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Birthday Cake
1/3 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, Yolks 2 eggs, 1 cup buttermilk, 2 cups flour, 1/3 cup Baker's Breakfast Cocoa, 1 teaspoon soda, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Cream the butter, and add sugar gradually, while beating constantly. Drop yolks of eggs into mixture and beat thoroughly; then add buttermilk, flour mixed with cocoa and soda, and vanilla. Turn into three buttered and floured layer cake pans and bake in a moderate oven twenty minutes. Put Marshmallow Frosting between layers and on top of cake.
A plain buttermilk-and-cocoa layer cake from one of Walter Baker's promotional booklets, written for cooks who had a cocoa tin and a coal range. A few points of translation.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is usually read as somewhere around 350 to 375F. Thin layers in dark or thin pans may be done at 15 to 18 minutes, so start checking early.
- The cocoa is the hingeBaker's Breakfast Cocoa is natural (non-alkalised) unsweetened cocoa, and the teaspoon of soda is working against its acidity together with the buttermilk. Dutch-processed cocoa is neutral, so there is less acid for the soda to meet (the buttermilk still supplies some), which can give a soapy note and less lift.
- Pan sizeThree layers from two cups of flour means very thin layers. Three 8-inch rounds is the usual reading; in 9-inch pans they will be barely half an inch tall. Two 8-inch pans, baked five minutes longer, is a reasonable alternative.
- Measuring the flourTwo cups of flour is roughly 225 to 250 g depending on how the cup is filled. Spoon it into the cup and level it rather than scooping, or the cake tightens up.
- ButtermilkCultured buttermilk from the carton works. If you use the older thin buttermilk left from churning, or a milk-and-vinegar substitute, expect a slightly slacker batter.
- The leftover whitesThe recipe takes only the yolks; the Marshmallow Frosting it sends you to would most likely have used whites, so the two are probably meant to be accounted for there. If you frost with something else, plan a use for them.
- MixingAdd the buttermilk and the cocoa-flour-soda mixture alternately and stop as soon as the flour disappears. Once the soda meets the acid the clock is running, so have the pans buttered and floured before you start.
- YieldA three-layer 8-inch cake, about 10 to 12 servings.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts traced its chocolate mill back to 1765 and by the turn of the twentieth century was among the best-known chocolate names in the United States. Its Choice Recipes booklets were advertising, given away or sold for a few cents, and the recipes carried the names of respected cookery authorities of the day, Maria Parloa and Fannie Merritt Farmer among them; they generally specify a Baker's product by name. "Breakfast Cocoa" was a general trade designation of the period for a cocoa pressed to a relatively high remaining fat content and sold for drinking. That this modest buttermilk cake is titled "Birthday Cake" says something about the period: chocolate layer cake with a white boiled frosting was still occasion food, not everyday baking.