Dark Part
1 cupful dark brown sugar 2/3 cupful cold strong coffee 3 yolks of eggs 1/2 cupful Crisco 1 tablespoonful molasses 1/4 cupful raisins 2 cupfuls flour 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1/2 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon 1/2 teaspoonful powdered cloves 1/2 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 1/2 teaspoonful salt
This is only half a cake. It is the dark batter of a marble cake, meant to be spooned into the pan alongside a light batter that uses the three egg whites left over here, and the book gives no method at all.
- Find its partner firstThe three yolks are the tell: a companion "Light Part" almost certainly sits alongside this one, and would be the natural home for the leftover whites. Mix both batters before either goes into the pan, since neither improves for standing while the other is beaten.
- Method, since none is givenCream the Crisco with the brown sugar, beat in the yolks and molasses, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the cold coffee. The coffee is the liquid, not a flavour accent added at the end.
- CriscoIn 1915 this was a novel all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, and the book exists to sell it. Any solid vegetable shortening works; 1/2 cup of butter gives a better flavour and a slightly firmer crumb.
- Cold strong coffeeBrewed coffee, cooled — it deepens the colour and sharpens the spice, though at two-thirds of a cup it will carry some coffee flavour of its own. It must be cold, or it will melt the creamed shortening.
- The raisinsA quarter cup is a small amount for two cups of flour. Chop them and toss them in a little of the measured flour so they do not sink or drag streaks through the marbling.
- OvenNo temperature or time is given; around 350F suits this batter. A loaf or tube pan takes about 45 minutes to an hour once both batters are in; two 8-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes.
- MarblingDrop alternating spoonfuls of dark and light batter into the greased pan and draw a knife through once or twice in a figure of eight. More stirring than that and you get a uniform mud-brown cake.
- YieldThe two batters together fill one large tube pan or two 8-inch layers, serving ten to twelve.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble, and its recipes call for Crisco, which had been on the market only since 1911. The book's job was to persuade cooks that a manufactured vegetable shortening could stand in for butter and lard in everything from pastry to spice cake, and a marble cake was a useful demonstration piece: two batters, one pan, no wasted whites or yolks. Marble cakes had been in American cookbooks since the mid-nineteenth century, when the dark half was usually coloured and flavoured with molasses and the sweet spices — cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg — as it is here. The cold coffee is a later refinement, said to appear in some early twentieth-century spice and "devil's" cakes for the depth of colour it gives without more molasses.