How to make Brooks Cake
Posted on | September 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Brooks Cake Recipe
To raise funds for the antislavery cause, Mary Brooks baked and sold
her signature tea cake, widely known as Brooks Cake. It was served at
all Concord anti-slavery meetings. This tea cake tastes great with jam.
Ingredients
One pound flour (4 cups)
One pound sugar (2 cups)
Half pound butter (2 sticks)
Four eggs
One cup milk
One teaspoonful baking soda
Half-teaspoonful cream of tartar
Half-pound currants (8 ounces), add in half of it
Makes two loaves
(Directions not given in original recipe.)
This makes two loaves; and, if such faithful hands and careful eyes as
hers attend to its making, it will be fit for the banquet of the gods. The
devoted woman lived to see the cause for which she so earnestly
labored as successful as was always her recipe for “Brooks Cake.”
— from the writings of William S. Robinson, 1877
Notes:
Mary Merrick Brooks was the daughter of a slave owner, the wife of a conservative senator, and the leading, most persistent abolitionist in town! The Brooks house was moved from its original site where the main Concord library now stands, to 45 Hubbard St. in 1872.