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June Cake
1 cup pulverized sugar ½ 1/2 cup butter (small) 2 eggs (well beaten) 1½ cups Five Roses flour ½ cup milk 1½ teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon vanilla.
When nearly cold, frost with pulverized sugar mixed with a little cream or rich milk, flavored with vanilla or almonds.
A plain butter cake stripped to its essentials — the book assumes the cook knows the creaming method, the pan and the oven. Here is what the page leaves out.
- The missing methodNo mixing instructions are given, the book assuming the technique was familiar: cream the butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour. Stir in the vanilla last and mix only until smooth.
- No oven temperatureBake at 350F. A cake this size needs about 25-30 minutes in an 8-inch round, or 35-40 in a small loaf tin, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Pulverized sugarIn the cake, this means finely ground granulated sugar — modern caster or superfine is the closest match, and ordinary granulated will work. For the frosting, use confectioners' sugar, the nearest modern equivalent for a sugar-and-cream glaze.
- Butter (small)A slightly scant half cup rather than a generously packed one; the parenthesis appears to be a caution against overfilling the cup.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard spring wheat flour, stronger than most modern all-purpose. Plain all-purpose gives a fine result here; the batter is rich enough that the extra protein is not doing structural work.
- The frosting proportionsNone are given. Roughly 1½ cups confectioners' sugar to 1-2 tablespoons cream, added a teaspoon at a time, gives a glaze that sets. "Flavored with almonds" means a few drops of almond extract, not almond oil or bitter almond preparations.
- When nearly coldWorth taking literally. Frost a hot cake and the glaze soaks in and disappears; frost a stone-cold one and it sits on top in a slab. Just-warm is the point at which it settles into a thin even sheet.
- YieldOne 8-inch layer or a small loaf, eight modest slices. Doubling works if you want two layers with the frosting between.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, whose head office was in Montreal, to sell its Five Roses flour, and much of its contents came from Canadian housewives who wrote in with their own receipts — which is why the instructions are so compressed. A contributor writing for other experienced cooks saw no reason to explain creaming or to name an oven temperature. The recipe follows the familiar cup-measure proportion of sugar, butter, eggs, flour and milk that anchored home baking before boxed mixes.