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White Cup Cakes
Take as much fresh butter as will fill one cup, as much powdered white sugar as will fill two cups, and as much flour as will fill three cups. Beat the butter to cream, add the powdered sugar and the flour. Whisk the whites of eight eggs to froth, and add them gradually to the mixture, together with a table-spoonful of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in a little hot water, a table-spoonful of rose-water, and as much milk or cream as will make the batter of the consistency of pound-cake batter. Butter some small tins, three-parts fill them with the mixture, and bake in a well-heated oven. The yolks of the eggs may, of course, be used for other purposes. Time to bake the cakes, according to size. Probable cost, 2s. 4d. for this quantity.
A white cake built on the old cup-count ratio, leavened with beaten whites and a startling amount of soda. Two things need attention before you bake: the soda and the mixing order.
- The soda is the problemA tablespoon of bicarbonate of soda in three cups of flour is roughly three times a workable dose, and there is no acid here to neutralise it — the cakes will taste soapy and metallic and may turn faintly yellow. Use 2 teaspoons of baking powder instead, sifted with the flour, or leave the chemical leavening out entirely and rely on the eight whites.
- Cups as ratioThis is the 1-2-3 pattern: 1 part butter, 2 sugar, 3 flour. Any consistent cup gives a balanced batter. With a standard US cup that is 8 oz butter and about 13 oz flour; "powdered white sugar" here means finely ground granulated sugar, roughly 7 oz a cup, so about 14 oz for the two cups — modern confectioners' sugar would weigh far less by volume. Either way, a large batch.
- Cream, then foldBeating butter and sugar together first, then working in the flour, gives a stiff paste that is hard to lighten. Cream butter and sugar until pale, slacken with some of the milk, then alternate flour and the remaining liquid, and fold the whisked whites in last in three additions so the air survives.
- Whites to soft peaks"Froth" here means soft, glossy peaks that still slump slightly, not a dry stiff meringue. Over-beaten whites break into lumps that will not fold into a heavy butter batter.
- ConsistencyPound-cake batter drops thickly from the spoon and does not pour in a stream. Expect to need 1/2 to 3/4 cup of milk, added by degrees.
- OvenA "well-heated oven" is not a fixed figure; for small cakes something in the region of 350-375F works, and the recipe itself only says to time them according to size. Reckon on roughly 18-22 minutes in standard cupcake tins, baking until the tops spring back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Rose-waterStill sold, and worth buying the food-grade culinary kind rather than cosmetic rose water. A tablespoon is assertive by modern palates; start with two teaspoons if rose is unfamiliar to you.
- Yield and the yolksAbout 24 cakes from the full quantity. The eight spare yolks keep two days covered in the refrigerator and go into custard, lemon curd or mayonnaise.
The name has nothing to do with the paper cup a modern cupcake sits in: a "cup cake" was one measured by cupfuls rather than weighed, the ratio itself serving as the recipe — one butter, two sugar, three flour, and in the fullest version four eggs, the so-called 1-2-3-4 cake. That volumetric habit is generally traced to American kitchens, where scales were scarcer than in British ones. Making the cake white by using only the whites was a point of display in the nineteenth century, when a pale crumb is often said to have signalled fine bolted flour and good sugar; the leftover yolks, as the recipe puts it, may of course be used for other purposes. Rose-water is the older flavouring, standard in English cake-making long before vanilla extract became cheap and general, and it lingered in white cakes precisely because it added no colour.