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Ribbon Cake
Two and a half cups sugar, one of butter, one of sweet milk, tea-spoon cream tartar, half tea-spoon soda, four cups flour, four eggs; reservé a third of this mixture, and bake the rest in two loaves of the same size. Add to third reserved, one cup raisins, fourth pound citron, a cup of currants, two table-spoons molasses, tea-spoon each of all kinds of spice; bake in a tin the same size as other loaves; put the three loaves together with a little icing or currant jelly, placing the fruit loaf in the middle; frost the top and sides.-Miss Alice Trimble, Mt. Gilead.
A three-layer cake built from one batter: two plain layers and a dark fruited one in the middle. The whole point is that the three bake to the same height, so the pans and the oven matter more than anything else here.
- Split the batter by weight"Reserve a third" is easier to do accurately on a scale than by eye, and the fruit third then gains close to a pound of additions. Weigh the plain batter into two equal pans and give the fruit layer the same pan size, accepting that it will sit slightly higher.
- PansThree 9-inch round pans, or 8-inch squares if you want the loaf look the original implies. Grease and line the bottoms; the fruit and molasses in the middle layer make it prone to sticking.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, usually read today as somewhere near 350F, is the safe assumption. Expect 25 to 35 minutes for the plain layers and a few minutes more for the fruit layer, which is heavier and wetter.
- LeaveningOne teaspoon cream of tartar with half a teaspoon soda is a functioning baking powder, in roughly the correct 2:1 ratio. It acts on contact with the milk, so mix and get the pans into the oven without delay. Substituting 2 teaspoons of modern baking powder works but gives a slightly slower, more forgiving rise.
- "Tea-spoon each of all kinds of spice"The period spice box for a fruit cake means cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and sometimes mace. A teaspoon of each is a great deal in a third of a batter; a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon each of nutmeg, cloves and allspice suits modern palates better.
- CitronA quarter pound of candied citron peel, chopped fine. It is still sold at holiday baking counters; candied orange or lemon peel is the usual stand-in. Toss the raisins, currants and citron in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- MethodNo mixing order is given because it was assumed: cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour and milk alternately. The cream of tartar and soda go in with the flour.
- AssemblyCurrant jelly is the better filling of the two options given, since a thin layer of icing between layers tends to set hard and shear when the cake is cut. Warm the jelly slightly and brush it on. The fruit loaf goes in the middle so the cut slice shows the dark band.
- YieldRoughly a dozen to sixteen slices. Baked as three layers it keeps well for several days, wrapped.
Ribbon cake belongs to the late nineteenth-century American fashion for cakes that showed a pattern when sliced, alongside marble cake. The economy of it is characteristic of the period: one batter, mixed once, with the expensive fruit and spice confined to a third of it, so that the cake carried the look of a fruit cake without the long baking. The Buckeye Cookbook, published in Ohio in 1876, and its revised successor, Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, were assembled from contributions by named women, and the attribution to Miss Alice Trimble of Mt. Gilead is typical of how the book worked: a community's kitchen knowledge collected, credited, and printed with the assumption that the reader already knew how to cream butter and judge a moderate oven.