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Chocolate Layer Cake
5 level tablespoonfuls of butter, 3 1/2 squares Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate (melted), 1 cup milk, About 2 1/2 cups sifted flour, 1 Cup granulated sugar, 3 eggs, 3 1/2 level teaspoonfuls baking powder. Cream butter, add sugar, the melted chocolate, the whole eggs and beat all until smooth. Set this aside to cool. Add vanilla and half cup of the flour in which has been sifted the baking powder. Then add milk and remaining flour alternately, using enough flour to make mixture stiff enough to drop from the spoon. This may seem stiffer than other cake mixtures, but the amount of flour given will not be too much. Beat until very smooth.
Bake in square or round pans 20 or 25 minutes or until the cake springs back when pressed with the finger.
Put layers together with a thick, white frosting, lightly covered with marshmallows cut in small pieces, or omit the marshmallows and press half walnuts into the frosting, while it is soft. When the marshmallows are not used add 1 teaspoonful of vanilla to the cake mixture.
A straightforward creamed-butter layer cake from Walter Baker & Co.'s promotional booklet, written when the company assumed everyone knew its product line and every stove ran on judgment rather than a dial. A few points need translating.
- Baker's Premium No. 1This was the company's plain unsweetened chocolate, sold in one-ounce squares. Use 3 1/2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled slightly; it is not the same as bittersweet or semisweet, and substituting either will throw off both sugar and structure.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given at all, as is usual in booklets of this kind. Bake at 350F, which suits the stated 20-25 minutes for layers.
- Pan size and yield"Square or round pans" and "put layers together" tell you it is a layer cake but not how many layers; this quantity of batter suits two 8-inch or 9-inch pans, greased and floured or lined, for a cake serving eight to ten. The 9-inch layers will be thin and want the shorter end of the timing.
- Baking powderThree and a half level teaspoons is a lot by current standards, where roughly 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons per cup of flour is usual; a modern cook might use closer to 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons for this much flour. Period powders varied in type and strength, and some brands may have needed the larger dose. Following the original will give a fast, high rise.
- The vanillaThe instructions tell you to add vanilla before specifying any, then say to add a teaspoon only if the marshmallows are omitted. The intent is that a marshmallow-topped cake carries its own flavour; assume 1 teaspoon either way unless you want the chocolate very plain.
- Butter measured in spoonsFive level tablespoons is a scant third of a cup, about 70 g. Spoon measures for butter were the normal convention in cookery writing of the period. Have it properly soft before creaming, since this batter is stiff and will fight you otherwise.
- "Stiff enough to drop from the spoon"This is the hinge. The flour is given as "about" 2 1/2 cups on purpose; add the last of it only until the batter falls from a spoon in a heavy lump rather than pouring. Overshoot and the cake bakes dry and close-grained.
- MarshmallowsMarshmallows of the period were made by different methods from the modern extruded kind, though the recipe's instruction to cut them "in small pieces" shows they were firm enough to hold a shape. Expect today's to sit up as distinct cubes on the soft frosting.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, was the oldest chocolate manufacturer in the United States, and its Choice Recipes booklets were advertising in the most useful form: give the cook a reason to keep buying the squares. The recipes were credited to well-known domestic-science writers of the day, which lent the pamphlets the authority of a cookbook while the ingredient lists named Baker's products by grade. "Premium No. 1" was the firm's unsweetened cake chocolate, distinguished in these pages from its breakfast cocoa and its sweetened varieties. The cake itself belongs to the great age of the American layer cake, made possible by chemical leavening and by cheap standardized pans, and the marshmallow-and-frosting finish places it in the early twentieth century, when marshmallows had shifted from a confectioner's specialty to something any grocer stocked.