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Jelly Cake (One and one-half cup sugar two)
One and one-half cup sugar, two eggs, two teaspoons baking powder, sifted in two cups of flour; break the eggs in a cup and fill it up with good morning's milk. Bake in three jelly tins.
A bare-bones layer cake of the kind that assumes the cook already knows the drill. Two things need settling before you start: how much liquid the recipe actually calls for, and what holds the layers together.
- The egg-and-milk cupBreak the two eggs into a one-cup measure and top up with milk to the one-cup line — that is the whole of the liquid, roughly half a cup of milk to two large eggs. It is not one cup of milk in addition to the eggs.
- "Good morning's milk"Fresh milk from that morning's milking rather than milk that had stood; it was most likely unskimmed. Whole milk works; a spoonful of cream in place of a spoonful of milk gets you closer.
- No fat in the batterAs written there is no butter, lard or other shortening. Some plain jelly cakes were made this way on purpose and come out sponge-like and lean, but the omission may simply be an oversight of the sort common in these community books. Expect a firm, dryish crumb that depends on the jelly for moisture.
- A very stiff batterOne and a half cups sugar and two cups flour against one cup of egg-and-milk gives something closer to a thick paste than a pourable batter. Spread it into the tins with an offset spatula rather than trying to pour it.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Thin layers of this type bake at 350–375F; they are done in 12–20 minutes, when the surface springs back and the edges pull from the tin. Thin layers overbake quickly, so check early.
- Jelly tinsShallow round pans, generally 8 or 9 inches, made for a single thin layer. Three modern 8-inch cake pans will do. Grease and flour them, or line the bottoms with parchment.
- The jellyNo quantity is given. Figure about 1/2 cup of a firm, tart jelly — currant, quince or apple — warmed slightly and stirred smooth, divided between the two joins. The recipe says nothing about finishing the top.
- Yield and keepingThree thin layers serve 8 to 10. Assemble the day you bake it: with no fat in the crumb, the cake stales fast, and the jelly will start to soak through by the second day.
Jelly cake was the everyday American layer cake of the second half of the nineteenth century, and it is often said to have owed its popularity to jelly being cheaper and quicker than frosting. Chemical leavening \— first saleratus, then the commercial baking powders that spread after the 1850s \— made it practical to bake thin, quick layers in shallow "jelly tins" rather than fighting a yeast or long-beaten egg batter, and a jar of currant or apple jelly from the summer's preserving turned three plain rounds into a company dish. Recipes like this one, contributed to a compiled household book, were written for readers who needed the proportions and nothing else; the vagueness about oven heat and jelly quantity reflects a kitchen where the stove was judged by hand and the filling was whatever the shelf held. The instruction to use "good morning's milk" is a reminder that this was written before refrigeration was general, when the age of the milk was a thing worth specifying.