Recipes By Martha Meadows

NYT Cooking

Chocolate Little Layer Cake

This recipe came to The New York Times in 2009 from Martha Meadows of somewhere between Slocomb and Hartford, Ala., where the worth of a cook can be measured in cake layers. In this corner of the country, everyone knows whose cakes are tender and whose consistently reach 12 thin layers or more. Ms. Meadows learned to bake 15-layer cakes from her mother, who cooked each layer one at a time in a cast-iron hoe-cake pan. The cake is frosted with warm boiled chocolate icing. Here is our tribute to that.