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Angel Cake (No. 2)
1 cup sweet milk 1 cup Five Roses flour 1 cup fine granulated sugar 3 teaspoons baking powder Pinch of salt 2 eggs (whites only) Set milk in a pan of boiling water and heat to boiling point. Sift well together the dry ingredients five times. Into this, pour the cup of hot milk, stir smooth, then add the stiff whites of 2 eggs. Fold them in carefully.
Do not grease the tin or flavor cake. Bake in moderate oven.
Ice with water icing.
A hot-milk sponge wearing an angel cake's name — there is no cream of tartar here and only two whites, so expect a light, fine-crumbed white layer rather than the cloud-like texture of a true angel food. The hinge is the milk: it must go into the dry mixture genuinely hot, which gelatinizes some of the starch and gives the cake its tender, moist crumb.
- Moderate oven"Moderate" in books of this period is generally taken as somewhere around 350F. The recipe names only one tin and gives no time; judge by a springy top and a clean tester rather than the clock.
- Why the tin is left ungreasedThe usual explanation for an ungreased tin in cakes of this family is that the batter grips the sides as it rises; the recipe itself gives no reason, and with only two whites and baking powder doing the lifting the effect is less pronounced than in a true angel food. Free the cake from the tin with a thin knife.
- Heating the milkA pan set in boiling water is a double boiler; scalded milk in a heavy saucepan over low heat does the same job. Pour it into the dry ingredients while still steaming and stir quickly — a cooled cup of milk gives a coarser crumb.
- Sifting five timesRepeated sifting served to aerate the flour and to blend the powder evenly through it, which mattered more when baking powder was less uniform than today's. Two passes through a sieve is adequate with modern double-acting powder.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to one cup of flour is heavy by current standards and can leave a faint chemical or soapy edge. Around two teaspoons of modern double-acting powder is nearer the mark for this quantity of flour.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat flour from the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, still sold under the name. Any all-purpose flour works; a cup of sifted flour runs to roughly 4 oz against something nearer 4.5 to 5 oz scooped, so measure lightly.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as distinct from the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often called for alongside soda. Whole milk gives the best result.
- Do not flavorThe instruction is explicit in the recipe: the cake is left plain, tasting of little but sugar and egg. If you want vanilla, put it in the water icing rather than the batter.
- Water icingConfectioners' sugar stirred with just enough hot water to make a pourable glaze, spread over the cake while it is barely warm so it sets in a thin sheet.
- YieldA small cake: the batter is scant for a large tin and gives one thin cake or layer. It is best the day it is made and stales quickly, as low-fat sponges do.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed to promote its flour, which is why the brand name appears inside the ingredient list rather than beside it. Recipes like this one circulated in variant forms across North American community and milling cookbooks in the early twentieth century, often filed under the name of the more famous cake they resembled. True angel food, which appeared in American cookbooks from the 1870s onward, depends on a dozen or more egg whites and cream of tartar for its structure; this version, by contrast, calls for only two eggs and a leavening of baking powder. The hot-milk method itself is an old sponge-cake technique that outlived this recipe and is still used in what is generally called hot milk cake.