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Little Chocolate Cakes
Put in double boiler 2 squares chocolate, broken in small pieces 1/2 cup milk and 2 egg yolks. Cook, stirring constantly until thick and smooth. Remove from fire and add 1 cup sugar and 3 tablespoons butter and 1 1/4 cups bread flour, alternately with 1/2 cup milk in which 1/2 teaspoon soda is dissolved. Beat well and fold in 2 egg whites beaten stiff and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Pour into greased individual tins and bake 15 minutes at 450 degrees F. Cover with Cream frosting in different colors.
A small-batch chocolate cake built on a cooked chocolate custard base, in the manner of early devil's food cakes. Two things in the original need attention before you start: the oven temperature and the flour.
- The oven temperature is the hinge450F will set the outsides and scorch the sugar before the centers rise. Individual chocolate cakes of this size belong at 350-375F for 18-22 minutes, tested with a pick. If you follow the 15 minutes as written, do it at 350F rather than at 450F.
- Squares of chocolateA square meant one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so this is 2 oz. Do not substitute semisweet or the full cup of sugar will overwhelm it.
- Bread flourThe bread flour of the period need not have matched modern high-gluten bread flour; all-purpose, spooned and leveled, is a safe substitute. Stop mixing as soon as the batter comes together; overworked gluten gives a tough, tunneled crumb.
- Why soda and no baking powderThe half teaspoon of soda relies on whatever acidity the unsweetened chocolate and milk provide. Dissolve it in the milk as directed and get the batter into the tins promptly, since the lift begins at once.
- Order of mixingThe butter and sugar go into the warm chocolate custard rather than being creamed first, so let the custard cool to lukewarm or the butter will simply melt out and the whipped whites will deflate when folded in.
- Individual tinsMost likely gem or muffin tins, on the order of a 2 1/2-inch cup. Grease them well or use liners; fill two-thirds full.
- YieldAbout 12 small cakes, or 16 in shallower gem pans.
- Cream frosting in different colorsThis points to a frosting recipe given elsewhere in the book, divided into portions and tinted. Any plain buttercream takes color the same way.
Cakes like this use a cooked chocolate-and-egg-yolk base: the chocolate is thickened with milk and yolk over water first, which both smooths the batter and deepens the color, and the same technique appears in the devil's food recipes found in American cookbooks in the first decades of the twentieth century. Baking in gem tins rather than a layer pan gave portions that needed no cutting and could be passed with tea or coffee.