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Certainly, there is such a thing as a real “Italian” cream cake, a ricotta- and fruit-fi lled dessert you can fi nd in true
Italian bakeries. But the American Italian cream cake is another 20th-century Southern invention: dense, covered
in cream cheese frosting, and packed with some Southern favorites (coconut and pecans). Rumors and good recipes
spread like wildfi re in the South, so we don’t know who invented it or when exactly it came to be. The most debated
factor of an Italian cream cake is its coconut-to-pecan ratio. Whatever the baker’s preference, there must be both,
preferably packed in the cake layers and on the frosting. Because that’s the true American-Southern-Italian way.
Italian Cream Cake