The Old-School Cake That Was Created To Encourage Voters

People deal with stress in different ways. Let's say, hypothetically, that there's an election coming up, one with enormously high stakes that will affect your life for years to come. (An outlandish example, to be sure, but we trust you to use your imaginations.

) How do you manage the gnawing, creeping dread? Do you tune it all out and focus on another hobby, or do you obsessively scroll through the social media feeds of election pundits to give yourself some modicum of control? Well, if you want to try something new, you can always bake an election cake — a practice dating back to the very birth of our country. You might be expecting one of those flag cakes where the Stars and Stripes are made out of berries and cream, the kind that goes with . But election cake is a lot less ostentatious.



In fact, it's basically just fruitcake made from various dried fruits (including currants, raisins, and the occasional prune) as well as copious amounts of liquor, like brandy or whiskey. The result is a rich, boozy cake, not overly sweet, that would be equally as welcome at breakfast as it would at dessert. It goes without saying that it would go hard when paired with a good cup of coffee, too — perhaps .

Election cake started life as muster cake in the Revolutionary War Before it was election cake, however, it was muster cake. See, in the days before the Revolutionary War, militia men would be ordered by the British to "muster," or to gather and train for a few days. These men would, of course, need to be fed, and even 18th-century colonists conscripted by the British Army wanted their sweet little treats.

(Not even , was immune.) As such, plenty of muster cakes were made at once. After the war, of course, America became a fledgling democracy, for rich white male landowners, anyway.

Women were left out in the lurch, as they would be (at least at the federal level) until the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. So, in order to have at least some involvement in the democratic process, women in New England would bake election cakes and bring them to polling places. This had the effect of boosting turnout, as well as occasionally swinging a few votes.

If you'd like to make it yourself, be warned: A lot of the older recipes were designed to make massive quantities of election cake. So, unless you want to be eating fruitcake until the next presidential election, you would be wise to divide your recipe. Recommended.