Feasting on Art

Growing up in the Midwest, cookies played a major part of my December. Throughout the holiday season, we gathered at my grandparent’s home for various parties and meals, always entering their home via the garage and past the cookies. Perched on the woodpile, the cookies lived in old tins between layers of wax paper and were kept cold by the Michigan winter. This holiday staple, a recipe by my grandmother, produces a soft and chewy cookie with a dense crumb and can easily be scaled up or down.

John Frederick Peto, The Poor Man’s Store (detail left), 1885
oil on canvas and panel, 90 x 65cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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Let me first point out that if you decide to make this cake for anyone, call it by it’s other name, ‘Mystery Cake.’ I first heard of Tomato Soup Cake when I was flipping through a Michigan cookbook when I was working at a historic village during summer break after my Freshman year of college. It was at a time in my life when I considered cooking to consist of pouring a bowl of cereal or making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I was immediately disgusted with the very idea and promptly forgot about the whole thing until I started working on this blog. I prepared this cake the day before two of my college roommates arrived here from Michigan. As soon as they were in the door I had them seated at the table with a wedge of cake, impatient for them to taste the mystery ingredient. They were both stumped, guessed it was carrot cake (it looks very similar in colour and the taste is not too far off), and seemed a bit surprised when I gleefully pulled out a can of tomato soup for the big reveal. I have to say that the entire cake is now gone so in the end the can of soup is not too much of a deterrent, after all, it is delicious.

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