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Black Hill Cake
1 cup sugar Butter size of an egg 1 egg 1 cup sweet milk 2 teaspoons cream of tartar (level) 1 teaspoon soda 1 pint Five Roses flour Beat sugar and butter together well.
Add other ingredients. Pour into buttered tin two-thirds of mixture, and to remaining third add: 2 tablespoons molasses ½ teaspoon ground cloves ½ teaspoon allspice Stir together and pour over top of first mixture. Bake in moderate oven.
A plain one-egg milk cake with a third of the batter darkened with molasses and spice, poured on top. The measurements are volumetric in the older style and the oven direction is a single word, so both need translating.
- Butter size of an eggThat is about 2 oz, or 1/4 cup. Have it soft enough to cream with the sugar.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume: a pint is 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz of all-purpose flour depending on how it is scooped. Spoon it into the cup and level rather than packing.
- Sweet milkOrdinary fresh milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that a period cook might otherwise reach for. Whole milk suits this batter best.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether these act as a homemade baking powder, mixed in the bowl rather than bought ready-made. Two level teaspoons cream of tartar with one of soda is somewhere in the range of 3 to 4 teaspoons of modern baking powder, depending on the conversion used. Whichever you use, get the batter into the tin promptly, as the acid-soda reaction begins in the bowl.
- SaltThe recipe gives none; butter of the period was commonly salted. With unsalted butter add 1/4 teaspoon to the flour.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F (moderate is usually read as 350 to 375F). An 8-inch square or 9-inch round tin, buttered, will need roughly 30 to 35 minutes; test with a skewer in the pale layer as well as the dark.
- The dark thirdMolasses and spice make that portion heavier and looser than the plain batter, so it is likely to sink partway rather than sit as a clean top layer. Spoon it on in dollops and give it one or two passes with a knife if you want a marbled crumb; leave it alone for a mottled dark top.
- YieldOne modest single-layer cake, eight to nine squares. It is a teacake rather than a dessert cake, and no icing is intended.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal to promote Five Roses flour, and much of its contents came from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which is why the book is thick with small, thrifty, unadorned cakes like this one. A single egg, a cup of milk and a pint of flour makes a plain frame for an everyday cake; the interest came from what you did to part of the batter, in this case darkening a third with molasses and the cheap warm spices, cloves and allspice, that every pantry held. Cakes of this type circulated under a great many local names, and no origin for "Black Hill" is documented. The recipe uses cream of tartar with soda rather than a tin of baking powder.