Piece of Cake

A true story by Erick Sahler

— Mr. Shaler, let me tell you one thing, the female caller snapped. The MEN on Tangier Island cook better than the WOMEN on Smith Island.

Clikkup.

A few seconds later my phone chirped again.

— Newsroom. This is Erick

— Is this Erick Shaler?

— Umm — this is Erick Sahler

— Mr. Shaler, I want to warn you, a man said. There’s a pack a ladies gettin’ on the mailboat. They’re mad as hornets and they’re headed your way

So began my morning on Monday, Oct. 4, 2004. The day before, the Salisbury newspaper published the 74th of 159 editorial cartoons I drew from 2003 to 2006.

But this story actually starts more than a decade earlier. And it’s really more about my wife than me.

Tracy was writing food features when we began dating in 1990. She had moved here from Colorado and I encouraged her indoctrination into Eastern Shore cuisine. We spent our free time wandering the backroads and eating what the locals ate, including chicken barbecue, stewed muskrat and lots and lots of seafood.

For our first Christmas together, I presented her a copy of “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook,” originally published in 1981 and still available in its seventh printing today.

An island native, Frances Kitching had grown famous for her down-home Eastern Shore feasts thanks to stories by food writers from the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post. Her meals included crab loaf, oyster puffs, pan-browned wild duck, baked rockfish and crispy crab cakes. The actor Sylvester Stallone, arriving by helicopter with a party of 12, had once dined at her table, as had the entirety of Washington’s NFL football team.

Mrs. Kitching’s granddaughter, Joanne, who worked with us at the newspaper, secretly shuttled the cookbook to Smith Island to be signed.

“To Tracy. God bless. From my kitchen to yours. Frances Kitching 12/25/90” is inscribed on the title page in blue ball-point ink.

Several years later, Mrs. Kitching agreed to be featured in a story about Smith Island cake that Tracy was writing for the Baltimore Sun.

Smith Island cake is made of 10 thin layers — traditionally yellow cake — with a delicate coating of icing in-between — usually chocolate. Making one is labor intensive, but the result is a sweet rich moist cake. Eating a slice is an unforgettably sensual experience.

Back then, the cakes were not well known. Even on Smith Island, pies were the preferred dessert. In fact, Mrs. Kitching didn’t include a Smith Island cake recipe in the first five printings of her cookbook.

So Tracy gathered the prescribed ingredients and sailed on the mailboat to Smith Island. Over the next three hours she recorded the from-scratch instructions as Mrs. Kitching worked in her kitchen. The famous cook had never written down the recipe.

It became Tracy’s most far-reaching food story, and she republished Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island cake recipe in her food column in the Salisbury paper for years as readers continued to request it.

Over the next decade, the popularity of the Smith Island cake exploded.

Tidewater Publishers printed a sixth edition of “Mrs. Kitching’s Smith Island Cookbook,” replacing a full-page black-and-white photo of a crab shanty on Page 110 with the exact Smith Island cake recipe Tracy wrote for the Baltimore Sun. A large gold sticker on the cover proclaimed “Smith Island Ten-Layer Cake Recipe Added.”

Smith Island Cake popped up on restaurant dessert menus across the mid-Atlantic region.

Businesses were launched in Crisfield and Salisbury to sell Smith Island cakes, which were available for shipping all around the globe.

At the statehouse in Annapolis, it was declared Maryland’s official state dessert.

And so it was, I was chatting with a group of fellas at a birthday party in the summer of 2004, where not one, not two, but three(!) different varieties of Smith Island cake were served.

— Ten years ago, nobody’d ever heard of Smith Island cake, now they’re everywhere, I said. You suppose there’s a Tangier Island cake, too? What would that be?

— A box a Tastykakes! one fella shot back

We roared!

A few weeks later, after I had turned that snippet of conversation into an editorial cartoon for the Salisbury newspaper, the folks on Tangier Island were not amused. In fact, they were downright ornery and they let me know it. I received threatening phone calls and letters for days.

Now they say there’s a little truth in every joke. But to be honest, I know nothing about the ability of the cooks on Tangier Island. We ate a fried seafood meal while taking my in-laws there on a day trip once. It was sufficient. I don’t remember dessert.

So to those on Tangier Island who were offended by the juvenile sense of humor in my cartoon, I apologize in full.

It wasn’t personal. I was just trying to be funny.

There. It’s done.

Piece of cake.