Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, interest in election cake resurfaced from its heyday more than 200 years ago. While mentions of the cake predate the American Revolution, the first-known published recipe is in the 1796 book “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons. That yeast-risen butter cake called for a pint of wine and quart of brandy, which sounds pretty great.
Election cake is a sturdy dessert that takes days to prepare and lasts for weeks, so it may have been just the thing to prepare while waiting for results. Waiting’s the one sure thing in any election, and the same is true of baking. Whatever goes in the oven takes time, and among baked goods, cookies are the least likely to fail.
Cakes require more attention than cookies, the easiest of which call for only dropping dough on a baking sheet. If you’re new to baking or distracted while in the kitchen, your cookies will come out fine, even if they’re shaped like amoebas. Chocolate chip cookies, invented nearly a century ago by Ruth Wakefield in Massachusetts, seem like the obvious choice, ideal for just about every occasion, but the fleeting high they induce doesn’t feel right for Election Day. Instead, these chewy brown butter cookies sustain with a grounded maple sweetness and strata of buttery richness.
They’re designed for Election Day baking: The recipe can be made in stages (during breaks from watching results roll in), and both raw dough and baked rounds last for weeks in the freezer. They also reflect tastes beloved in America at this moment, chewy and toasty with brown butter and edged with salt, nutty with Southern pecans and autumnal with Northern maple syrup.
