Mrs. Meggett's Sour Cream Cake Saves the Day

Emily Meggett (November 19, 1932-April 21, 2023) was a chef and community leader who embodied the traditions, knowledge and foodways of her community. For 89 years, she cooked without recipes and, in her own words, ‘by her brain, and her hand, and her heart’ before authoring Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island.

April 20th, 2023

It had been a shitty day and halfway into a glass of not very good Tempranillo I decided that baking a cake would make me feel better. I had yet to cook from it, but Gullah Geechee Home Cooking came to my mind for some reason and Mrs. Meggett’s Sour Cream Cake ended up the perfect choice. I got to use my bundt pan for one, which connects me to people missed and loved

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There are these cheap, coated aluminum bundt pans—they are a dull, Campbell’s tomato soup red—that you can get at the grocery or dollar store. This is my bundt pan because it was the kind of pan my mom used to make her famous rum cake (you can find me recreating that cake for Wisconsin Public Television here). My grandmother baked in these too. And just like Mary Lou Williams was fond of the busted pianos she’d find waiting at her early juke joint gigs because of the way they challenged her artistically, so too, am I fond of these bundt pans—dinged up, cheap, and uneven conductors of heat though they may be.

Some bundts shape cakes that look like tiered sand castles and others create mesmerizing Nordic swirls that pull white icing between sharp crevices like icy mountain streams. Cakes baked in this pan don’t make those kind of pictures. These here are lumpy hillocks, but there is a simple beauty to them that extends for me beyond what an iPhone can capture.

In opening this ritual, I start with a clean kitchen. Butcher block scrubbed and energy cleared, I set out stainless steel and glass bowls for dry and wet and utensils in orderly rows. I preheat my oven. I turn on a moody Spotify mix that includes late career Billie Holiday, The Katy, and Hermanos Gutierez. I settle into a slower rhythm. My breath deepens. I call my mom and grandmother into the room by prepping the bundt and feel more grounded immediately.

In line with the tradition of which it is part, this recipe calls for simple ingredients. I have everything on hand: sugar, cake flour, eggs, sour cream, butter and a bit of salt and powder. I measure out my mise, pound the butter with a rolling pin to soften it (therapeutic) and give the fridge-cold eggs a little bath to bring them to room temperature.

The instructions too, are uncomplicated—technique enough to guide a focus on craft. In addition to its knowing and elegant simplicity, I think what made this such a perfect project for a rough day was that Mrs. Meggett trusted me to know how to make the cake. After a day of micro- and passive- aggressions, demands, and backhanded recognition only in terms of what I hadn’t done, her confidence in me felt like a hug (I never met her but she seemed like the kind of person who gave and received them freely. The ever-brilliant Clay Williams’s photos of her suggest this.).

She told me just what I needed—nothing more. I was asked to prep my pan, not told how. And to “mix together” the batter—nothing, really, about the color or texture I was looking for or the amount of time or speed. She is quoted in her book as saying “At this house, there are no guests—just friends and family.” Between my bundt pan and her reassuring tone, I baked that night with family and with an experienced friend.

I don’t always, but I took the time to crack each egg into a shallow bowl in search of shell fragments before adding it to the batter. I scraped my bowl after each addition. I added the dry in three quick batches and then the sour cream—careful not to over mix. I spooned the beautiful batter into my beautiful prepared, dinged up aluminum bundt pan and set it in the oven.

The care taken and love put in paid off. This is an elegant and rich cake. I took it to work the next day and shared the love Mrs. Meggett had shared with me with the people who had been trying to drive me insane the previous day. Elsewhere in the book she notes, “Making something out of nothing was our specialty. …Whether it was food or clothes, [we’d] take the littlest thing and turn it into gold” I feel grateful to be able to participate in and pay this ancestral alchemy forward.

Everything I have read and seen about Emily Meggett testifies to the ways she loved her community and was loved back. The process of baking her Sour Cream Cake reminded me of who I am, the people I’m connected to, the kind of care I care about. It pulled me away from a temptation after a shitty day to drink too much bad wine and to dissociate in front of bad tv and instead put me squarely back in my body: baking by my brain, and my hand, and my heart.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Meggett and in the power of the connection, care, and deep hospitality you modeled for us.

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So how about you? What are your shitty day baking rituals? xx