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Almond Cream Cake
Two cups pulverized sugar, one-fourth cup butter, one cup of sweet milk, three cups flour, three teaspoons baking powder, whites of four eggs, beaten very stiff; one-half teaspoon vanilla. Bake in four layers.
This is a white layer cake batter only — the "almond cream" of the title is a filling the book assumes you already know how to make, and it is not given here. Plan the filling separately before you start.
- Pulverized sugarIn books of this period pulverized sugar is finely ground granulated sugar, roughly what we sell as caster or superfine — not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Ordinary granulated works if you cream it thoroughly or pulse it briefly in a food processor.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in soda-leavened recipes. Since the leavening here is baking powder, do not substitute buttermilk without adjusting.
- The butter is deliberately lowThe butter is low -- A quarter cup of butter to three cups of flour is very lean by modern standards, and the stiffly beaten whites contribute lightness alongside the baking powder. Beat the butter and sugar until pale, add milk and flour alternately, then fold the whites in last without deflating them.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven temperature. A modern moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. Four layers from this quantity are thin, so they should be done in roughly 15 to 20 minutes — check as soon as the centers spring back and the edges pull from the pan.
- Pan size and yieldDivide the batter evenly among four 8- or 9-inch round pans; the layers will be thin. Filled and stacked, it serves about 10 to 12.
- The missing fillingAlmond cream in this era usually meant a cooked custard or a boiled sugar-and-egg-white icing, flavored with blanched, pounded sweet almonds. A modern pastry cream or Italian meringue with almond extract and finely ground almonds will serve between the layers; keep the assembled cake refrigerated if the filling is custard-based.
- Vanilla in the cakeHalf a teaspoon is all the batter carries, so the layers themselves are lightly flavored.
Cakes built entirely on egg whites became a fixture of American receipt books once cheap chemical baking powder and finely milled white flour were widely available in the second half of the nineteenth century; whites-only "white" or "silver" cake was often accompanied in such books by a "gold" cake that used up the leftover yolks. The almond cream that gives this one its name belongs to an older tradition of pounding blanched sweet almonds into a paste to enrich custards and icings, a technique inherited from English confectionery. In a household that ate its large meal at midday, supper was the light evening table of breads, cold dishes and cake, and a thin four-layer cake sliced small was exactly the sort of thing set out for it.