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Vanity Cake
One and a half cups sugar, half cup butter, half cup sweet milk, * one and a half cups flour, half cup corn starch, tea-spoon bakingpowder, whites of six eggs; bake in two cakes, putting frosting between and on top. - Olivia S. Hinman, Battle Creek, Mich.
A white layer cake in the cornstarch style popular in the 1870s and 80s. The original assumes you know the standard method the book gives elsewhere, so the order of work is the part that needs filling in.
- The hinge: fold, do not beatCream the butter and sugar, add the milk and the sifted flour, cornstarch and baking powder, then fold in the whites beaten stiff at the very end. Six whites are the only lift this cake has beyond a single teaspoon of baking powder, and stirring them in flat gives a dense, rubbery layer.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from sour milk or buttermilk, which would have called for saleratus instead of baking powder. Whole milk is the right choice.
- The asteriskThe mark appears in the middle of the ingredient list rather than at the head of the recipe, and evidently refers the cook to a note in the chapter's general directions; its exact sense is not given in the recipe itself. It is not a missing ingredient.
- Baking powderNineteenth-century powders were single-acting, and batters went into the oven at once. With modern double-acting powder one level teaspoon is enough for two cups of dry ingredients here; the whites do the rest.
- CornstarchHalf a cup replacing part of the flour lowers the protein and gives the fine, tender, very pale crumb these cakes were prized for. It is the same principle as modern cake flour; if you substitute cake flour for the whole two cups, expect a slightly less silky result.
- Oven and pans"Two cakes" means two layers. Use two greased and floured 8- or 9-inch round pans and bake at 350F, roughly 25 to 30 minutes, until the centre springs back.
- FrostingNo frosting is given. A boiled white icing or a plain confectioners' sugar and egg-white frosting suits the period and the cake's pallor; the six leftover yolks go to custard or a gold cake.
- YieldOne two-layer cake, ten to twelve slices.
Cornstarch cakes appear all through American community cookbooks of the 1870s and 80s, when boxed cornstarch had become a cheap grocery staple and cooks discovered that swapping some of it for flour produced a whiter, finer crumb than the coarse household flour of the day could manage on its own. Names like "Vanity Cake" belong to a whole family of fanciful titles for white layer cakes built on egg whites alone — silver cake, snow cake, bride's cake. The attribution to Olivia S. Hinman of Battle Creek is characteristic of Buckeye Cookery, which was assembled from contributions solicited across Ohio, Michigan and the upper Midwest and printed each donor's name and town, making the book as much a regional directory of home bakers as a manual.