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Flour Mixtures Continued: Cake: Bake
HONEY DROP COOKIES 1/2 cup of butter The whites of 2 eggs, beaten 1/2 cup of granulated sugar dry 1 cup of honey 3 cups of sifted flour Beaten yolks of 2 eggs 1 teaspoonful of soda Grated rind of 1lemon More flour if needed 3 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice Mix in the usual manner. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto a buttered baking pan, shape into smooth rounds. Bake in a moderate oven. For change add half a cup or more of cocoanut.
CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE 2 level tablespoonfuls of butter Filling for Cream Pie: 1/2 cup of sugar 1 egg 3/4 an ounce of chocolate 1/3 cup of milk 1/4 cup of sugar 7/8 cup of sifted four 2 tablespoonfuls of boiling water 1 1/2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 3/4 cup of double cream 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla Cream the butter; add half the sugar gradually. Beat the egg and beat in the other half of the sugar, then combine the two mixtures; add the milk and the flour sifted with the baking powder and salt. Bake in two small tins. Melt the chocolate; add the sugar and water and cook until smooth; let cool, add to the cream with the vanilla and beat until firm. Put between and on top of the layers.
ENGLISH TEA CAKES 1 1/2 cups of flour 1/2 cup of butter 1/2 cup of sugar 1/2 cup of dried currants 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 1 egg 2 level teaspoonfuls of baking 2 tablespoonfuls of milk powder Granulated sugar Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder; with the tips of the fingers work in the butter; beat the egg, reserving a tablespoonful of the egg to glaze the cakes, add the milk to the egg and use to mix the dry ingredients to a dough. With the hands roll the dough into balls the size of an English walnut. Set the balls in a buttered pan, some distance apart, brush over with the egg, dredge with sugar and bake in a quick oven. The recipe makes about fifteen cakes. They are good and quickly made.
MARSHMALLOW MARGUERITES Take any variety of thin, unsweetened cracker, spread lightly with butter and set in a baking pan; on the center of each cracker dispose a marshmallow, with a bit of butter above, - the butter may be omitted, - put the pan into a hot oven until the marshmallow is softened and browned a little, then serve at once.
ORANGE COOKIES 1/2 cup of butter 1/4 cup of orange juice 1 cup of granulated sugar 2 cups or more of flour Grated rind of 1 orange 4 level teaspoonfuls of baking 1 egg, beaten light powder Mix in the usual manner, but without separating the white and yolk of the egg. Roll into a sheet, cut into cakes, set into baking pan, dredge with granulated sugar and bake in a moderate oven. Bake one cake, then add more flour if needed.
DROP COOKIES WITH SOUR CREAM 1/2 cup of butter 1/4 teaspoonful of sifted soda 1 cup of sugar 2 1/2 cups of sifted flour 1 egg, beaten light 3 1/2 level teaspoonfuls of baking 1/2 cup of sour cream powder Mix in the usual manner, stirring the soda into the cream. Mix the whole together very thoroughly; the mixture will be quite stiff. Drop from a spoon onto buttered tins, shaping each portion into a smooth round. Dredge with granulated sugar. Bake in a moderate oven.
OATMEAL MACAROONS 1 egg, beaten light 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1/2 cup of sugar 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla 1/2 tablespoonful melted butter 1 1/4 cups of rolled oats Beat the sugar into the egg; add the other ingredients and beat all together thoroughly. Drop from a teaspoon onto a buttered baking sheet and shape in symmetrical rounds. Bake in a moderate oven. The recipe makes about eighteen small cakes.
TINY CREAM CAKES 1/4 cup, or 2 ounces, of butter 1/2 cup of sifted flour 1/2 cup of boiling water 1 egg and 1 extra yolk Set the butter and water over the fire and when boiling add the flour and stir and cook until the mixture separates from the sides of the saucepan. Turn into a bowl, break in the whole egg and beat it in thoroughly, then beat in the yolk. With a teaspoon shape the mixture, on a buttered tin, into rounds about an inch and a quarter across. Bake about fifteen minutes, with strongest heat at the bottom. When cold make an opening on one side and fill with English Cream; dip the top of each in melted fondant and sprinkle with tiny candies (hundreds and thousands). Frosting made of syrup and confectioner's sugar may replace the fondant.
ENGLISH CREAM FILLING 1 cup of milk, scalded 1/3 cup of sugar 1/4 cup of sifted flour 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 cup of milk 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla 1 egg or 2 egg yolks, beaten well Stir the quarter cup of milk into the flour and cook in the scalded milk about fifteen minutes, then stir in the egg, sugar and salt, beaten together; let cook to set the egg; let cool and add the vanilla.
CRULLERS 1 yolk of egg, beaten light 1 white of egg, beaten dry 1/4 cup of granulated sugar 1/4 teaspoonful, each, of mace 1 tablespoonful of melted but- and salt ter About 1 cup of flour Beat the sugar into the beaten yolk; beat in the butter, fold in the white and then beat in the flour sifted with the salt and mace. Add more flour if needed. The dough must be stiff enough to roll into a sheet about one-third an inch thick. Cut into rectangular pieces (two by three inches), make four parallel slits in each equally distant from each other and the edges of the dough on all sides. Carefully lift up the second and fourth strips, to meet in the center, and cook in hot fat to a golden brown. Drain and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
YEAST DOUGHNUTS 1/4 cup of lukewarm water 1/3 cup of melted butter 1/2 cake of compressed yeast 2 eggs A little bread flour 3/4 cup of sugar 1 teaspoonful of salt 1/2 teaspoonful of mace or nut- 1 cup of scalded-and-cooled meg milk About 4 cups of bread flour At about eight o'clock in the evening soften the yeast in the lukewarm water, mix thoroughly, then stir in flour to make a dough that can be kneaded; knead until elastic and cut the little ball of dough across the top in both directions, then put it into a bowl of tepid water, to stand until it floats on the water, light and puffy. With a skimmer remove "the sponge" to the mixing bowl, add the other ingredients and mix to a soft dough. Knead about fifteen minutes. Cover and set aside until morning. The temperature should not go much below 60 deg F. In the morning turn the light puffy dough upside down and roll into a sheet half an inch thick. Cut into strips half an inch (generous) wide; twist these and bring the ends together. Set to rise, covered, on a floured cloth or tin. When light fry in deep fat, drain on soft paper and roll in powdered sugar. The fat must not be too hot or the cakes will brown before they are cooked through. Turn frequently while cooking. Cakes made with yeast require longer cooking than those made with soda, etc. DATE AND NUT LOAF 1/2 pound of dates weighed af- 1 rounding teaspoonful of ba- ter stoning kingpowder 1/2 pound of English walnut 1/2 cup of sugar meats 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 1/2 cup of sifted flour 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla 2 eggs Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt over the dates and nut meats. Mix all together thoroughly. Beat the yolks and stir into the mixture, beat the whites dry and then beat into the mixture with the vanilla. Turn into a brick loaf bread pan lined with buttered paper. Bake one hour in a very moderate oven.
A run of small-batch cookies, cakes and fried dough from a book written for two-person households. The measurements are sound, but the oven language, the yeast and one or two ingredient names need translating.
- Oven temperaturesThe book's terms have no fixed modern equivalents, but the usual reading is "moderate" around 350F, "quick" around 400-450F, "very moderate" (the date and nut loaf) around 325F, and the "hot oven" for the marguerites 400-425F or a low broiler. For the tiny cream cakes a hot start of about 400-425F falling to 350F suits choux; "strongest heat at the bottom" describes where the range's heat came from rather than any stated temperature.
- "Mix in the usual manner"The standard creaming method the book assumes you already know: cream the butter, beat in the sugar, add the egg, then the liquid and the sifted dry ingredients alternately. The honey and orange cookies both allow "more flour if needed"; bake one test cookie as the orange recipe suggests and stiffen the dough only if it spreads flat.
- Half a cake of compressed yeastA household cake of fresh yeast ran to roughly 0.6 oz, though sizes varied, so half is about 0.3 oz. Roughly 1 teaspoon of instant dry yeast will stand in. The floating-sponge step -- scoring a ball of dough and dropping it in tepid water until it rises -- appears to have served as a check that the yeast was working, and can be skipped with modern yeast.
- Sour creamIn 1909 this meant cream that had naturally soured and was genuinely acidic, which is why the soda is stirred into it. Commercial cultured sour cream is the right stand-in; unsoured cream will leave the soda untriggered and the cookies flat and faintly soapy.
- Double cream, cocoanut, hundreds and thousandsDouble cream here means heavy whipping cream at 36 percent or more, not British 48 percent double cream, though the latter works. Cocoanut is dried shredded coconut, unsweetened if you can get it. Hundreds and thousands are nonpareils.
- The chocolate cream pie ingredient listThe typesetting has scrambled: "7/8 cup of sifted four" is flour, and the method calls for salt that never appears in the list — use 1/4 teaspoon. The 3/4 ounce of chocolate is unsweetened baking chocolate. Note that the frosting is cocoa-flavoured whipped cream, so the finished cake must be refrigerated and eaten the same day.
- Tiny cream cakes are chouxThis is pâte à choux by another name, and the hinge is drying the paste: keep stirring over heat until a film forms on the pan bottom and the mass pulls cleanly from the sides, then beat the eggs in one at a time. Do not open the oven during the first ten minutes or the shells collapse.
- English cream fillingFifteen minutes of cooking the flour-and-milk base is not excessive — it cooks out the raw starch — but once the egg goes in, keep the pan just below a simmer and stir constantly, or it will scramble. Chill it thoroughly before it goes into the choux shells.
- Frying the crullers and doughnutsThe book warns that the fat must not be too hot and that yeast-raised cakes need longer cooking than soda ones. Work at 360-370F for the yeast doughnuts and 370-375F for the crullers, and fry in small batches so the temperature holds. The marguerites, by contrast, need watching every second -- marshmallows go from softened to scorched in under a minute.
- YieldsThe original gives counts only for the tea cakes (about fifteen) and the oatmeal macaroons (about eighteen). For the rest, expect several dozen small cookies each from the honey and orange doughs, a similar number of sour cream drops, roughly twenty tiny cream cakes, and one small date and nut loaf that slices thin and keeps for several days wrapped.
Cooking for Two was written by Janet McKenzie Hill, longtime editor of the Boston Cooking School Magazine, for the then-novel proposition that a household of two people deserved proper cookery rather than scaled-down leftovers — hence the half cups, the two small tins and the recipes that frankly announce they make fifteen cakes. The Marshmallow Marguerites are the period piece here: marguerites, a cracker spread with a sweet topping and browned in the oven, circulated widely in American cookbooks and magazines around the turn of the century, usually with a meringue or nut paste, and the marshmallow version arrived once factory-made marshmallows became cheap and shelf-stable. It is often pointed out as an ancestor of the s'more, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. The yeast doughnuts, with their overnight rise and their instruction that the room "should not go much below 60 deg F," belong to an older world of unheated kitchens and yeast of uncertain vigour — the floating sponge test was insurance against a dead cake of yeast ruining a morning's breakfast.