The History of Lane Cake

Lane Cake was created by Emma Rylander Lane of Clayton, Alabama. In the late 1800s, she won first prize with it at a county fair in Columbus, Georgia, and after that, it was often referred to as Prize Cake. In 1898, she self-published a cookbook called Some Good Things to Eat, in which she shared the recipe and referred to it as Prize Cake (although Lane Cake is the name that stuck over the following decades). Lane Cake soon became popular throughout the South and is still often made for Christmas celebrations. It is also famously mentioned several times in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960. In December 1967, Emma Rylander Lane’s original recipe for Lane Cake was published in an article written by Cecily Brownstone for the Associated Press; the recipe was supplied by Lane’s granddaughter, Emma Rylander Law. Today, Lane Cake remains a popular Southern classic, although it isn’t as well-known outside of the region.