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Huntington Chocolate Pudding
1/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, Yolks 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1 3/8 cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, Whites 2 eggs, 1 1/2 squares Walter Baker & Co.'s Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.
Cream butter and add gradually, while beating constantly, one-half the sugar. Beat yolks of eggs until thick and lemon-colored, and add gradually, while beating constantly, remaining sugar. Combine mixtures and add milk alternately with flour mixed and sifted with baking powder and salt; then add whites of eggs beaten until stiff, chocolate (which has been melted over hot water) and vanilla. Turn into a buttered and floured angel-cake pan and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes.
Remove from pan to a serving dish, cool slightly, fill centre with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with vanilla and pour around it
A butter cake baked in a tube pan and served as a warm pudding, with sweetened whipped cream in the well and a sauce poured around. Almost everything translates directly; the two things to watch are the chocolate and the pan.
- The chocolatePremium No. 1 was unsweetened baking chocolate in one-ounce squares, so 1 1/2 squares is 1 1/2 oz. Any unsweetened baking chocolate works; do not substitute semisweet, which will throw off both the sugar and the texture.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven of this period is roughly 350-375F; 350F is a safe reading here. Forty-five minutes suits a tube pan; test with a skewer in the thickest part of the ring.
- The panAn angel-cake pan is a plain tube pan, about 9 inches, with a hollow centre. Butter and flour it thoroughly, including the central tube, since this batter is rich enough to stick.
- That 1 3/8 cupsMeasure it as 1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons. Spoon the flour into the cup and level rather than scooping.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to under 1 1/2 cups flour is heavier leavening than modern practice. Two teaspoons gives a finer crumb with today's double-acting powder.
- Folding orderThe stiff whites go in before the melted chocolate, which is awkward: warm chocolate deflates beaten whites. Let the melted chocolate cool to barely warm and fold it in with a light hand, or the cake will bake dense.
- ServingUnmould while still warm, cool only slightly, and fill the centre just before it goes to the table so the cream does not slacken.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts was the oldest chocolate manufacturer in the United States, and its Choice Recipes booklets were promotional literature: the formulas specify Premium No. 1 or Baker's Breakfast Cocoa by name. The phrasing — "beat until thick and lemon-colored," "melted over hot water" — was common cooking-school boilerplate of the period. The name "pudding" for what is plainly a baked cake reflects older usage, in which pudding described a dish's place in the meal rather than its method: anything sweet, warm and sauced that arrived after the meat qualified.