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Black Cake (Two cups brown sugar one)
Two cups brown sugar, one and one-half cups of butter, six eggs beaten separately, three cups flour (brown the flour), two tablespoons molasses, one of cinnamon, one tea-spoon mace, one of cloves, two cups sweet milk, two pounds raisins, two of currants, a half pound citron, one tea-spoon soda, two of cream tartar. Bake three hours. -Mrs. A. B. Morey.
A dark, heavily fruited keeping cake of the old plum-cake family, sized for a household with a large tin and a slow fire. The instructions assume knowledge the modern cook has to supply: pan, temperature, and how far to trust "bake three hours."
- Brown the flour firstThe parenthetical is the whole character of the cake. Spread the flour in a dry pan and stir over moderate heat, or on a sheet in the oven, until it is the color of weak coffee, then cool it completely before use. Browned flour loses some thickening and gluten strength, which is part of why the crumb is dense.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven heat. For a bake of three hours at this size, a slow oven suits: 300F, no hotter than 325F. A cake this wet and this heavy with sugar and fruit will scorch at the edges long before the center sets if pushed higher.
- Pan and liningRoughly four and a half pounds of dried fruit plus batter is close to eight pounds of material. Use two 9-inch round pans or a large deep tube pan, lined with parchment and, for insurance, wrapped outside with a band of doubled paper. Fill no more than three-quarters.
- An ambiguous spice measure"Two tablespoons molasses, one of cinnamon" reads as one tablespoon cinnamon carrying over from the previous unit, with mace and cloves then specified as teaspoons. A tablespoon of cinnamon in this quantity of batter is plausible but assertive; if in doubt use two teaspoons.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, in about the ratio still used. Sift both with the cooled browned flour rather than dissolving the soda in the milk, or the reaction spends itself before the cake reaches the oven.
- Eggs beaten separatelyWhites beaten to soft peaks and folded in last are the only lift beyond the chemical leavening. Fold them in after the fruit, gently, and get the cake into the oven without delay.
- Dredge the fruitToss the raisins, currants and chopped citron with a few spoonfuls of the measured flour so they stay suspended. Without it a batter this loose lets the fruit sink into a solid layer at the base.
- Doneness and yieldAt three hours check with a skewer in the center; heavy fruit cakes commonly need three and a half. The full quantity serves twenty-five or more, and improves after a week wrapped tightly in a cool place.
"Black cake" is the nineteenth-century American name for the darkest end of the British plum-cake family: pounds of raisins and currants, citron, warm spice, molasses, and in this version browned flour to deepen both color and flavor. It was a celebration cake rather than an everyday one, baked for weddings, Christmas and funerals, and valued because the sugar and fruit let it keep for weeks or months; the same tradition traveled to the Caribbean, where black cake soaked in rum remains a Christmas fixture. Its appearance in Buckeye Cookery (an Ohio compilation of the 1870s and 80s, built from contributed recipes credited by name) shows how such cakes had become the property of ordinary Midwestern households, though the cost of two pounds of raisins, two of currants and a half pound of imported citron still marked it as an occasion. Mrs. A. B. Morey's version is typical of the book's style: exact on ingredients, silent on oven heat, because a cook working a wood range judged that by hand and habit.