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Celestial Cake
Bake an angel cake in a large round, shallow basin, when cold cut into wedge shaped pieces, reverse the pieces and put them together with points out, making it in form of a star. Cover with icing and garnish with bits of green angelica and red candied cherries. - Linda Hull Larned.
This is an assembly and decoration recipe rather than a batter formula: it assumes you already have an angel cake and tells you how to turn it into a star. The only real technical demand is baking the cake flat instead of in a tube pan.
- The cake itself is not givenThe recipe assumes you already have an angel cake to hand. Any standard angel food batter works, provided it is baked as a broad flat disc that can be cut into long wedges.
- "A large round, shallow basin"The basin here appears to mean the baking vessel rather than a mixing bowl. A 9 or 10 inch round cake pan about 2 inches deep gives the flat disc the design needs; a tube pan will leave a hole at the centre of the star.
- Never grease the panAngel food climbs the sides of an ungreased pan as it sets. Do not butter or flour it and do not line the sides with paper, or the cake will slump. Invert the pan to cool and only then loosen with a thin knife.
- OvenAngel cake is generally baked in a moderate oven, around 325 to 350F. In a shallow round it bakes faster than in a tube pan, so check from 25 minutes; it is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out dry.
- Fully cold before cutting"When cold" is the hinge. Warm angel cake tears and compresses under a knife. Cool it several hours, then cut with a long serrated knife or a sawing motion so the crumb stays open.
- How the star is formedCut the disc into wedges, six or eight, then reverse each wedge and push the pieces back together so their points face outward. The result reads as a star from above; set it out on the serving plate before icing, since it cannot be moved afterwards.
- The icing has to holdA soft buttercream will let the wedges drift apart. Use a boiled or royal-style icing stiff enough to set firm and act as mortar between the pieces.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, cut into thin green strips, was a common green garnish of the period and is still sold by baking suppliers. Candied citron peel tinted green is a possible substitute.
- YieldThe cake serves as many as there are wedges, so six or eight generous portions; thin slivers will collapse as points of the star.
Linda Hull Larned was a prolific American cookery writer of the 1890s and 1900s, best known for One Hundred Picnic Suggestions and a run of books on fancy dishes and hostess cookery, and this contribution is very much in that line: it is not a formula but a table effect. Angel cake, an American invention of the later nineteenth century whose rise is commonly, if not firmly, attributed to cheap refined sugar, fine white flour and the rotary egg beater, was still novel enough in this period to be treated as a showpiece. The name "Celestial Cake" is a straight pun on the angel cake beneath it, and the green angelica with red cherries was a familiar decorative pairing of the era, doing the work that piped coloured frosting does now.