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Cakes for Musicale
Cream 1/4 cupful butter, add 3/4 cupful sugar; beat to a cream; add 1/2 cupful sweet cream, 2 cupfuls flour, 1 teaspoonful baking-powder, 1 teaspoonful vanilla, beaten yolks of 4 eggs, 1/2 cupful cocoanut, stiffly beaten whites, grated rind of half an orange. Bake in loaf; ice--bars, notes, etc., of chocolate icing, coated pellets, and citron.
A plain rich loaf cake whose point is the decoration: chocolate icing piped into a musical staff, with notes and clefs built from candies and citron. The batter is straightforward; the original leaves out oven heat, time and pan size.
- Oven and panBake in a greased and floured loaf pan of about 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches at 350F. Expect 50 to 60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean; check the centre rather than the edges.
- Sweet creamThis means fresh, unsoured cream, not a sweetened one. Heavy or whipping cream is the right substitute; the word "sweet" is there to distinguish it from the sour cream and clabbered milk that older recipes often use with soda.
- CocoanutDried shredded coconut, which at the time would ordinarily have been unsweetened. Modern bagged coconut is usually sweetened, and with 3/4 cup of sugar already in the batter you will want the unsweetened kind if you can get it.
- Leavening and the whitesOne teaspoon of baking powder to two cups of flour is modest, so a good deal of the lift depends on the four beaten whites. Fold them in last, in two or three additions, and stop as soon as no streaks remain.
- Order of mixingAs written the dry and wet ingredients arrive in one run. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the yolks, then alternate the flour sifted with the baking powder against the cream, and add vanilla, coconut and orange rind before folding in the whites.
- Coated pelletsProbably small candy-coated comfits of the kind later sold as dragees. Many decorative dragees sold today are labelled non-edible; use small round candies or chocolate beans instead.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks or diced. Cut it into thin strips for the staff lines and stems, or substitute candied orange peel, which is easier to find and suits the orange rind in the cake.
- Icing and assemblyA firm chocolate icing that sets is essential if the notes are to hold their shape; a thin glaze will let everything slide. Ice the top and sides, let the surface set, then lay the five staff lines and place the notes.
- YieldOne loaf, ten to twelve slices.