White Part
1/2 cupful Crisco 1 cupful granulated sugar 3 whites of eggs 2/3 cupful milk 2 cupfuls flour 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoonful salt For dark part. Cream Crisco and sugar, add yolks well beaten, coffee, molasses, flour, salt, baking powder, spices and raisins. Mix and divide into two Criscoed and floured layer tins and bake in moderately hot oven twenty minutes.
For white part. Cream Crisco and sugar, add milk, vanilla, flour, salt, baking powder, then fold in stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Bake in two layers. Put layers together and ice with following frosting.
Put 2 cupfuls dark brown sugar and 3/4 cupful water into saucepan, add 1 tablespoonful Crisco and 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract. Boil till mixture forms soft ball when tried in cold water, or 240Degree F., remove from stove, beat till it begins to cream, then add 1 cupful chopped raisins. Spread on cake and allow to dry.
Sufficient for one large layer cake.
This is the white half of a four-layer light-and-dark cake, printed here with the dark batter's method but not its full ingredient list, which sits on the facing page of the original book. Read it as one recipe in two batters plus a brown-sugar frosting.
- The missing dark-part quantitiesThe instructions call for yolks, coffee, molasses, spices and raisins, but the amounts appear in the dark part's own ingredient list, which is not reproduced on this page. If you want the two-tone cake, source those quantities before starting; the white part stands on its own as two layers.
- CriscoStill sold, though reformulated since this period to remove partially hydrogenated fat. Equal weight of any solid vegetable shortening works; unsalted butter gives better flavour and a slightly firmer crumb. "Criscoed and floured" simply means greased and floured tins.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" in this period means about 375F. Twenty minutes suits thin layers in 8- or 9-inch tins; test with a skewer at eighteen.
- CupfulsThe book's cupful is the standard 8 fl oz measure. Two cupfuls of flour is roughly 250 g, spooned and levelled; scooping straight from the bag will add 30 g or more and dry the cake out.
- Order of mixingAs written, milk goes in before the flour, which is unusual and will look broken. Alternate the milk and the sifted flour, baking powder and salt in two or three additions, then fold in the whites last and stop as soon as the streaks vanish.
- The frosting is the hingeBoil the brown sugar and water to 240F and no further. Past about 245F it sets hard and crumbles when you spread it. Beat only until it clouds and thickens, then work fast, since the raisins accelerate setting.
- Egg whitesThree whites is roughly 90-100 g. They should hold a peak that just bends at the tip; taken to dry, stiff peaks they break up in the folding and the layers bake short.
- YieldFour thin layers, about twelve servings. The frosting quantity is generous for filling and top; there is little left for the sides, which the original does not ask you to cover.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which reached the market in 1911 as the first widely sold all-vegetable shortening. That accounts for the brand appearing in every line, including the odd tablespoonful stirred into the frosting, where it does little beyond gloss and a promise. The cake itself belongs to a long American tradition of paired batters baked as separate layers and stacked; nineteenth-century books call the type ribbon cake, and its close relative, the white batter alone, was often called silver cake to the yolk-based gold.