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Caramel Cake
1/2 cupful of butter, 1 1/2 cupfuls of sugar, 1/2 cupful whites of eggs, 1 cupful cold water, 3 cupfuls of flour, 3 teaspoonfuls baking-powder. Cream butter and half sugar, beat whites of eggs, and then add rest of sugar and beat stiff. Then put two together, add flour and water alternately. Bake in shallow pan to cut in squares.
A plain white butter cake batter, mixed by the older method of beating the sugar into the egg whites rather than folding the whites in last. It works, but the sequence matters.
- Egg whites by volumeHalf a cupful of whites is about 4 large egg whites. Weigh if you can: roughly 120 g.
- The hinge: two batters combinedYou are making a creamed butter mixture and a soft meringue, then folding them together before any flour goes in. Beat the whites to soft peaks, add the remaining 3/4 cup sugar gradually and beat to a stiff glossy meringue, then fold it into the creamed butter in two or three additions.
- Alternating flour and waterAdd in five additions, starting and ending with flour, and stop mixing the moment the last streak disappears. Overworking after the meringue is in collapses the only lift the cake has beyond the baking powder.
- OvenNo temperature is given here; a moderate oven, about 350F, suits this batter. In a shallow pan the cake bakes quickly, 25 to 30 minutes, until it springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Pan size'Shallow pan' is not defined; a sheet of roughly 9 by 13 inches, filled no more than an inch deep, works for a three-cup-flour batter and lets the cake be cut into squares rather than layered.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to three cups of flour is a standard period proportion and still reasonable today. Sift it through the flour rather than adding it to the wet mixture.
- Where the caramel goesThe batter itself contains no caramel; in cakes of this name the flavour usually comes from a boiled caramel or browned-sugar icing spread over the top. Plan on making one separately, or the cake is simply a white cake in squares.
- YieldAbout two dozen two-inch squares from a pan of roughly 9 by 13 inches.