The Messy History of Emily Dickinson's Black Cake Recipe

[no_hypocrisy]

It reveals an unexpected side to the poet’s personality and the brutality that brought a Caribbean dish to New England.

Black cake is a Caribbean Christmas cake, piquant with spirits and velvety with molasses or burnt sugar. Dickinson’s recipe, written in loopy letters on age-yellowed paper, belies her biography: A dedicated baker, Emily was better known during her lifetime for her desserts than her poetry. The labor-intensive recipe, and its journey from the Caribbean to Dickinson’s elite New England milieu, reminds us of the brutal histories of colonization and enslavement that shaped her times, and the Black and immigrant domestic laborers who shaped her work and home. Dickinson’s black cake recipe also helps us reimagine Emily herself—not as the austere recluse the patriarchal literary establishment has long portrayed, but as a sensuous, socially connected woman who shared poems and cakes with family, friends, and her life-long queer love.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/emily-dickinsons-black-cake-recipe?utm_medium=atlas-page&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0gMrm1BWAk0_Goi2n6VbDv59wGtDemRST1UQLWIUsuuGyfycvu449oXuQ

[hlthe2b]

1. That article is so filled with conflicting malign motivations from so many offering up commentary,

that I don't know what to believe. It just reeks of exploitation and determined "recasting" of someone long dead, regardless of where the truth lies.

And, of course, leaves me curious about the cake, but also pretty disgusted (not at the OP, but the article).

I guess I'll stick with the occasional fruitcake. Is that still an acceptable, if not fully appreciated choice? Are the pecans, citron and candied fruit, and other ingredients the stuff of horrendous suffering of those producing--even if that suffering was a hundred or more years ago? Please do let me know. I don't want an article like this written about me more than a century after my death--because I baked a fruitcake.
sigh....

[Tomconroy]

2. Her home in Amherst is definitely worth a visit.

[madaboutharry]

3. It is now closed for extensive renovations.

A massive renovation and restoration project is underway with reopening scheduled for next summer.

[Tomconroy]

5. When I took the tour a few years ago our tour guide told us

that the day before a woman had asked if she could lie in the poet's bed alone by herself. The guide went ahead and let her do it with the door shut. The guide shook his head and said: Heaven only knows what she was doing in there.

[peacefreak2.0]

4. Maybe she was just a lady who wanted to make a cake for

her family and friends. Me? Cut me a piece and I’ll sit down and watch Wild Nights with Emily.