A Travelogue in Recipes: A Guest Post by B. Dylan Hollis
From exploring wild and wacky recipes on TikTok to the page, B. Dylan Hollis has done it all — and now he’s taking us along for the ride across the United States. Read on for an exclusive essay from B. Dylan Hollis on writing Baking Across America.
Hardcover
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Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip (B&N Exclusive Edition)
Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip (B&N Exclusive Edition)
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$32.99
$37.99
Join B. Dylan Hollis, bestselling author of Baking Yesteryear, on a cross-country culinary journey with 100 uniquely American recipes
Join B. Dylan Hollis, bestselling author of Baking Yesteryear, on a cross-country culinary journey with 100 uniquely American recipes
I’d never knocked on the door of a State Capitol building before, and I’d certainly never
done so while covered in frosting and holding a fully assembled Lane Cake. The previous hour saw me carrying the weighty Southern belle up and down the capitol’s marble steps in the Montgomery summer heat, and the thrill of completing one of the first recipe shoots for Baking Across America must’ve overcome me with a blind confidence. I suppose I was banking on the Governor being in so I might offer her a taste–get a quick little cake rating, so to speak. I then would’ve asked for her opinion on why this once-legendary, four-layer creation of Alabama has since faded into obscurity, and if, legislatively speaking, anything might be done to revivify it into respectful modernity – besides putting it in my next book.
I later learned that this is not how you contact a Governor. A foreigner orbiting
government property with an unmitigated cake is aberrant behavior at best, and mildly
threatening at worst. In hindsight, the silence at the door made perfect sense.
Of course, the Alabama State Capitol has witnessed far more impactful moments over its
history. A reason for which its governmental duties are now largely vestigial, given that it sits atop Montgomery as a dormant, though still impressive, artifact of the past.
This is a fate shared with the Lane Cake: a Southern dessert once whistled about, cane
in hand and daycoat upon breast. But like the wearers of such coats, few unburied Alabamians remain who recognize its name.
In this manner, our shot for the Lane Cake was fitting. It was only one of the stories and
memories I made throughout the production of Baking Across America. We chased the ghosts of recipes in the South, and were chased by actual ghosts as we assembled Dirt Cakes in the parlor of a Kansas City mansion built in 1900, and seemingly never left. We slung muffins in bear-proof bags through Yellowstone National Park, and wove with plates of cookies through Boston traffic.
I’ve always felt that a vintage recipe road trip across the nation, featuring my three W’s:
the Wild, the Wacky, and the Wonderful, would make for one of the most fun reads a cookbook could offer. It wasn’t always dignified, nor was it ever particularly efficient. Baking Across America is a travelogue in recipes, and we literally baked and photographed the recipes on the road as we flew and motored from state to state. There’s a lot of magic in recipes that mean something to a place and its people, even when those places are tiny, or the people have long passed.
