This recipe dates all the way back to the 1800s, when women on Smith Island would bake cakes for their husbands to enjoy during the island’s autumn oyster harvest. The cakes were intended to serve as a symbol of togetherness and remind the oyster hunters of their loved ones waiting for them to return home. Today, the cake is famous in Maryland, where it’s especially popular as a holiday dessert.

At its core, a Smith Island cake is a cake made of many thin, pancake-like layers of yellow cake separated by decadent fudge icing. It’s somewhat like a crepe cake but with fewer, thicker layers. While this flavor combination is considered the original, bakeries on Smith Island and along the Maryland coast have begun deviating from the classic recipe, offering flavors such as coconut, double chocolate, red velvet and lemon.