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Everyday Layer Cake
Follow the directions and proportions given for Everyday Cake, baking the mixture in two small layers. Put together with jelly and sift powdered sugar over the top, or put together with icing, or a cooked cream filling.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it sends you back to the book's Everyday Cake batter and only tells you what to do differently. A few points fill the gaps the original assumes you already know.
- You need the parent recipeNothing here works without the Everyday Cake proportions given elsewhere in the book. The bake time and oven heat below apply to thin layers, and will differ from whatever the parent recipe directs for its own pan.
- SnowdriftThe book exists to sell Snowdrift, a cottonseed-oil shortening. Any modern solid vegetable shortening behaves much the same way; butter will give more flavour and a slightly firmer crumb, though because butter carries water a cup-for-cup swap is only approximate.
- "Two small layers"Probably two 8-inch round pans, greased and floured, or lined with parchment. A single-pan quantity spread across two 9-inch pans would give layers too thin to fill neatly.
- OvenA moderate heat, around 350F, suits thin layers; 20 to 25 minutes, test at 20. Whatever time the parent recipe gives for its own pan will not transfer to layers this thin.
- Cool before fillingTurn the layers out and cool them completely on a rack. Jelly spread on warm cake soaks in and slides, and the sifted sugar on top will dissolve into a damp film.
- The jelly fillingBeat or stir stiff jelly smooth first, or warm it briefly, so it spreads without tearing the crumb. Roughly half a cup for one layer's worth.
- Cooked cream fillingThis means pastry cream: milk, sugar, egg yolks and a little flour or cornstarch, cooked to a boil and chilled. A cake filled with it must be refrigerated and eaten within a day or two.
- YieldTwo small layers, cut into 8 to 10 servings.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a genre of early twentieth-century promotional cookery: booklets issued by manufacturers of the new vegetable shortenings, which were competing hard against lard and butter in American kitchens. Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil product of the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and cottonseed oil, once a waste stream of the cotton gin, became a major food fat in the decades around 1900. The layout of this entry is characteristic of the type: one workhorse batter is given in full, then spun out into as many named cakes as the page will bear, each variation demonstrating again that a single tin of shortening covers the whole family's baking. "Everyday" cake is the plain everyday cake tradition under a thrifty name, distinguished from the show cakes that needed more eggs and more time.