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Light Layer Cake
Four eggs, two coffee-cups sugar, three coffee-cups flour, one coffee-cup sweet milk, one coffee-cup butter, two teaspoons cream tartar sifted with the flour, one teaspoon soda dissolved in one tablespoon hot water, a little salt, flavor to taste. This recipe makes two cakes, three layers in each; put between jelly or soft frosting with cocoanut.
A plain creamed butter cake leavened with cream of tartar and soda, written for cooks who already knew the method and needed only the proportions. The gaps are the mixing order, the oven and the pan size.
- The coffee-cupIn American books of this period a coffee-cup is generally reckoned at a full 8 oz cup, a teacup at about three-quarters of that. Read it as 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 1 cup milk and 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 oz) butter. The measure was never standardised, so if the batter looks stiff, hold back a little of the flour.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons cream of tartar sifted with the flour and one teaspoon soda slaked in hot water is the homemade equivalent of about three teaspoons of baking powder. Modern double-acting baking powder can stand in at that quantity, but the soda-and-acid version begins working the moment the liquids meet, so get the pans filled and into the oven without delay.
- The unwritten methodCream the butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted flour and cream of tartar alternately with the milk. Recipes of this kind commonly gave proportions only, apparently assuming the reader already knew the mixing order.
- OvenNone is given. Bake at 350F. Thin layers of this size take roughly 18 to 22 minutes and are done when the centre springs back.
- Pans and yieldSix layers from this batter suits 8-inch rounds filled shallow, roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of batter each, though no pan size is given. Two three-layer cakes serving eight to ten apiece; halve everything for a single cake.
- Flavouring"Flavor to taste" in books of this sort usually meant a teaspoon or so of vanilla, lemon extract, or rose water; almond extract is another possibility, and a fraction of a teaspoon is enough alongside the coconut filling.
- CocoanutProbably fresh coconut cracked and grated at home, which is moister and less sweet than the bagged sweetened flake now sold, though prepared shredded coconut was also on sale by this date. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the closer match, scattered over soft boiled or seven-minute frosting while it is still tacky.
- FlourHousehold flour of the day was often softer than modern all-purpose, closer to cake or pastry flour, though this varied. All-purpose works, but measure by spooning into the cup and levelling rather than scooping, or the crumb will tighten.
Layer cakes rose with the cast-iron cook stove and cheap tin bakeware: once a household could hold a steady moderate heat and owned matching shallow rounds, a cake could be baked in thin sheets and stacked with jelly or frosting rather than baked as one deep loaf. The leavening here marks the moment as well. Cream of tartar sifted into the flour with soda dissolved separately was the standard chemical raising of the middle and later nineteenth century, and recipes went on giving the two ingredients separately for decades after commercial baking powder was available.