Sunshine Cake
11 egg whites 6 egg yolks 1 teaspoon cream of tartar 1 1/2 cups sifted granulated sugar 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon orange extract Beat whites till stiff and flaky, then whisk in one-half the sugar, beat yolks very light; add flavor and one-half the sugar. Combine yolks and white mixture, then fold in the flour and cream of tartar sifted together. Bake fifty to sixty minutes in a slow oven, using angel cake pan.
A tall foam cake of the angel-food family, lifted entirely by beaten egg with no chemical leavening. The book assumes a cook who knows what a slow oven and an angel cake pan are; here are the numbers.
- The hinge: cream of tartarThe recipe sifts the cream of tartar with the flour, a common period instruction, but it does more good added to the whites once they are foamy and before the sugar, where the acid stabilises the foam and keeps it from weeping. The measured amount is right; only the timing has changed.
- Slow ovenRead it as 325F. A true 300F will work for a cake this size but pushes the bake past an hour and risks drying the crust before the centre sets.
- Angel cake panA 10-inch ungreased tube pan with a removable bottom. Do not butter or line it: the batter has to climb the sides, and a greased pan gives a squat, collapsed cake.
- Cooling upside downThe book does not mention it. Invert the pan onto its feet or over the neck of a bottle the moment it leaves the oven and leave it until stone cold, or the crumb compresses under its own weight.
- Sifted granulated sugarPeriod granulated sugar was generally coarser than today's. Superfine (caster) sugar dissolves faster into the whites and is likely the closer match; ordinary granulated works if you sift it and add it slowly.
- Egg quantitiesEleven whites is roughly 1 1/3 cups and six yolks roughly 1/2 cup. Period eggs often ran smaller than modern large, but the counts are near enough to follow as written. Separate them cold, then let them come to room temperature before beating.
- The flourGold Medal is the Washburn-Crosby brand name; the recipe means ordinary household flour. Cake flour, sifted twice before measuring, gives a tenderer crumb; if using all-purpose, replace two tablespoons of the cup with cornstarch.
- Doneness and yieldThe top should spring back and a skewer come out clean at about 50 minutes; the cake is done before it smells strongly of egg. One 10-inch cake, 12 to 16 slices, best eaten within two days.
Sunshine cake is the yolk-bearing cousin of angel food, and the pairing is often said to be no accident: angel food used only whites and left a cook with a bowl of yolks to answer for, though that origin story is traditional rather than documented. Recipes like this one, which spend eleven whites and six yolks, were one solution. Both cakes depend on hard wheat milling, fine granulated sugar and reliable ovens, all of which arrived in American kitchens in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and both spread fast through flour-company booklets. The Washburn-Crosby company published its Gold Medal cook books partly as instruction and partly as advertising, though a brand name in an ingredient list appears in plenty of books not published by the miller. The orange extract dates it too. Bottled flavouring extracts were a cheap, shelf-stable modern convenience at the turn of the century, and cookbooks of the period reach for them where an earlier generation would have grated a rind.