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One Egg Cake
1/4 cup of butter 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup sugar 1 1/2 cups flour 1 egg 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and egg well beaten. Mix and sift flour and baking powder, add alternately with milk to first mixture. Bake thirty minutes in a shallow pan. Spread with Chocolate Frosting. Chocolate Cake I 1/2 cup butter 1 1/2 cups flour 1 cup sugar 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 2 small eggs 2 ozs. chocolate, melted 1/2 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and yolks of eggs well beaten, then whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Add milk, flour mixed and sifted with baking powder, and beat thoroughly. Then add chocolate and vanilla. Bake forty minutes in a shallow cake pan.
A plain butter cake scaled down to a single egg, the sort of everyday cake kept in the repertoire for when eggs were dear. It needs almost nothing added, but the original assumes you know your own oven.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; the book leaves oven judgement to the cook. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits this batter; the original calls for thirty minutes in a shallow pan, so check from about 25 minutes and bake until a skewer comes out clean.
- Pan size"A shallow pan" is not specified further; a single layer in something like an 8-inch square or round tin is a reasonable modern reading. A deeper pan will need longer.
- Baking powderTwo and a half teaspoons to a cup and a half of flour is high by modern standards, and period powders were generally single-acting rather than the double-acting ones sold today. With current powder, 2 teaspoons is ample.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period was often softer than today's all-purpose. For a finer crumb use cake flour, or replace 2 tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch.
- Alternating the additionsAs directed, add the dry mixture and the milk in three or four turns, beginning and ending with flour. Adding all the milk at once can break the creamed butter and give a coarser crumb.
- Butter measureA quarter cup is 4 tablespoons, about 2 ounces or 57 g. Have it genuinely soft before creaming, since there is little of it to carry the sugar.
- YieldA single shallow layer. The recipe directs that it be spread with the book's Chocolate Frosting rather than split and filled.