Granddad Sampson's Honey Spongecake and Honey Icing

From Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine by Norma Jean and Carole Darden (1978)*


1 heaping cup of sifted cake flour
1/4 tsp salt
5 large eggs, separated
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c honey
1/4 c hot water
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp grated lemon rind
3/4 tsp cream of tartar

Sift flour and salt together and set aside.  Beat egg yolks until frothy, stir in sugar, honey, hot water, vanilla and lemon rind until well blended.  Add flour mixture.  In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until foamy.  Add cream of tartar.  Continue beating until stiff peaks form.  Fold into batter mixture.  Pour batter into a lightly greased 9" tube cake pan and bake in preheated 325 degree oven for 50 min.  When cool, dust with powdered sugar or frost with Honey Icing.


Honey Icing

2 tblsp softened butter
2 tblsp honey
2 c confectioner's sugar
Drop of vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 egg white (unbeaten)

Cream the butter and honey together, adding 1/2 c of the sugar, drop of vanilla and salt.  Stir well, add egg white and remainder of sugar.  Beat until smooth, and ice honey cake.


*a collection of maternal and paternal family recipes, with mini-bios of the Darden ancestors, family and friends.  An excerpt from the bio of the Darden sisters' maternal grandfather, William Sampson:  "William Sampson was born in Kentucky in approximately 1865.  He lived with the Percivals, a wealthy white family who had taken him into their home to be raised as a houseboy.  He had no knowledge of his own family except a vague memory of being part of a large family.  He was told that he had been given away by his mother to a stranger who appeared at their door when he was three years old.  Grandaddy assumed he was given away in this manner because his family could not afford to care for him.  But he was never able to gather any information from the Percivals about his true origins, nor the identity of the stranger who brought him to their home, or even if William Sampson was his true name.  These factors were to haunt him all of his life.  As a young boy, he was aware of unconfirmed rumors among the townsfolk that he was actually the son of one of the Percivals and a servant.  The day before the will of old Mr. Percival was to be read, the courthouse mysteriously burned down, destroying the document and intensifying rumors that William Sampson, who had been summoned to the dying man's bedside, may have indeed been an heir."