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Charlotte Russe Cake
One even cup sugar, one heaping cup of flour, one heaping teaspoon baking powder, three well beaten eggs beaten separately, one tablespoon milk, flavor with lemon or vanilla.
This is a plain sponge base — the cake half of a charlotte russe, not the assembled dessert. The original gives no pan, temperature or time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- What it is forA charlotte russe is a mould lined with sponge and filled with whipped cream or Bavarian cream. This batter bakes the lining: either a thin sheet cut into strips and fingers, or a shallow round split into layers.
- Cup sizesAn "even" cup is level, a "heaping" cup is filled above the rim. Measured level, the flour comes to roughly 1 1/4 cups; use about 150 g flour to 200 g sugar and you are in the right range.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThis is the whole leavening strategy alongside the baking powder. Whip the yolks with the sugar until pale and thick, fold in the flour and milk, then fold in the whites beaten to soft peaks. Fold, never stir, or the cake bakes dense.
- Baking powderA heaping teaspoon in this quantity of flour is more than modern practice would use; a level teaspoon and a half is plenty and avoids the faint metallic edge that too much baking powder can leave.
- Oven and timeNone is given. Bake at 350F: about 20-25 minutes for an 8-inch round, 10-12 minutes for a quarter-sheet spread thin. It is done when the top springs back and the edges begin to pull from the pan.
- No fat in the batterThere is no butter here, so the crumb dries quickly. Line the pan with parchment, and use the cake the day it is baked or brush the strips lightly with a sugar syrup before lining the mould.
- FlavouringVanilla means a teaspoon of extract; "lemon" in books of this period may mean lemon extract, though the grated zest of one lemon works well here.
- YieldRoughly enough sponge to line a 1 1/2-quart charlotte mould, or about one 8-inch layer if you simply want the cake on its own.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to the French pastry cook Antonin Carême, who is credited with the cold cream-filled version and its name — a Russian flourish on the older baked apple charlotte. By the late nineteenth century it had become a fixture of American home entertaining, and the dish has two components: a sponge or lady-finger cake, and the whipped-cream or gelatine filling that goes inside. That is what has happened here — this page gives only the cake, on the assumption that the cook already knows what to do with a lined mould. The batter itself is a butterless sponge, and it may be that chemical baking powder let a household turn out a light cake without the long hand-beating that earlier egg-only sponges demanded.