As spring the winter doth succeed
And leaves the naked trees do dress,
The earth all black is clothed in green.
At sunshine each their joy express.
Puritan Poet Anne Bradstreet, May 13, 1657.
To celebrate the arrival of spring, we're revisiting an old favorite, "Boston Cream Cake" (really they're "cakes," plural) by Catharine Beecher. These lovely little tea-time (or any time) choux pastry treats are made with lots of butter, milk, and eggs, ingredients that traditionally got better and more plentiful in the springtime. Before modern lighting and breeding, the hen's laying cycle was dictated by daylight, with production of eggs beginning in late February or March and peaking in May. Butter was of higher quality in spring, too, and milk more abundant, as dairy cattle calved and were moved from their winter quarters in barns, where they survived on grain, to fresh, green, and grassy pastures. In this prime butter-making and egg-producing season, early New Englanders who could get hold of some good flour delighted in turning out cakes, sweet breads, "small cakes" (cookies) and custards, like the kind used to fill these lovely little cakes.
In our forthcoming book, Northern Comfort, we offer an updated recipe (with scaled-down quantities) for Beecher's classic dessert. There, we point out that Beecher's version, though there were many cream cake recipes in nineteenth-century cookbooks, was the simplest, plainest, and most affordable--qualities that we think modern home cooks will appreciate today. Beecher's recipe was such a nineteenth-century hit that it was reprinted (unfortunately with incorrect attribution), as late as 1876 in The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book. We think it deserves a twenty-first century revival.
So here's a link to our earlier post on "Boston Cream Cake" and we hope you'll also check out the version of the recipe in Northern Comfort, when it comes out in November 2026. Bon appetit!