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Golden Cream Cake
Cream one cup sugar and one-fourth cup butter, add half cup sweet milk, the well beaten whites of three eggs, one and a half cups flour, with half a tea-spoon soda, and a tea-spoon cream tartar sifted with it; bake in three deep jelly-tins; beat very light the yolks of two eggs, one cup sugar, and two table-spoons rich sweet cream, flavor with vanilla, and spread on cakes; or to yolks add one and a half table-spoons corn starch, three-quarters cup sweet milk and small lump butter; sweeten and flavor to taste, cook in a custard-kettle till thick, let cool, and then spread. - Mrs. J. M. Southard.
A white butter cake in three thin layers with a choice of two fillings — one uncooked, one a cooked custard. The book gives no oven temperature or timing, as was standard when heat was judged by hand.
- Choose the cooked fillingThe first filling is raw yolks beaten with sugar and cream and spread straight onto the cake, with nothing to bring the eggs to a safe temperature. The second option, thickened with cornstarch and cooked in a custard-kettle until thick, is the one to make; it is also more stable and will not soak into the layers.
- Custard-kettleThat is a double boiler. Cook the yolk, cornstarch and milk mixture over simmering water, stirring, until it coats a spoon thickly, then cool fully before spreading — warm custard slides off.
- Sweet milk and sweet creamPlain whole milk and ordinary heavy cream. The word distinguished them from the soured milk and buttermilk that were equally common in nineteenth-century kitchens and that would react differently with the soda.
- The leaveningHalf a teaspoon of soda with a teaspoon of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, in the range of 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons of modern baking powder, though it acts all at once rather than in two stages. If you substitute, sift it with the flour as directed and get the batter into the pans promptly.
- Deep jelly-tinsRound, straight-sided tins; the recipe asks specifically for deep ones. Modern 8-inch rounds work, with the batter divided into three thin layers. Butter and flour them; this batter has little fat.
- Oven and timingThe book gives no temperature or time. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern equivalent; thin layers of this size bake in about 15 to 18 minutes, and are done when the centre springs back and the edges just pull from the tin.
- Butter measureOne-fourth cup of butter is 4 tablespoons, 2 ounces. Have it properly softened, since creaming a small quantity of cold butter with a full cup of sugar is slow work.
- YieldThree 8-inch layers, filled but not iced on top or sides; it cuts into roughly 10 to 12 slices. Best the day it is made.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) is a compilation of contributions from Ohio and Midwestern housewives, with many dishes signed by their contributors. By the 1870s soda-and-cream-of-tartar leavening and cheap stamped tinware had made the thin-layered, filled cake much easier for a home cook, and similar batters appear under different names depending on the filling spread between the layers. "Golden" here probably refers to the yolk-rich filling set against a cake made with whites only, which lets one set of eggs do two jobs. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking, was widely sold, and recipes like this one, which sift it with the flour and add the soda separately, belong to the period when premixed baking powders were taking over.