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Hilda's Chocolate Cake (the Most Delicious I Ever Ate)
¾ cup butter 2 cups sugar 4 eggs (beaten separately) ¾ cup milk 2½ cups Five Roses flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons vanilla 1 teaspoon allspice ½ teaspoon mace 3 tablespoons grated unsweetened chocolate Cream butter and sugar until very light and white. Add well-beaten yolks, milk and flour (to which has been added and sifted 3 times the baking powder).
While mixing in the flour, add gradually the whites of the eggs which have been beaten dry and stiff. Add to this the vanilla flavoring. Beat briskly for one minute, then divide into 2 equal parts.
To one part, add the allspice, mace and chocolate. Bake each part in 2 layers, making in all 4 layers.
A two-batter layer cake from the era before electric mixers, when a cook would split one bowl of batter and spice half of it. The original assumes you know your oven, your pans and your icing, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives neither temperature nor time, as was common in the period. Bake the layers at around 350F for roughly 20-25 minutes, until the centres spring back and a tester comes out clean.
- PansFour thin layers means four 8- or 9-inch round pans, greased and floured or lined. If you have only two, bake in batches and keep the remaining batter at room temperature rather than chilling it.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat household flour, closer to modern all-purpose than to cake flour. Straight all-purpose works; measure by spooning into the cup and levelling, since the original scoops are generous.
- That much vanillaTwo tablespoons looks startling, and period extracts may well have been weaker or more variable, but with modern extract it will taste harsh and boozy. One to two teaspoons is enough.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to 2½ cups of flour is high by current standards, and many powders of the period were single-acting rather than the double-acting sort sold now. About two and a half teaspoons should give an ample rise without the metallic edge.
- Grated chocolateThree tablespoons of loosely grated unsweetened chocolate is about an ounce, one square. It is a small amount by design: this is a spiced chocolate layer, not a devil's food.
- SiftingSifting the baking powder with the flour three times was the period's method for distributing the leavening evenly. One thorough whisking of flour and powder together accomplishes the same distribution.
- Assembly and yieldFour layers, two plain and two chocolate-spiced, stacked alternately into one tall cake serving 12-16. No filling or icing is specified; a plain chocolate or boiled white icing suits it.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which is why so many of its entries carry a first name and a personal endorsement vouched for by whoever mailed it in, not by a test kitchen. The construction here, one batter divided and half of it darkened and spiced, produced a striking alternating cake from a single creaming. The allspice and mace alongside chocolate reflect an older habit of treating chocolate as a spice among spices rather than a flavour that stands alone, a pairing often said to have faded from North American baking by mid-century.