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Walnut Chocolate Cake
Yolks of 2 eggs 1 cup sugar ½ cup butter ¼ cup sweet milk ⅔ cup grated chocolate 1 cup walnut meats 2 cups Five Roses flour 1 teaspoon soda 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Sift the soda and cream of tartar with the flour. Bake in 2 layers, and ice with white boiled icing. Use orange filling.
A creamed butter layer cake from the era before commercial baking powder was universal, written for cooks who already knew the method and needed only the proportions. Two things want filling in: the mixing order and the oven.
- Soda and cream of tartar1 teaspoon soda with 2 teaspoons cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, and by the usual conversion it stands in for something in the range of 3 to 4 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Sifted into the flour as directed it stays inert until the milk wets it, but it is single-acting in effect: get the pans into the oven promptly.
- Grated chocolateTwo-thirds of a cup of grated chocolate means unsweetened block chocolate, about 3 oz by weight, grated on the coarse side of a box grater. Melting it over hot water and beating it into the creamed butter gives a smoother crumb than folding in dry shavings.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that so many cakes of the period called for. Since the leavening here is soda plus cream of tartar, no acid dairy is needed.
- The liquid is very shortA quarter cup of milk to two cups of flour makes a stiff, almost paste-like batter, closer to a modern cookie dough than a cake batter. Expect to spread it into the pans rather than pour it, and add a spoonful or two more milk if it will not level out.
- Method the original omitsCream butter and sugar, beat in the yolks, then the melted chocolate and vanilla, then the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk, and fold in the chopped walnuts last so they do not bruise the batter.
- Pans and ovenThe original specifies neither pan size nor oven heat, only 'bake in 2 layers'. Two greased and floured 8-inch round pans at 350F for 20 to 25 minutes is a workable modern reading; bake until a tester comes out clean and the edges pull from the tin.
- Boiled icing and the leftover whitesThe two whites left from the yolks are exactly what white boiled icing wants: a syrup of 1 cup sugar and about 1/3 cup water cooked to about 240F, the soft-ball stage, beaten in a thin stream into the stiffly whipped whites. Beat until it holds a peak and loses its gloss, then spread quickly, as it sets fast.
- YieldOne two-layer 8-inch cake, 10 to 12 slices. The orange filling goes between the layers, the boiled icing over the top and sides.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company, with offices at Montreal and Winnipeg, to sell its Five Roses flour, and the book presents its contents as receipts sent in by Canadian users of the flour, which helps explain the telegraphic style here: a list of quantities and the two or three details a cook could not guess. Grated chocolate rather than chips or squares reflects the period habit of buying chocolate as a hard unsweetened cake to be shaved or melted. The paired soda and cream of tartar are the older self-mixed leavening, which flour-company pamphlets went on printing alongside branded baking powders that had been on the market for decades.