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Bread Cake
1 cup sugar. 2 eggs. 3 tablespoons chocolate (melted) ½ cup butter 1 cup Five Roses flour 1 cup chopped raisins 1 teaspoon cinnamon SES 1 cup light bread sponge (see bread recipes) ½ teaspoon soda Mix, beat well, and bake in moderate oven.
A cake built on leftover bread sponge rather than baking powder — a common thrift device in early twentieth-century baking books. The ingredient list as printed is short on a few things a modern baker will expect, so read it through before you start.
- Bread spongeThis means the soft, risen yeast batter from the first stage of a bread recipe — flour, water, yeast and a little salt, left to ferment until foamy and slightly sour. A cup of a slack, well-risen sponge or of soft bread dough is the substitute; ripe sourdough starter fed to a loose batter consistency behaves much the same.
- No sugar is listedBread cakes of this type are normally sweetened, commonly with a cup or so of brown or white sugar creamed with the butter. The omission is most likely an error in the printed list rather than a feature of the cake.
- ChocolateThree tablespoons melted chocolate means unsweetened baking chocolate, about 1½ ounces, melted over hot water. Cocoa powder is not a direct swap; it lacks the cocoa butter that keeps the crumb tender.
- Soda and the spongeThe half teaspoon of soda is there to neutralize the acidity of the fermented sponge and give some lift. Dissolve it in a tablespoon of warm water and add it last, then get the cake into the oven promptly.
- Moderate ovenUsually read as about 350-375F. Timing will depend on the pan and the depth of the batter; test with a skewer at the center.
- MethodCream the butter (and sugar), beat in the melted chocolate, then work in the sponge, which will be stringy and reluctant at first. Add the flour, cinnamon and floured raisins, then the dissolved soda.
- Rising timeSome period bread cakes are set aside 30 to 60 minutes in a warm place after mixing, so the yeast in the sponge contributes lift before baking. With only half a teaspoon of soda for a cup of flour, a rest of that kind may improve the texture.
- YieldA small loaf. Expect a dense, moist, faintly tangy crumb closer to a spice loaf than to a modern layer cake.
- RaisinsChop them and toss with a spoonful of the measured flour so they stay suspended in what is a fairly heavy batter.
Bread cakes belong to a long tradition of using the bread dough already working on the kitchen table as the leavening for something sweet — a habit that predates reliable chemical leaveners and survived well past them because it cost nothing. Recipes of this kind appear across North American and British household books through the nineteenth century, sometimes called "bread dough cake" or "raised cake," and the small addition of soda is the transitional touch: enough alkali to cut the sponge's sourness and add a little gas, without abandoning the yeast. The Five Roses book was published by a Canadian milling company, and its cake chapter assumes a reader who is already making bread that week and can spare a cup of sponge — an assumption that dates the recipe as clearly as any ingredient in it.