I love this cake. My husband loves this cake. My children love this cake.
I’m guessing a lot of other people do too, and that’s how it got its name. It certainly is yummy, and it’s a pretty impressive dessert for being so simple to put together. It’s a great dessert for a crowd, or pot luck, because you can make it ahead of time and it actually tastes better the longer you let it hang out in the fridge!
I know. The name of this cake is pretty awful. I’ve baked it up numerous times over the years and every time I look at the recipe, I cringe at the name. I don’t know who came up with the name, or the recipe, but I have seen it in countless Southern cookbooks over the years. I figured that the reason it’s called a Pig Pickin’ Cake is because it’s so good that it’s easy to look like a pig as you are “picking” at the cake. However, thanks to the power of Google (Seriously, what did we do before search engines? I swear, I Google something at least ten times a day.), I found that the name of the cake comes from the Southern tradition of serving it for dessert at pig roasts, or “Pig Pickins”. Now that I have a legitimate reason for the (still kind of awful) name of the cake, and I no longer look at it as an insult, I feel I can pass it on to you!
Food, in general, is pretty amazing stuff when you think about it. Not only does it sustain us, comfort us and keep us going day after day, but certain foods can trigger memories and take us back to places we haven’t seen or visited in years in just a single bite.