Five Cakes–and a New Mill
 

We recently acquired a beautiful antique stone mill from the highlands of North Carolina just for you. It has hand-dressed pink granite stones for close cold milling ‘00’ and ‘000’ heirloom flours, and uses the same design and stones that milled fresh new crop flours in the 19th century. It is also a gravity mill (meaning that grains fall between the mill stones without air movement), and operates better and more slowly than our former wheat mill, actually speeding hand production and increasing our capacity to process heirloom bread, cake, and biscuit flours. The mill is so quiet and turns so slowly we barely hear it running, but the aromas issuing from its rotating stones are sweet and redolent of a wheat field after summer rain. Sometimes we just pause to take it all in. The new mill also came with hand bolters (sifters) that self-chill to retain heirloom goodness. We continue to honor our artisan system, of course. Instead of electric eye controls, our millers work by hand, the old way. These millers also farm many of our grains themselves and have a keen sense of the quality we seek. This same team hand-bolts and cold vac-packs every pound of heirloom flour we produce. We thought it would be nice for you to know our wheat millers by name, so please meet Kevin, Chuck, Daryl, Eufren, Balthazar, and Jason. At Anson Mills, people mill for you. Welcome back to the Old World.



But now let’s have some cake. Plain, fancy, chocolate, vanilla, rolls, slabs, layers, or loaves, we have cake. Here are five of our favorites.

Coconut Layer Cake
 

Redeveloped during stay-at-home April and more delectable than ever, this four-layer extravaganza features a moist vanilla butter cake base, light German buttercream, and plenty of both toasted and snowy-white coconut.

For those who think frosting is overrated, this elegant tea cake agrees. It flaunts flecks of fine yellow cornmeal and carries traces of Madeira and orange flower water to emphasize the point.

Outrageously Good Chocolate Layer Cake




 

Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Cake

This humble nubby oat cake is crowned with a lavish broiled topping of pecans, brown sugar, and coconut. A perfect spoil-your-dinner snack.

A classic tender sponge roll with strawberry cream, this cake is pure summer sundress on a hot summer day.

 Click the pics to see the recipes.