Home › Village Receipts › Spice Cake (One cup of sugar one-half cup)
Spice Cake (One cup of sugar one-half cup)
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, one cup of sour milk, one cup of raisins, two cups of flour, one teaspoon of soda, one-half teaspoon of cloves, two teaspoons each of cinnamon and nutmeg.
— Miss Dorothy M. Jones
A plain sour-milk spice cake in the terse style of a church-supper collection: ingredients only, no pan, no oven, no time. Everything below fills those gaps.
- No eggs, and that is not an omissionNo eggs are listed -- The lift comes from soda reacting with the acid in the sour milk. Expect a closer, moister, slightly chewier crumb than a well-egged butter cake.
- Sour milkThis meant milk naturally soured at room temperature, not today's pasteurized milk, which spoils rather than clabbers. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or stir 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- Mixing orderCream the butter and sugar, beat in the sour milk, then add the flour sifted with the soda and spices. Dissolve the soda in a spoonful of the milk if you want to be sure of no yellow streaks, and get the batter into the pan promptly — the leavening is already working.
- RaisinsToss them in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding in, or they sink. A cup is generous for this quantity of batter; the cake is as much a fruit cake as a spice cake.
- Spice balanceTwo teaspoons of nutmeg is a great deal by modern standards, and pre-ground spice that had sat in a grocer's stock would likely have been milder than freshly grated. Start at a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg unless you want it dominant.
- Pan and ovenThe recipe specifies neither. The batter fits an 8-inch square or a standard loaf pan, greased and floured. Bake at 350°F for 35 to 45 minutes in the square pan, longer in the loaf, until a skewer comes out clean.
- YieldAbout nine squares, or one modest loaf. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day as the spices settle.
Sour-milk cakes belong to a dairy household that had no way to keep milk sweet, and their leavening depends on it: saleratus, and later baking soda, needed an acid partner, and clabbered milk was the one every farm kitchen had. Recipes of this type are common in American community cookbooks from the later nineteenth century onward, often spiced with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. The book is the ordinary genre of the fundraising cookbook -- each contribution signed, each one assumed to be read by someone who already knew what her own stove took. Miss Dorothy M. Jones felt no need to say; her neighbors did not need telling.