ever a connoisseur of a sweet treat, has discovered Gold Belly recently and let’s just say that the international purveyor of any dessert you can think of, shipped directly to you—is by all accounts a miraculous find.

 

I went to Gold Belly’s site for some intel for this article. Having already sampled a few of the options below—how sweet is a husband who orders you a remake cake of Jackie and John F. Kennedy’s wedding cake for your birthday? I wanted to check out a few more of their offerings and learn about some of the “best cakes” in the country! Enjoy and remember: qu’ils mangent de la brioche!

Everyone knows America's best cheesecakes hail from New York. And the most popular NYC institution is known for doing it, right? That's gotta be Junior's. Famous since the day they opened in 1950, Junior’s Restaurant is a Brooklyn landmark. Harry Rosen, Junior’s founder, scraped together every dime he had to build his restaurant, naming it after his two sons. With its bright orange awnings and booths, Junior’s continues to bake cheesecakes from the same spot over sixty-five years later using the same recipe Harry perfected. Beloved by locals for years, Junior’s cheesecakes became renowned worldwide after NY Magazine conducted a blind taste test and rated Junior's as the best. Since then, Junior’s has been visited by everyone from former presidents to James Beard award-winning chefs.

 

Montilio’s has been in business near Boston since 1947, and it’s a third-generation family-owned-and-operated bakery. At Montillo’s, they’re still making all their baked goods the old-fashioned way, by hand, using only simple ingredients. Many of these recipes haven’t changed in over seventy years, and you can taste the decades of tradition in every bite.

 

New Orleans, Louisiana

Since its founding in 1959 as a small, twenty-four-hour window-service bakery by Mildred and Lloyd Haydel, Haydel’s Bakery has since become a legendary New Orleans-area institution for its wide variety of scratch-made cakes, cookies, pastries, and more family-recipe NOLA-inspired treats—and its king cakes are a Mardi Gras tradition for countless locals. Haydel’s is today run by the third generation of the Haydel family, and owner David Haydel is the only baker in Louisiana who’s internationally certified as a Craftsman and Master Baker. In 2010, Haydel even broke the Guinness World Record for the World’s Largest King Cake!

 

Spartanburg, South Carolina

It started with a Southern-style seven-layer caramel cake from an old family recipe—seven moist layers of classic yellow cake topped and filled with creamy caramel icing. Caroline Ragsdale Reutter served one such beauty at her son’s christening and soon took orders as far away as Alaska. Twenty-seven years later, the cake that launched a thousand delights is now the “Home of the World’s Best Caramel Cake,” a thriving bakery that dishes out incredibly delicious cakes alongside its signature flavors. One bite of her sweet, creamy creations and confirmation is swift: Southern girls really do do it best!