Harper Lee Recipes: 13 Alabama Dishes, From Miss Maudie’s Lane Cake to Her Own Crackling Cornbread

Harper Lee recipes start with a cake that every reader of To Kill a Mockingbird can picture. Lee grew up in Monroeville, Alabama, a small town of front porches, church suppers and cooks who baked for every visitor. In her 1960 novel, Miss Maudie Atkinson welcomes Aunt Alexandra to Maycomb with a tall Lane cake, the famous Alabama layer cake first printed by Emma Rylander Lane in 1898. Lee also shared a real recipe of her own: crackling cornbread, printed in The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook in 1961. This gallery gathers Harper Lee recipes and the Southern dishes that filled tables in her corner of Alabama, from cast iron cornbread to glossy caramel cake. Each one is a family favorite that still tastes like an Alabama holiday dinner, and every slide has an easy method you can follow at home..

Harper Lee Recipes: Miss Maudie’s Lane Cake

Miss Maudie bakes this cake in To Kill a Mockingbird to welcome Aunt Alexandra, and that one gesture made it the most famous of all Harper Lee recipes. Lane cake comes from Clayton, Alabama, where Emma Rylander Lane won a county fair prize with it before printing it in 1898. Thin white layers hold a rich, buttery filling of pecans, coconut and raisins. Our version keeps the filling family friendly with grape juice and vanilla. If you love old-fashioned coconut cakes, this is the one to bake first..

You will need: 3 cups cake flour, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup butter, 8 egg whites, 1 cup milk, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 8 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar for the filling, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup chopped pecans, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup coconut, 1/3 cup white grape juice, 1 teaspoon vanilla, boiled white frosting.

How to make it: 1. Cream butter and sugar, add flour, baking powder and milk, then fold in beaten egg whites and bake in four 9-inch pans at 350°F for 20 minutes. 2. Cook yolks, sugar and butter over low heat until thick, then stir in pecans, raisins, coconut, grape juice and vanilla. 3. Spread filling between cooled layers and finish with fluffy white frosting.

Harper Lee’s Crackling Cornbread

This is the dish Lee herself put her name to. In 1961 she sent a crackling cornbread recipe to The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook, and Smithsonian Magazine later spotlighted it for a new generation. Cracklings are the crisp bits left after rendering pork fat, and they turn plain cornbread into something salty and rich. Calpurnia’s crackling bread in the novel is the same idea. Bake it in a hot skillet and compare it with other Southern cornbread recipes you know. It is one of the Harper Lee recipes that costs almost nothing to make.

You will need: 2 cups white cornmeal, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 cups buttermilk, 1 egg, 1 cup pork cracklings, 2 tablespoons bacon drippings.

How to make it: 1. Heat the drippings in a 10-inch cast iron skillet in a 450°F oven. 2. Stir cornmeal, salt and soda with buttermilk and egg, then fold in the cracklings. 3. Pour into the sizzling skillet and bake 20 to 25 minutes until the crust is deep golden.

Scuppernong Grape Hand Pies

Late summer in south Alabama smells like scuppernongs, the big bronze muscadine grapes that climb backyard arbors and fences. Children still pop them off the vine and spit out the thick skins. Grandmothers cooked the pulp into a jammy filling and folded it into half-moon pies for church suppers and lunch pails. These hand pies are easy to carry, easy to freeze and taste like an Alabama porch in September. Find more sweet hand pies and turnovers for your baking list.

You will need: 2 cups scuppernong or muscadine grapes, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 2 rolled pie crusts, 1 egg for brushing, coarse sugar.

How to make it: 1. Squeeze pulp from the skins, simmer pulp until soft, press out the seeds, then return the chopped skins and cook with sugar and cornstarch until thick. 2. Cut 5-inch circles of dough, spoon filling on one half, fold and crimp with a fork. 3. Brush with egg, sprinkle sugar and bake at 400°F for 18 to 20 minutes.

Sunday Fried Chicken

In small Alabama towns, Sunday dinner meant a platter of fried chicken that the cook started right after church. It was the dish served to the preacher, to visiting cousins and to anyone who came by unannounced. Buttermilk keeps the meat tender and a plain flour coat fries up crisp and craggy in a heavy skillet. Nothing about it is fancy, which is exactly why it belongs among Harper Lee recipes and the Maycomb table. See how other cultures do it in our fried chicken roundup.

You will need: 1 chicken cut in 8 pieces, 2 cups buttermilk, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon black pepper, 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon paprika, shortening or oil for frying.

How to make it: 1. Soak the chicken in salted buttermilk for at least 4 hours. 2. Shake each piece in seasoned flour and rest 10 minutes. 3. Fry in 1 inch of 325°F oil in a cast iron skillet, covered for 10 minutes, then uncovered, turning until golden and 165°F inside.

Harper Lee Recipes: Old-Fashioned Tea Cakes

Tea cakes are the simple soft cookies that sat in a tin on nearly every Southern kitchen counter. They are thicker than sugar cookies, lightly crisp at the edge and tender in the middle, with a whisper of vanilla or nutmeg. Mothers in Monroeville made them by the dozen for children coming home from school. They belong with Harper Lee recipes because they are the taste of an ordinary afternoon in a small Alabama town. Explore more forgotten Southern desserts from the same era.

You will need: 1 cup butter, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 3 1/2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 tablespoons milk.

How to make it: 1. Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs, vanilla and nutmeg. 2. Mix in flour, baking powder, salt and milk, chill the dough 1 hour, roll 1/4 inch thick and cut 3-inch rounds. 3. Bake at 350°F for 10 to 12 minutes until the edges are barely golden.

Southern Pecan Pie

Alabama is pecan country, and by November every family has a bag of fresh-cracked halves waiting for the holiday pie. Pecan pie is sweet, gooey and toasty all at once, with a crisp top of nuts over a soft custard. It shows up at Thanksgiving, Christmas and every church homecoming in between. Bake it a day ahead so it slices clean. For cakes, bars and candy from the same bag of nuts, browse our grandma’s pecan desserts.

You will need: 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust, 3 eggs, 1 cup light corn syrup, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 cups pecan halves.

How to make it: 1. Whisk eggs, corn syrup, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and salt until smooth. 2. Scatter pecans in the crust and pour the filling over them. 3. Bake at 350°F for 55 to 60 minutes until the center barely jiggles, then cool at least 3 hours.

Harper Lee Recipes: Alabama Caramel Cake

Ask any Southern cook which cake shows real skill and many will say caramel cake. The icing is cooked sugar, butter and milk beaten until it turns thick, glossy and fudgy, and it has to be poured before it sets. Ladies in Alabama churches were famous for it, and a slice was the prize at every bake sale. It sits beside Lane cake among Harper Lee recipes as a true Alabama treasure. For more sticky, golden treats, see our gooey caramel desserts.

You will need: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 4 eggs, 3 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, plus for icing 3 cups sugar, 1 cup evaporated milk, 1/2 cup butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla.

How to make it: 1. Bake a classic yellow butter cake in two 9-inch pans at 350°F for 25 to 30 minutes. 2. Caramelize 1/2 cup of the icing sugar in a skillet, stir it into the remaining sugar, milk and butter, and boil to 235°F. 3. Beat in vanilla until thick, then quickly pour over the cooled layers.

Biscuits and Gravy

Breakfast in an old Alabama farmhouse started with a pan of hot biscuits. Some mornings they were split and drowned in peppery sausage gravy, other mornings they were drizzled with cane syrup. Readers of the novel may recall young Walter Cunningham pouring syrup over his entire dinner plate at the Finch table, a small scene that says a lot about Southern meals. Make the biscuits tall and flaky and the gravy thick. More morning favorites wait in our Southern breakfast classics.

You will need: 2 cups self-rising flour, 1/2 cup cold butter, 3/4 cup buttermilk, 1 pound breakfast sausage, 1/4 cup flour, 2 1/2 cups milk, salt and plenty of black pepper.

How to make it: 1. Cut butter into flour, stir in buttermilk, pat 1 inch thick, cut biscuits and bake at 450°F for 12 to 14 minutes. 2. Brown sausage, sprinkle in flour and cook 1 minute. 3. Whisk in milk and simmer until thick, season well and spoon over split biscuits.

Lady Baltimore Cake

Lady Baltimore cake is the elegant cousin of Lane cake. It is a snowy white layer cake filled with chopped figs, raisins and pecans folded into fluffy frosting, and it became a Southern wedding and holiday favorite in the early 1900s. Bakers across Alabama kept both recipes in the same tin box, one for Christmas and one for the next big party. It makes a beautiful companion to the other Harper Lee recipes in this gallery. Compare it with more classic Southern layer cakes.

You will need: 1 white layer cake baked in three 8-inch pans, 1/2 cup chopped dried figs, 1/2 cup chopped raisins, 1/2 cup chopped pecans, 2 tablespoons orange juice, 7-minute frosting made with 3 egg whites and 1 1/2 cups sugar.

How to make it: 1. Soak figs and raisins in orange juice for 30 minutes. 2. Make the 7-minute frosting and fold about one third of it with the fruit and pecans to make the filling. 3. Fill the cooled layers and cover the cake with the remaining frosting.

Collard Greens With Ham Hock

No Alabama holiday table is complete without a big pot of collard greens. Cooks wash the leaves in the sink, strip out the tough stems and let them simmer slowly with a smoky ham hock until tender and silky. The broth left in the pot, called pot liquor, is the part everyone fights over with a wedge of cornbread. Greens are linked to good luck at New Year in the South too. For more ways to cook them, see our leafy greens recipes.

You will need: 2 large bunches collard greens, 1 smoked ham hock, 1 onion, 2 cloves garlic, 6 cups chicken broth, 1 tablespoon cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon sugar, red pepper flakes, salt.

How to make it: 1. Simmer the ham hock with onion, garlic and broth for 45 minutes. 2. Wash the greens well, remove stems and slice into ribbons. 3. Add greens, vinegar, sugar and pepper flakes, then cook covered 45 to 60 minutes until tender and season with salt.

Harper Lee Recipes: Christmas Ambrosia

In the Deep South, Christmas morning often meant peeling oranges at the kitchen table for ambrosia. The old way is simple: fresh orange sections and grated coconut layered in a cut glass bowl, sometimes with pineapple and a few red cherries for color. It was a special treat in the days when oranges came once a year in a Christmas stocking. Harper Lee recipes would not be complete without this bright, cold bowl beside the rich cakes. Try more ideas in our fruit salad recipes.

You will need: 6 navel oranges, 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut, 1 cup pineapple tidbits, 1/4 cup maraschino cherries, 2 tablespoons sugar, optional 1/2 cup sour cream.

How to make it: 1. Peel the oranges, remove the white pith and cut into sections, saving the juice. 2. Layer oranges, coconut and pineapple in a glass bowl, sprinkling each layer with a little sugar. 3. Top with cherries, chill at least 2 hours and stir gently before serving.

Lemon Pound Cake

A pound cake was the cake you could always count on. The first recipes called for a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, and Southern cooks kept one wrapped on the counter for drop-in company. A lemon glaze makes it bright enough for a Christmas brunch and simple enough for a weeknight. It also travels well to potlucks and funerals, the way small town Alabama cooks always carried food to neighbors. For more from the same tradition, browse our vintage pound cake recipes.

You will need: 1 cup butter, 1/2 cup shortening, 3 cups sugar, 5 eggs, 3 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1 cup milk, zest of 2 lemons, plus 1 cup powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons lemon juice for glaze.

How to make it: 1. Cream butter, shortening and sugar until fluffy, then beat in eggs one at a time. 2. Add flour and baking powder alternately with milk, stir in zest and bake in a greased tube pan at 325°F for 75 to 85 minutes. 3. Cool 15 minutes, turn out and drizzle with lemon glaze.

Harper Lee Recipes: Sweet Potato Casserole

Sweet potatoes grow well in sandy Alabama soil, and every family baked them into something for the holidays. This casserole is smooth and spiced underneath with a crunchy brown sugar and pecan topping that bakes into candy. It is one of the most requested sides at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it can be made the night before. It rounds out these Harper Lee recipes with the flavor of a real Monroeville holiday plate. Get more tips in our full sweet potato casserole collection.

You will need: 4 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1/3 cup melted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, plus 1 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup butter and 1 cup chopped pecans for topping.

How to make it: 1. Beat sweet potatoes with sugar, eggs, milk, butter, vanilla and cinnamon and spread in a buttered 9×13 dish. 2. Rub brown sugar, flour and butter together and stir in pecans. 3. Sprinkle over the top and bake at 350°F for 30 to 35 minutes until bubbling and crisp.