Kara Mae Harris, through her Old Line Plate blog, works to help preserve Maryland’s food history and culture through her hard work, dedication and love of food.
As blogger and author of Old Line Plate, she researches, shares and tests the recipes she finds online and posts her experiences on her blog. Out of this practice, she has also penned several cookbooks: “Festive Maryland Recipes” and “Old Line Plate: Stories & Recipes from Maryland”.
Here, Harris shares a local mother’s recipe, its history and why it’s fitting for Mother’s Day.
History in Baltimore
“This pound cake recipe comes from ‘Black-Eyed Susan Country: A Collection of Recipes,’ a cookbook put out by St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore. The cookbook has a lot of classic recipes including Barbara Mikulski’s crab cakes, William Donald Schaefer’s ‘Wafers,’ and recipes from other local politicians,” Harris says.
“The recipe author, Mary Batzer, was a nurse at St Agnes for 35 years. Her mother, the original source of the recipe, was named Margaret Marie Batzer. The family lived on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore.”
Is it a kid-friendly recipe?
“Learning to cream (softened) butter and sugar for a pound cake is a great way for kids to learn the basics of cake making (but you might have to finish the job if they get tired!) This cake can also be decorated, which is a fun job for kids,” Harris notes.
“Good family recipes for me are always things where you are making a lot of small things like cookies, dumplings and things like that, but it all really depends on what kids like to do. Some are crafty and might like to make perfectly-shaped cookies, some might just want to help stir a little and then watch and then, of course, there [are] kids who would rather do the eating!”
Passed down through generations
“I have this recipe in my database, which is full of recipes with ‘Mother,’ ‘Mom’ or ‘Mama’ in the name. Since the early days of cookbooks, people have been copying recipes from their mother and passing them down through generations. Pound cake is an older type of cake. It’s possible this recipe was passed down, but at some point the baking powder, which only became popular in the 1800s, was added,” Harris says.
What’s next for Old Line Plate?
“I am currently working on a very genealogy-based project of connecting recipes to people who are buried in Green Mount and Mount Auburn cemeteries,” Harris says. “By sharing the recipes, I hope to bring attention to history and to the people behind these historic sites, and their forgotten stories.”
Mother’s Pound Cake
Roughly 10 to 12 servings
Ingredients
- 1 ¾ cup butter, room temperature
- 3 cups sugar
- 5 large eggs
- 3 ¼ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°.
Grease and flour one 10-inch tube pan.
In large bowl, beat sugar and butter with electric beater at medium speed.
Add eggs one at a time, feeding thoroughly after each egg.
Add dry ingredients, alienating with milk. Add extracts; beat 2 minutes.
Pour into pan. Bake 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Cool 20 minutes on rack. Remove from pan and cool completely.
Keeps well when wrapped tightly.
—Mary Margaret Batzer, R.N.
Tyneisha Lewis is a freelance writer/journalist whose work has been featured in Baltimore Style, Baltimore’s Child, Baltimore Fishbowl and others.
