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Black Chocolate Cake
1 1/4 cups sugar, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup Crisco, 4 squares chocolate, 1 1/2 cups flour, measured after sifting, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup milk, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Cream Crisco and sugar, add well beaten eggs, then chocolate melted, beat thoroughly. Sift salt and baking powder with flour and add alternating with milk to previous mixture. Add flavoring last and beat thoroughly before pouring into a pan well greased with Crisco. Bake in a moderate oven about 40 minutes.
A stiff, dark one-layer cake from a shortening company's promotional book. Two things decide the outcome: how much chocolate a "square" is, and how little liquid the batter carries.
- Squares of chocolateA square is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this calls for 4 oz — a very high proportion for 1 1/2 cups of flour, which is what makes the cake "black". Melt it and let it cool slightly before it goes into the creamed mixture, or it will start to set into flecks.
- CriscoStraight vegetable shortening, still sold and essentially interchangeable with the modern product, though today's is not the same formula. Butter works and tastes better; use 4 tablespoons either way, and the cake will be a little less tender.
- Moderate oven350F. At that temperature 40 minutes is right for a single layer; test with a skewer at 30 minutes, since unsweetened chocolate scorches and a dry chocolate cake is unrecoverable.
- Pan sizeNo pan is specified. The batter suits one 8-inch round or an 8x8 square; a 9-inch pan gives a thin, quick-baking layer that will want closer to 25 minutes.
- The saltA full teaspoon in this quantity of batter is heavy by modern taste. Half a teaspoon is more usual now.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons is a lot for 1 1/2 cups of flour by modern standards. With modern double-acting powder, 2 teaspoons will lift it without the bitter edge and coarse crumb that over-leavening gives.
- A thick batterHalf a cup of milk against 4 oz of chocolate makes for a stiff batter, though the recipe still expects it to be poured. If it is too thick to pour, spread and level it in the pan rather than adding liquid to loosen it.
- Yield and servingOne layer, eight to ten slices. A boiled white icing or a butter frosting is the period-appropriate finish.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the company introduced in 1911; the recipes throughout use the product, which is why a plain chocolate cake specifies the brand three times in six lines. "Black" here appears to mean simply dark, from the quantity of melted unsweetened chocolate; "black cake" in older usage more often meant a dense fruit cake heavy with molasses and raisins.