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Lemon Cheese Cakes
Whites of 4 eggs (or whites of 4 and yolk of 1) 1½ cups of sugar ½ cup butter ½ cup milk 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 cups Five Roses flour Use lemon filling.
A bare ingredient list in the style of its era, when a cook was assumed to know what to do with butter, sugar and eggs. The method is the standard creaming procedure, and the filling is the point of the recipe.
- "Lemon cheese" is lemon curdNo cheese is involved. Lemon cheese is the British name for the thick egg-and-butter lemon curd cooked over low heat or a double boiler. The book's own lemon filling is what is meant here.
- The missing methodCream the butter with the sugar, add the yolk if using one, sift the flour with the baking powder, and add it alternately with the milk. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites last; they are the only lightness beyond the baking powder.
- Oven temperatureSmall cakes of this size bake at 350-375F. Sheet or layer pans take 20-30 minutes; individual patty tins nearer 15-18.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat all-purpose flour, somewhat stronger than modern soft American cake flour. Plain all-purpose works; measure by spooning into the cup and levelling, as scooping packs in appreciably more flour.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is one teaspoon per cup, within the usual modern proportion. A little less gives a finer crumb.
- The four whitesWith no yolks the crumb is pale and slightly dry, which suits a rich curd filling. The optional single yolk would add a little colour and richness.
- Assembly and yieldThe batter fills two 8-inch layers or about 18 small cakes. Split the small cakes and fill, or sandwich the layers with curd; the curd is too loose to hold up as an outer frosting.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, with offices at Montreal and Winnipeg, and like other miller's cookbooks of the period it existed to sell flour: the book presents its recipes as contributed by Canadian housewives who used the brand, and the brand name runs through the ingredient lists. That commercial origin helps explain the telegraphic style here. A cook buying a sack of flour was assumed to know the creaming method, so the book spends its space on proportions and on the assumption that you have the companion recipe for lemon filling elsewhere in the volume. The name "lemon cheese" is older than the book and comes from Britain; the usual explanation is an analogy with the firm fruit cheeses (quince, damson) that were sliced rather than spread, though this is traditional explanation rather than documented derivation. "Lemon curd" became the more common term in North America, and the survival of "lemon cheese" in a Canadian book of this date reflects how closely Canadian home baking still followed British usage.