Home › Village Receipts › Ames Cake
Ames Cake
One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, five eggs, one-half cup of milk, two and one-half teaspoons baking powder, juice and rind of one lemon; beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately, saving the whites of two eggs and one teaspoon of lemon juice for frosting. Make a boiled frosting. Bake in a dripping pan, cut into squares and put one English walnut meat on each square.
— Mrs. Harry Hall
A sheet-baked lemon butter cake in the pound-cake tradition, finished with boiled frosting and cut into squares. The original assumes you already know how to make a boiled icing, so that is where most of the guidance is needed.
- The hinge: the boiled frostingBoiled frosting is an Italian meringue — a sugar syrup cooked to the soft-ball stage, about 238–240F, then beaten in a slow stream into the two reserved whites already whipped to soft peaks. Roughly 1 cup sugar to 1/4 cup water for two whites. Under-cooked syrup gives a runny icing that never sets; over-cooked gives a grainy one that tears the cake.
- "A dripping pan"The shallow rectangular pan that sat under a roast — in a modern kitchen a half-sheet pan (13x18 in) or a 9x13 in baking pan. This is a large batter: a half-sheet gives a thin cake, roughly 20-25 minutes, a 9x13 a taller one that will want longer, roughly 35-40. Test rather than trust the clock.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, as was usual in recipes of this kind. Bake at 350F and test with a skewer at the centre.
- Separating the eggsThree whole eggs' worth of whites plus the yolks of all five go into the cake; two whites are held back for the frosting. Beat those three whites to soft, not stiff, peaks and fold them in last, after the flour, or the crumb tightens.
- Lemon"Rind" means the zest only — grate it finely and rub it into the sugar to draw out the oil. Reserve a teaspoon of the juice for the icing before adding the rest to the batter.
- Baking powderTwo and a half teaspoons for three cups of flour is in the normal modern range, so use it as written. Period baking powder was often single-acting, so the original cook would have moved quickly; with today's double-acting powder there is no rush.
- The walnutsThe recipe frosts, cuts into squares, and then sets one walnut meat on each square. If you would rather not ice cut sides, the nuts can be set on while the frosting is still tacky and the cake cut once it has crusted.
Cakes named for a family are the signature of a community cookbook, where a receipt travelled under the name of the woman or household it came from rather than any description of the dish itself. In substance this is a rich cup cake, the nineteenth-century American formula built on cups of butter, sugar, flour and a count of eggs, descended from the older one-one-one-one pound cake but lightened with baking powder, which became widely available in American kitchens after the 1860s. Baking it flat in a dripping pan and cutting it into iced squares was the practical answer for a church supper or a fair table, where portions had to be uniform and eaten out of hand; the single walnut meat on each square marks the serving and saves the cook decorating a whole cake.