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Cake, Cheap and Wholesome
When bread is made at home, it is easy to make a good wholesome cake from the dough, of which a little must be taken out of the bowl after it has begun to rise. Allow four ounces of butter, a quarter of a pound of moist sugar, a little grated nutmeg, some chopped lemonrind, or candied peel, and either a quarter of a pound of currants or a few bruised caraway-seeds to one quartern of dough. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, dredge a little flour over them, and place the bowl near the fire, covering it with a thick cloth. When well risen, put it into buttered tins and bake immediately in a moderately-heated oven. One quartern of dough will be enough for a good-sized cake.
A dough cake — enriched bread dough rather than a batter — from the era when most households had a bowl of rising dough on hand. The whole method depends on getting the butter and sugar into the dough without killing the yeast.
- A quartern of doughA quartern is a quarter of a peck of flour, about 3½ lb, which yields roughly 4½–5 lb of dough. If you are working from a standard modern loaf recipe, take about a third of a large batch; the enrichments below are scaled to that weight.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined or partly refined soft sugar — light brown sugar is the closest match. It carries some molasses, which is part of the colour and flavour here.
- Moderately-heated ovenUsually taken to mean somewhere around 350°F/175°C, though the book gives no temperature. A dough this rich browns faster than plain bread, so cover the top loosely with foil if it colours before the centre is set. Expect roughly 45–60 minutes for a cake of this size; an internal temperature of about 190–200°F indicates it is done.
- Take the dough earlyThe instruction to lift dough out "after it has begun to rise" matters: the yeast should still be lively, since 4 oz of butter and 4 oz of sugar will slow the rise considerably. Take it before the first rise is complete.
- Working the fat inHave the butter genuinely soft, not melted, and knead the additions in patiently — enriched dough looks broken and greasy for several minutes before it comes together. The dredge of flour over the top is presumably to keep the surface from sticking while it proves.
- The second rise"Place the bowl near the fire" means simply a warm spot. This rise is slow — an hour and a half to two hours would not be unusual with that much fat and sugar — and the dough should be visibly puffed but not collapsing before it goes into the tins.
- Bruised carawayBruising means crushing the seeds lightly to release the oil, not grinding them. A teaspoon is plenty for a cake this size; caraway seed cake was far more common in Victorian Britain than it is now and the flavour reads as assertive to modern palates.
- Tins and yieldButter the tins well. The recipe's own line that one quartern is 'enough for a good-sized cake' points to a single large tin rather than several small ones — bear in mind that is 4½–5 lb of dough before the additions. It is at its best the day it is baked and is traditionally eaten sliced and buttered thereafter.
Dough cakes belong to the economy of the home bakehouse: as long as a household made its own bread, a portion of the risen dough could be diverted, enriched with whatever butter, sugar and dried fruit were to hand, and baked alongside the loaves. Regional versions survive under names like lardy cake and Yorkshire spice loaf, and the method is much older than chemical raising agents — it is how sweet baking was done before baking powder became a general grocery item over the course of the nineteenth century. By the time this entry was printed, much urban bread-making had passed to commercial bakeries, and a recipe premised on "when bread is made at home" was addressing a shrinking readership.