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Spanish Bun (No. 2)
4 eggs (reserve white of three for frosting) 2½ cups baking sugar ¾ cup butter 1 cup sweet milk 1 teaspoon soda 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspices 1 grated nutmeg 2 cups Five Roses flour.
This is an ingredient list rather than a method, which was normal for a brand cookbook aimed at cooks who already knew how a spice cake went together. The gaps are all fillable, but a few of them matter.
- The leavening is the hingeOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is a homemade baking powder, and it starts working the moment the milk hits it. Sift the soda and cream of tartar through the flour, add it last, and get the pans into a hot oven at once; a batter left standing will fall flat.
- "Baking sugar"Fine granulated sugar, closer to today's caster than to coarse preserving sugar. Ordinary granulated creams well enough with the butter, though a minute or two longer in the mixer helps.
- "Sweet milk"Fresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that many recipes of the period called for. Do not substitute buttermilk here, as the acid is already supplied by the cream of tartar.
- A whole grated nutmegThat is roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg, on top of a teaspoon each of cloves, cinnamon and allspice. It is a genuinely assertive spice load; halving the nutmeg gives a cake most modern palates prefer.
- The proportions are worth checkingTwo cups of sugar and three-quarters of a cup of butter against only two cups of flour makes an unusually rich, slack batter. Measuring conventions of the period were not standardised, so expect a dense, moist crumb, and add a few spoonfuls more flour if the batter will not hold a ribbon.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven direction; 350F is a workable modern setting. A greased and floured 9 by 13 inch pan takes about 30 to 35 minutes; two 8 inch layers take about 25 to 30. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- The reserved whitesNo frosting recipe is given. Three whites beaten with sifted icing sugar (upwards of four cups, added until the icing holds its shape) make a plain uncooked white icing; the same three whites with a hot sugar syrup make a boiled icing, a common finish for cakes of this kind. Spread it while the cake is fully cool.
- YieldRoughly 16 squares from a 9 by 13 pan. Spanish buns were often baked in a shallow pan and cut into squares or bars.
"Spanish bun" is one of those names that outlived its explanation. From the early nineteenth century onward, English and American cookbooks used it for a rich, heavily spiced butter cake baked in a sheet or a shallow pan and cut into squares, and the connection to Spain is usually described as traditional rather than documented; one speculative suggestion is that the name nods to the spice trade rather than to any Spanish original. By the time this version appeared, the dish had settled into North American home baking as a keeping cake: sturdy, sweet, well spiced, and finished with a white icing made from whites left over from the batter, which is exactly what the instruction to reserve three of them signals. The book itself is the Five Roses Cook Book, issued by a Canadian flour miller and assembled largely from recipes sent in by housewives who used the brand, which is why the flour is named and the method is not readers were assumed to know how to cream butter and sugar without being told.