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Sunshine Cakes
Whites of 7 eggs; yolks of 5; 1 cupful of fine granulated sugar; 1 scant cupful of flour, measured after sifting five times; 1/4 teaspoonful of cream of tartar; 1 teaspoonful of orange extract. Beat yolks till thick, and set aside. Now add a pinch of salt and the cream of tartar to the whites, and beat till very stiff; add sugar, beat thoroughly, then add flavoring and beaten yolks; beat lightly and carefully; stir in the flour. Bake in tube pan, in moderate oven, forty to fifty minutes. Invert the pan to cool.
A sunshine cake is an angel food cake with the yolks put back in: no butter, no baking powder, all of the lift coming from egg white. The whole recipe turns on how the whites are handled.
- The hinge: fold, do not stir"Stir in the flour" means fold it in with a spatula in three or four additions, cutting down and turning the bowl. Anything more vigorous deflates the whites and there is no chemical leavening to rescue the cake.
- Moderate ovenSet the oven to 325-350F. At the upper end, check at forty minutes; the cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer in the thickest part comes out clean.
- Tube pan, ungreasedUse a two-piece aluminium angel food pan with a removable bottom and do not grease it. The batter must grip the sides to climb, and a nonstick or greased pan gives a squat cake.
- InvertingInvert the pan the moment it leaves the oven and leave it until completely cool, an hour or more. A pan with feet or a bottle through the tube both work. Cooling right side up compresses the crumb under its own weight.
- Sifted five timesThe repeated sifting lightened and aerated the flour, which was less finely and consistently milled than modern flour. Sifting modern cake flour and measuring after sifting, as the recipe directs, gets close to the same effect. Cake flour rather than all-purpose keeps the crumb tender.
- Egg whitesSeven whites is roughly 7 oz or a scant cup. Have them at room temperature, use a scrupulously clean bowl, and beat only to firm peaks that still bend at the tip; whites beaten to dry, chalky stiffness break apart when folded.
- Cream of tartarStill sold in the spice aisle. It stabilises the foam and helps keep the crumb white; a little lemon juice can stand in at this small a quantity, though cream of tartar is the more dependable choice.
- The spare yolksTwo yolks are left over. They keep two days covered in the refrigerator and go into custard, mayonnaise or hollandaise.
- Flavouring and yieldA teaspoonful of orange extract is assertive by modern standards; a teaspoon of finely grated orange zest with half a teaspoon of extract reads cleaner. With only a cupful each of flour and sugar this is a modest batter, better suited to a 9-inch tube pan than a large one, and best eaten the day it is baked.
Sunshine cake belongs to the family of foam cakes that spread through American home baking in the later nineteenth century, as mechanical egg beaters, finely milled white flour and more controllable ranges made a cake risen on egg white alone practical. Angel food used whites only; sunshine cake, as the name suggests, added the yolks back for colour and a slightly richer crumb, and gold cake used yolks alone. The pan is the other half of the story: the central tube conducts heat into the middle of a batter too delicate to bake through from the sides, and inverting the pan to cool has stayed with the genre ever since.