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Fruit Short Cake
1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg 1/4 cup milk 1 cup flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and egg well beaten. Mix and sift flour, baking powder, and salt, adding alternately with milk to first mixture. Beat thoroughly, and bake in a buttered round tin. Cool, spread thickly with sweetened fruit, and cover with Cream Sauce I or II. Fresh strawberries, peaches, apricots, raspberries, or canned quince or pineapple may be used. When canned goods are used, drain fruit from syrup and cut in pieces. Dilute cream for Cream Sauce with fruit syrup in place of milk. Any shortcake mixture may be made for individual service by shaping with a large biscuit cutter; or mixture may be baked in a shallow cake pan, centre removed and filled with fruit, and pieces baked separately to introduce to represent handles.
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This is a cake-style shortcake rather than the biscuit type, and the original assumes you know both the oven temperature and the companion cream sauce. Fill in those two gaps and it works as written.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given, and the recipe specifies only "a buttered round tin" without a size. A moderate oven, around 350F, for roughly 25 minutes suits a one-cup-flour batter; use a small round tin (6 to 7 inches) unless you want a thin layer, and bake until the centre springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- It is a batter, not a doughWith a quarter cup of butter creamed with sugar and egg, this behaves like a plain one-egg cake. Do not expect biscuit dough you can pat out; it is soft enough to spread with a spatula.
- Individual portionsThe page says "any shortcake mixture" may be cut with a large biscuit cutter, but that only works with a stiffer dough; this batter is too soft to cut. For single servings here, divide the batter among muffin cups or small tart tins.
- Cream Sauce I or IIThese are separate entries elsewhere in the book; the instruction to dilute the cream tells us only that milk is part of them. Any lightly sweetened pouring cream or thin vanilla sauce does the same job.
- Diluting with fruit syrupWhen you use canned fruit, replacing the milk in the sauce with the drained syrup is the best instruction on the page. It ties the sauce to the fruit and keeps the plate from tasting of two unrelated sweetnesses.
- Canned quince and pineappleCanned quince has largely disappeared from shops. Poached fresh quince or a firm canned pear works in its place; cut all canned fruit into pieces and drain it well so the cake does not sog.
- Sweetening the fruitSugar the berries or sliced stone fruit 20 to 30 minutes ahead and let them sit. The juice they release is what soaks into the cake and makes it a shortcake rather than a slice of plain cake with fruit on top.
- YieldOne small round layer, serving four to six with fruit and sauce. It is best the day it is baked.
American shortcake developed along two lines during the nineteenth century: the older biscuit type, a barely sweetened rich dough split and buttered while hot, and the cake type baked in a tin, which reliable baking powder and cheap sugar made easy to manage. This entry sits in the second camp. The note about substituting canned quince or pineapple and using the drained syrup in the sauce marks the period, when canned fruit let shortcake be made outside the short fresh-fruit season.