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Orange Cake
1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup milk 1 cup sugar 1 2/3 cups flour 2 eggs 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, eggs well beaten, and milk. Then add flour mixed and sifted with baking powder. Bake in a thin sheet in a dripping-pan. Cut in halves, spread one-half with Orange Filling. Put over other half, and cover with Orange Frosting.
A plain creamed butter cake baked flat, split, and sandwiched with orange filling — the sort of quick layer cake that assumes you already have the companion filling and frosting recipes to hand.
- Dripping-panA dripping-pan was the shallow rectangular roasting pan that sat under a joint. Use a quarter-sheet or jelly-roll pan, roughly 9 by 13 inches, greased and lined; the batter should go in no more than about half an inch deep.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; cooks judged their own ovens, and many coal and wood ranges had no reliable thermometer. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it, and a sheet this thin should be done in roughly 18 to 22 minutes, when the surface springs back and the edges just pull from the pan.
- Cut in halvesThe cake is baked as one thin sheet, cooled, then cut across into two rectangles that are stacked. Cool it completely in the pan before cutting or the layers tear when lifted.
- Baking powderTwo and a half teaspoons for 1 2/3 cups of flour is generous by current standards. With fresh double-acting powder, 2 teaspoons is ample and the crumb will taste cleaner.
- FlourPeriod household flours varied, and some were softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour may give a more tender crumb; if using all-purpose, measure by weight at about 200 g.
- Creaming orderThe method is the standard one, but the eggs and milk go in before the flour, which risks curdling in a cold kitchen. Have butter, eggs and milk at room temperature and beat the eggs in fully before the milk.
- Filling and frostingBoth are separate recipes in the same book and are not reproduced here. Any orange curd or cornstarch-thickened orange filling and a confectioners' sugar and orange juice frosting will serve.
- YieldOne two-layer rectangle serving eight to ten in modest squares.