18. Description of and recipe for "Brooks Cake" (transcribed from Harriet Robinson's "Warrington" Pen-Portraits," 1877).
To raise funds for the antislavery cause, Mary Merrick Brooks baked and sold a signature tea cake, widely known as "Brooks Cake." In Warrington Pen-Portraits, Harriet Robinson wrote of this famous product:
" Mrs. Brooks (though a woman of property), desiring to earn herself the money used in the sacred cause, made cake by an unfailing recipe of her own, and sold it to her neighbors and friends: it was named for her, Brooks Cake. At every 'tea-fight' in Concord this cake was pretty sure to be found; and the gentlemen, who, in turn, entertained the Social Circle [a men's club to which Nathan Brooks belonged], were glad to avail themselves of this specialty of a member of the proscribed sex. This recipe played such an important part in the antislavery movement (by the money it earned), that I cannot forbear giving it here. When woman's work is recognized and valued as it should be, a new and good recipe will be as important a discovery as a 'new figure of speech' or a new poem.
BROOKS CAKE.—One pound flour, one pound sugar, half-pound butter, four eggs, one cup milk, one teaspoonful soda, half-teaspoonful cream of tartar, half-pound currants (in half of it).
This makes two loaves; and, if such faithful hands and careful eyes as hers attend to its making, it will be fit for the banquet of the gods. This devoted woman lived to see the cause for which she so earnestly labored as successful as was always her recipe for 'Brooks Cake'."
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