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Bread Cake (Three coffee-cups yeast dough)
Three coffee-cups yeast dough, light enough to bake for bread, two and two-thirds cups sugar, one cup butter, three eggs, one nutmeg; put all together, and work with the hands until smooth as pound-cake. It is very important that all should be mixed very thoroughly with the light dough. Add raisins and as much fruit as desired, and let rise half an hour in the pans in which you bake. The oven should be about right for bread. This is easily made, and is quite as nice as common loaf-cake. - Mrs. Chas, Fullington.
A yeast-raised cake built on ordinary bread dough, which is what makes it worth attempting: the leavening work is already done. The critical step is the kneading-in of the fat and sugar.
- The coffee-cupA coffee-cup is usually reckoned at roughly a standard cup, about 8 fl oz, though period cups varied and often ran smaller. Three cups of risen dough would be somewhere around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb -- a modest batch of white bread dough.
- Oven temperature"about right for bread" is the only guide given; in modern terms that is somewhere in the region of 375-400F. Because of the sugar and butter the loaf browns much faster than bread, so check at 30 minutes and tent with foil if the top is colouring ahead of the centre.
- The hinge: work it until smoothSugar and butter beaten into risen dough will first make it slack, greasy and separated. Keep working by hand until it comes back together and looks like a smooth stiff batter, as the recipe says, "smooth as pound-cake." Stopping early gives streaks of unincorporated butter and a heavy seam at the base.
- Expect a long second riseHalf an hour in the pans is optimistic by modern standards; sugar and fat slow yeast considerably, and the dough has just been deflated by heavy handling. Give it until it is visibly puffed and springs back slowly — often 1 to 2 hours in a warm kitchen.
- One nutmegA whole nutmeg grated is 2 to 3 teaspoons, an assertive amount for this quantity. Pre-ground nutmeg from a jar is weaker and staler; if using it, start with 2 teaspoons.
- Fruit"as much fruit as desired" leaves it open; 1 to 2 cups of raisins, currants or chopped candied peel is a reasonable reading. Toss it in a little flour before adding so it does not sink, and add it last, after the dough is smooth.
- Yield and pansThe recipe says "pans," plural, and with the sugar, butter, eggs and fruit added the mixture is bulky; expect two loaf pans rather than one. Grease and line the base; the sugar catches. Bake until a skewer comes out clean and cool completely before slicing -- yeast cakes are gummy while warm.
Bread cake belongs to a family of yeast-raised "loaf cakes" that were common in American home baking before chemical leavening became cheap and reliable. The logic is thrifty and domestic: a cook who already had risen dough on hand could enrich a portion of it with the expensive ingredients -- sugar, butter, eggs, spice, dried fruit -- and bake it in the same oven. That is presumably why the instruction is simply "about right for bread" rather than a temperature. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, printed at Minneapolis in 1877 as a compilation of contributed receipts, carries many such recipes credited to named women of the community, and the closing line -- "quite as nice as common loaf-cake" -- reads as a contributor recommending her shortcut over the more laborious creamed-butter cakes.