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Metropolitan Cake
Two cups sugar, one of butter, one of milk, nearly four cups flour, whites of eight eggs, three tea-spoons baking powder, flavor with lemon. Take a little more than three-fifths of this mixture in three jelly-tins, add to the remaining batter one table-spoon ground allspice, one and a half table-spoons cinnamon, tea-spoon cloves, fourth pound each of sliced citron and chopped raisins; bake in two jelly-tins and put together with frosting, alternating dark and light. - Mrs. Dr. D. H. Moore, Wesleyan College, Cincinnati.
A five-layer cake built from one batter split in two: three plain white layers and two spiced fruit layers, stacked alternately with frosting. The only real skill is keeping the thin layers from overbaking.
- Jelly-tinsThese are shallow round layer pans, 8 or 9 inches across, filled with a thin layer of batter rather than the deep pans sold as cake tins today. If you own only two or three, bake in batches and keep the rest of the batter covered at room temperature.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a wood range. Use 350F. Thin layers like these are done in 15 to 20 minutes, when the top springs back and the edge just pulls from the pan.
- Splitting the batter"A little more than three-fifths" is best handled by weight: tare a bowl, weigh the whole batter, and take off 62 to 65 percent for the three light layers. The remainder carries the spice and fruit, which add bulk, so the two dark layers end up about as thick as the light ones.
- Eight egg whitesThat is roughly one cup. The recipe never says to beat them separately; many white-cake recipes of the period direct the whites beaten stiff and added last, which helps keep the light layers white and tender. Save the yolks for custard or gold cake.
- Butter and creamingA cup of butter is two sticks, 8 oz, softened but not melted. Cream it with the sugar until visibly pale before anything else goes in, since the air worked in there and in the whites is all the lift the baking powder has to build on.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to four cups of flour is close to modern practice, if a shade lean. Nineteenth-century powders varied in strength and reliability, so a modern tin may behave a little differently. Use plain flour, not self-rising.
- Citron and raisinsA fourth pound each is 4 oz. Candied citron is still sold at holiday time; chopped candied orange or lemon peel is the nearest substitute. Toss the fruit with a spoonful of the measured flour so it does not sink through the thin layer.
- The frostingThe frosting is structural here, holding five layers together, so it needs body: a boiled white icing or a stiff confectioners' sugar and egg-white icing rather than a soft glaze. Spread it right to the edges of each layer and expect a tall, plain-sided cake.
- YieldA five-layer cake of about 9 inches, serving 12 to 16 in modest wedges. It slices better on the second day, once the frosting has set and the spice layers have settled.
Metropolitan cake belongs to a family of late nineteenth-century American layer cakes built on a single batter divided and differently flavored, a trick that let one afternoon's mixing produce a cake of striking cut surface. Marble and ribbon cakes work the same way; the contrast of white layers against dark spiced fruit layers was the point, and the name may simply signal city sophistication, though its origin is not documented. Buckeye Cookery (1877, Marysville, Ohio) collected its recipes by attribution from contributors across the Midwest, and this one comes from Mrs. Dr. D. H. Moore of Wesleyan College in Cincinnati; the naming of a college and a doctor-husband was part of the recipe's credential. That eight egg whites could be spent on three layers, with the yolks left to some other dish, marks this as a company cake rather than everyday baking.