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Walnut Cake (One cup of sugar half a cup)
One cup of sugar, half a cup of milk, half a cup of butter, two cups of flour prepared with baking powder, one egg and yolk of two eggs, putting the whites in a cool place till needed. Bake in three layers and put together with some of the icing made from the whites of the eggs with small pieces of walnuts scattered between the layers. Ice the top, putting on halves of walnuts. One pound of walnuts to a cake.
— Miss Emma Pendexter
A small one-egg layer cake of the kind village fundraiser books are full of: cheap in eggs, generous in nuts, and written for a cook who already knew how deep to fill a tin. A few things need translating.
- "Flour prepared with baking powder"Flour sifted together with its leavening, the ancestor of self-rising flour. For two cups of all-purpose flour, sift with about 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt; salted or unsalted butter is at your discretion.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the range had none. Bake at 350F. Thin layers of this size are done in 15 to 20 minutes, when the centre springs back and the edges just pull from the tin.
- Tin sizeThe batter is small — about 3 cups — so three layers means three shallow ones. Use 8-inch round tins and expect layers barely half an inch thick; 9-inch tins will give you something closer to a wafer.
- Creaming orderThe receipt lists ingredients without method. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the whole egg and the two yolks, then add flour and milk alternately. Half a cup of butter is 4 ounces, one stick.
- A pound of walnutsMost likely a pound in the shell, which yields roughly 2 cups of nutmeat. Buying shelled, use 6 to 8 ounces: chop most of it for between the layers and keep the best halves whole for the top.
- The icingTwo whites, held in a cool place, were meant for an uncooked icing beaten stiff with sifted confectioners' sugar -- figure roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups of sugar for two whites, added until it holds a peak and spreads without running. If raw white is a concern, use pasteurized whites or a boiled (Italian meringue) icing.
- AssemblySpread the icing thinly between layers and scatter chopped walnuts over each; the nuts do the work of a filling. Ice the top last and press the walnut halves in before it sets, or they will not stick.
- YieldA three-layer 8-inch cake, 10 to 12 modest slices. It is leaner than a modern butter cake.
Community cookbooks like this one were compiled by church and village committees, each contributor signing her name to a receipt already familiar to her neighbours. The cake itself belongs to the great age of American layer cakes, helped along by cheap chemical baking powder from the 1860s onward and by tinware light enough to bake several thin rounds at once. Walnuts might be gathered, hulled and cracked at home or bought shelled; the milder English walnut had become widely available by the end of the century and is the safer choice if you want the icing to taste of sugar. The single whole egg plus two yolks, with the whites carefully reserved "in a cool place" for the icing, is characteristic thrift, and refrigeration meant a cellar or a north windowsill.