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Neapolitan Cake
Black Part. One cup brown sugar, two eggs, half cup butter, half cup molasses, half cup strong coffee, two and a half cups flour, one of raisins, one of currants, a tea-spoon each of soda, cinnamon and cloves, and half tea spoon mace.
White Part. Two cups sugar, half cup butter, one of milk, two and a quarter of flour, one of corn starch, whites of four eggs, small tea-spoon cream tartar; make frosting of whites of two eggs to put between the layers. -Mrs. Calista Hawks Gortner, Goshen, Ind.
Two batters, baked as separate layers and stacked alternately with frosting between. Buckeye Cookery assumes you already know how to bake a layer-cake, so the pan size, oven heat and times are all missing.
- Oven and pansThe book gives no pan size, heat or time. As a modern reconstruction, bake at about 350F, dividing each batter between two 8- or 9-inch round pans for roughly four layers; check the white layers from about 20 minutes and the wetter molasses layers a little later. They are done when the center springs back.
- Leavening in the white partCream of tartar is an acid and will not raise a cake by itself; soda has most likely been dropped from the white part, since recipes of this kind normally pair the two. About 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons baking powder in place of the cream of tartar will do the work. The black part needs nothing added: the soda has the molasses and coffee to react with.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, sold as a small raisin, not fresh red currants. Toss both the raisins and currants in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Corn starchA cup of cornstarch replacing part of the flour was the period trick for a tender, pale, close crumb, essentially a homemade cake flour. Sift it with the flour two or three times; it clumps.
- Flour measureMuch nineteenth-century American flour was softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose. Measure by spooning into the cup and leveling, and hold back a few tablespoons from the white batter if it seems stiff.
- Strong coffeeBrewed coffee, cooled, not espresso and not grounds. It is there for color and to sharpen the spices rather than to taste of coffee.
- The frosting between layersTwo egg whites beaten with enough sifted confectioners' sugar to spread makes an uncooked icing. Since it is never heated, use pasteurized whites, or make a boiled icing instead, which also glues the layers more firmly.
- Assembly and yieldAlternate dark and light so the cut face shows stripes, and frost between each layer but not necessarily the sides. A four-layer cake of this size serves 12 to 16, and the spiced layers improve after a day wrapped.
In American cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s, "Neapolitan" on a cake meant striping rather than any Italian recipe: the name is often said to have been borrowed from the Neapolitan ice-cream brick, then fashionable, whose contrasting bands were sliced to show off the layers. The construction here is pure layer-cake economy, one batter dark with spices and fruit and the other pale with whites. Buckeye Cookery, first published in 1877 out of Marysville, Ohio, was assembled from contributions signed with the cook's name and town, and Mrs. Gortner of Goshen, Indiana, is typical of the Midwestern housewives whose kitchen shorthand the book preserves, including the habit of assuming the reader knows what heat her stove should be.