éClair Cakes
One teacup sugar, one teacup flour, three eggs, one teaspoon vanilla, one teaspoon baking powder.
This is a formula rather than a set of instructions: the book assumes a cook who knows that a sugar-flour-egg list with no butter and no liquid means a sponge batter. The points below fill in what the original leaves unsaid.
- The teacupA Victorian teacup as a measure is often reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though usage varied and some books treated it as a full cup. Since sugar and flour are here in equal volume, the ratio holds either way — measure both with the same cup and you will be fine.
- No fat, no liquidThat is not an omission. Three eggs beaten to full volume with the sugar are the only leavening and moisture the batter has, apart from the baking powder. Expect a dry, springy sponge meant to be filled, not a butter cake.
- The hinge: beat the eggs to ribbonWhole eggs and sugar must be beaten until pale, thick and falling from the beater in a wide ribbon — several minutes with an electric mixer. Then sift the flour and baking powder over and fold, cutting through no more than necessary. Overwork it here and the cakes bake flat and tough.
- OvenThe book gives no oven direction. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits small oblongs or a sheet; roughly 12 to 15 minutes for finger-sized cakes, somewhat longer for a sheet. The top should spring back and the edges just pull from the tin.
- What makes it an "éclair cake"The shape and the filling, which the book leaves to the cook. Bake in narrow oblongs (or bake a sheet and cut it into fingers), split them, and fill with whipped cream or pastry cream, then ice the tops with chocolate.
- Baking powderModern double-acting powder is generally reckoned stronger than the powders of the period, though formulations varied. A teaspoon will do no harm in a sponge this lean, but do not increase it.
- YieldA small quantity: roughly 12 to 16 small cakes, or one thin sheet cut into fingers.
Éclair is French for lightning, and the name is traditionally explained by how quickly the pastry is eaten — a claim repeated everywhere and documented nowhere. The genuine article is choux paste piped in fingers, baked hollow, filled with pastry cream and glazed with chocolate fondant, and it appears in American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century as a fashionable French novelty. What happened in entries like this one is that the prestige of the name detached itself from the pastry: choux is fussy and unforgiving, and household books sometimes offered a plain sponge batter baked in éclair shapes, split and filled with cream, and called it an éclair cake.
Filling
One pint sweet cream, whites of two eggs, whip the cream very stiff, beat eggs light, sweeten and flavor to taste, mix well and fill the cakes when baked.