Now that the January 6 Select Committee has begun the hearings we’ve been waiting for, there are more mentions of a prior scandal (fifty years ago!) in the zeitgeist. But I never expected a culinary one. Yet The Washington Post went there. Did you all know about Watergate Cake? The recipe is very much an artifact of the 1970s…and I don’t say that as a compliment.
Check this out:
After it became a crime, Watergate became a cake
The Watergate cake, retro as shag carpet and innocuous as the Carpenters, is all about ease. The base is a box of white cake mix, a box of instant pistachio pudding mix, 7-Up — remember, this was decades ago in the Midwest — some eggs, walnuts and vegetable oil. Basically, you open several packages, crack a few eggs, chop some “nutmeats” as the recipe reads, and stir everything together. Slide the batter into the oven for 30 minutes, and what’s to stop a cake with a whiff of intrigue from rising? The topping is another box of instant pudding mix combined with Cool Whip, which explains the dessert’s durability. Cool Whip is like Aqua Net in its ability to hold — not that the Watergate cake ever lasts long after it’s served. One slice easily leads to another. For a cake, it’s surprisingly refreshing.
In short, it’s a sea foam green cake with sea foam green icing of the artificial variety.
Apparently, there is a Watergate salad, too. Imagine, crushed pineapple, miniature marshmallows (of course!), and more pistachio pudding mix (natch).
More from the article:
Back then, the owner of Watergate Pastry put a mile between the easy-breezy dessert and his shop’s selections. “We haven’t invented anything to which we’d attach a name like that,” Harold Giesinger all but sniffed in print. “A private source may have put it together.”
Joseph Rodota, author of “The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address” (William Morrow, 2018), says “the lack of answer is fitting“ in the scheme of things. "The bakery, like the hotel, was quite upscale. A cake made with cheap ingredients was off-brand for a hotel known for luxury and privacy.” Yet it was also part of “Watergate consumerism” that swept the country at the time, he says, noting that a retail shop in the complex sold ties with plastic bugs on them. (Rodota has tried the dessert, which the native Californian thinks of as “a pistachio version of olive oil cake.”)
All which begs the question, when all the connected scandals of the Trump era in Washington are done and dusted, will there be a memorial recipe? If so, what would it be like?
Whatever it might be, I don’t think I could eat it. I would choke!
The weekend begins now. Come in, be comfortable, and share your day, your weekend plans, your menus. Let’s talk about last night’s hearing! This is an open thread.