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Gold Cake
Cream one-fourth cup of butter, add one-half cup of sugar slowly, and continue beating. Add the yolks of five eggs beaten until thick and lemon colored and one teaspoon of orange extract. Mix and sift seven-eighths cup of pastry flour with one and one-half teaspoons of baking powder, and add alternately with one-fourth cup of milk to the first mixture. Bake in a buttered and floured tin.- Stella A. Downing.
A small, rich yellow cake built on five egg yolks — the traditional partner to a Silver Cake made from the whites. The original gives no pan size, temperature or time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. In a single 8-inch round layer this takes about 20 to 25 minutes; in a small loaf tin, 35 to 40. It is done when the center springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- YieldThe quantities are modest by modern standards — one thin 8-inch layer, or a small loaf. Doubling works cleanly if you want two layers to fill and frost.
- Pastry flourSeven-eighths cup of pastry flour is roughly 3 1/2 oz by weight. If you only have all-purpose, use 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon, or substitute cake flour cup for cup; the low protein is what keeps this cake tender against five yolks.
- The hinge: beat the yolks properly"Beaten until thick and lemon colored" means several minutes with a whisk or mixer until the yolks fall in ribbons and have visibly paled. Along with the creaming of the butter and sugar, this is the cake's main aeration beyond the baking powder, and skimping shows as a dense, greasy crumb.
- Alternating flour and milkAdd flour first and finish with flour, in three flour additions and two of milk. Mix only until each disappears — overworking after the milk goes in toughens a cake this delicate.
- Orange extractA full teaspoon of modern orange extract is assertive. Half a teaspoon plus a teaspoon of grated orange zest gives a rounder flavor.
- "A buttered and floured tin"Butter, dust with flour, and knock out the excess; a parchment round in the base is a reasonable modern insurance policy.
- The leftover whitesFive whites is about right for a Silver Cake, a white layer cake, or a meringue. They keep refrigerated about four days, or freeze well.
Gold Cake and Silver Cake are a matched pair, and the pairing is much of the point: a cook who made an angel food or a white mountain cake was left holding a bowl of yolks, and vice versa. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookbooks printed the two recipes side by side so nothing was wasted, sometimes baking them as alternating layers or swirling them together into a marble. Gold cakes are commonly flavored with orange or lemon rather than vanilla alone, the citrus offsetting the richness of the yolks.