According to state historian Walter Woodward, years ago there was a Connecticut Election Cake recipe.

The newer recipe I found, “A Modern Election Cake Recipe,” looks like a half birthday cake, half fruit cake. It calls for yeast, some butter and buttermilk (the latter of my favorite add-ins for all cakes), vanilla, eggs, and so on. Like a fruit cake, you add golden raisins and a quarter cup of dried fruit. And, like a yeast bread, the batter must be allowed to rise for 1 ½ hours in a Bundt pan. I kept thinking how difficult it would be for that yeast to do its job, rising with all that heavy fruit pushing it down. Also, like a fruit cake, it is topped with a glaze.

I am not terribly fond of fruit cake. I think about that joke about fruit cake: you know, there is only one fruit cake and it just gets re-sent every year.

I do love the idea of an election cake these days, what with a wild election, a pandemic and more time spent in the kitchen. Also, Adam Young, of Mystic’s Sift Bakery, will be judging a non-partisan cake contest. We will find out who won on Nov. 2 (after this has gone to the printer), but I will guess that it won’t be the election cake Amelia Simmons wrote about in 1796.

In any case, for your Nov. 3 election get-together (social distancing, masks please), why not make any cake you like, glaze it or frost it with five-minute or chocolate icing or perhaps a decadent buttercream. I like the recipe below, from Southern Living. I would drizzle it with dark chocolate. You could make it as cupcakes. If you frost it, you might use a pure extract in the frosting, like almond or pecan. Or, what the heck, it’s your house; paint the frosting blue or red!

Million Dollar Pound Cake

From Southern Living magazine

Serves 10 to 12

1 pound butter, softened

3 cups sugar

6 large eggs

4 cups all-purpose flour (White Lily if you have it)

¾ cups milk

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy and lighter in color, 1 to 7 minutes depending on the power of your mixer. Gradually add sugar, beating at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating just until yellow yolk disappears.

Add flour to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat at low speed until mixture blends after each addition. (The batter should be smooth and bits of flour should be well incorporated to rid batter of lumps.) Stir gently with a rubber spatula. Stir in extracts.

Pour into a greased and floured 10-inch pan. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 40 minutes, or until a long wooden pick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on the wire rack.

On the Side

What to do these days if you have extra time, no place to go and have put things off for months or even years? So, over the end of September and early October, I had cataract surgery. This involved many presurgery visits to my ophthalmologist's office, two surgeries, two next-day visits and then one more to go for a new prescription.

Most took place at my eye guy's office in Norwich. And that, of course, required a visit or two at Dixie Donuts, only five blocks away. I used to bring them to my dentist's office, which a trip required a drive from Old Lyme to Norwich to Groton.

These donuts, made on site, are worth the trip. Recently, I bought a coffee roll, as big as a large man's palm, and ate in for two days. I also bought a dozen each to my doctor's office and to the staff at Waterford surgery center. Too bad I may not need glasses anymore.

Dixie Donuts

275 West Town St., Norwich

(860) 889-8992

Lee White lives in Groton.