Creole Cake
1/2 cup butter, 2 cups brown sugar, Yolks 3 eggs, 1/3 cup Baker's Breakfast Cocoa, 1/2 cup hot strong coffee infusion, 1 teaspoonful soda, 1/2 cup sour heavy cream, 2 cups flour, Whites 3 eggs.
Cream butter and add sugar, gradually, while beating constantly; then add yolks of eggs beaten until thick. Add coffee infusion gradually to cocoa and let stand until cool.
Add to first mixture, then add soda dissolved in cream, flour, and whites of eggs, beaten until stiff. Bake in layer cake tins in a moderate oven. Put layers together with boiled frosting, cover top with frosting, and when set spread with a thin layer of Walter Baker & Co.'s Premium No. 1 Chocolate, melted.
A brown-sugar chocolate layer cake leavened with soda and sour cream, finished with boiled frosting and a thin wash of melted unsweetened chocolate. Most of the work of translating it is in the dairy and the two chocolate products.
- The hinge: cool the cocoa pasteThe hot coffee is poured onto the cocoa and left to cool before it joins the butter mixture. Adding it warm risks melting the creamed butter and slackening the batter.
- Moderate oven350F. Three 8-inch or two 9-inch layers will take roughly 20 to 30 minutes; test with a skewer at the centre rather than by time.
- Sour heavy creamThis means cream that has naturally soured and thickened, acidic enough to react with the soda. Modern cultured sour cream is the closest equivalent; well-shaken buttermilk also works, though the crumb will be a little less rich.
- Baker's Breakfast CocoaA natural, non-alkalised unsweetened cocoa. Use natural cocoa here, not Dutch-process: the recipe relies on the acid in the cocoa and the sour cream to activate a full teaspoon of soda.
- Coffee infusionSimply strong brewed coffee, hot. Half a cup of a dark, full-strength brew is what is wanted; it deepens the cocoa rather than tasting of coffee.
- Premium No. 1 ChocolateWalter Baker's unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in blocks. Any unsweetened baking chocolate melts to the same thin, slightly bitter glaze; spread it only after the frosting has crusted, or the two will marble together.
- Boiled frostingThe period standard is a hot sugar syrup beaten into stiff egg whites, syrup taken to about 240F. It sets firm and matte, which is why the chocolate can be spread over it.
- Soda and sugarA teaspoon of soda is generous by modern standards; dissolve it fully in the cream so it does not leave soapy patches. Two cups of brown sugar, lightly packed, makes a decidedly sweet cake, and the unsweetened chocolate topping is there to balance it.
- YieldEnough for a two- or three-layer cake serving 10 to 12.
This comes from one of the Choice Recipes booklets that Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, distributed for decades to sell cocoa and baking chocolate, with recipes contributed by well-known cooking-school figures of the day and every branded product named in full. "Creole" here appears alongside the pairing of coffee with chocolate, an association traditionally traced to the strong, often chicory-laced coffee of New Orleans. The technique is general American practice of the period, though: soured cream and soda instead of baking powder, a boiled meringue frosting, and a final thin coat of unsweetened chocolate that both decorated the cake and advertised the block it came from.