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Spanish Chocolate Cake
Dissolve on the back of the stove half a cup of grated unsweetened chocolate, one-fourth of a cup of granulated sugar and two tablespoons of milk. Beat to a cream one-third of a cup of butter and a cup of powdered sugar; add two eggs, one at a time, beating well, and half a teaspoon of vanilla; next add the dissolved mixture and beat thoroughly; now add gradually one-fourth of a cup of milk, a cup of flour and a teaspoon of baking powder, the baking powder mixed with a little of the flour and added last. Bake in an oblong sheet about three-quarters of an inch thick.
Place an ounce of unsweetened chocolate in a small teacup, and stand this in a pan containing boiling water, to melt it.
Boil together until it forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water, a cup of granulated sugar and five tablespoons of milk; take from the fire, add vanilla to flavor and beat until white, yet soft and creamy; spread smoothly on the cake at once, while the cake is yet warm; then coat immediately with the melted chocolate, using preferably a soft pastry brush, although a knife will serve the purpose. Cut the cake in squares or diamonds and serve the same day it is made. This is a very choice recipe, making an elegant cake. Amelia Sulzbacher. - Pound Cake as Our Mothers Made It One pound of flour, one pound of butter, one pound of sugar, ten large eggs and about one-fourth of a nutmeg.
Cream the butter and sugar together well (our mothers' rolled and sifted loaf sugar is better, but granulated sugar will answer the purpose), then add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs, and add the flour, a little at a time, beating very thoroughly all the while, lastly add the whites of the eggs which have been beaten to a stiff froth that can be cut with a knife, or that will adhere to the vessel in which it has been beaten, being careful not to beat the cake after the whites have been added, but merely to fold in the puff. Flavor with one-fourth of a grated nutmeg, which should be put in before the whites of eggs.
Bake in a very moderate oven for one hour. The only improvement that could be made on this recipe would be to use pastry flour (which was not used in mother's time). The best authorities on cake baking declare that good results cannot be obtained without the use of pastry flour.- Mrs P. L. Sherman, Chicago.
Two recipes run together here: a small chocolate sheet cake with a fudge icing and a lacquer of melted chocolate, and a classic one-pound-of-everything pound cake. Both are workable, but the vocabulary needs translating.
- The hinge: ice it while warm, glaze it at onceBoiled icing stiffens quickly once it has been beaten to the creamy stage, and the melted chocolate goes on best before the icing has set, or it may not adhere. Have the ounce of chocolate already melted and a brush in hand before you take the sugar syrup off the heat.
- "Back of the stove"On a wood or coal range the back was the cool zone. Melt the grated chocolate, sugar and milk in a small pan over the lowest heat or in a bowl over hot water, stirring until smooth; do not let it come near a boil.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this period "powdered sugar" usually means a fine granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use superfine or ordinary granulated sugar for the creaming; the batter will cream properly and the crumb will be less dense.
- Soft-ball stageThe icing syrup is at soft ball at 235-240F. A thermometer is more reliable than the cold-water test, but stop beating and spread the moment the mixture turns pale and still flows.
- Pan size and ovenOne cup of flour makes a modest batter. A pan of roughly 60-65 square inches (the recipe calls for an oblong sheet) gives about the three-quarter-inch thickness described. The recipe gives no oven direction; about 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the centre springs back, suits a sheet this thin.
- YieldThe chocolate cake cuts into about 16 small squares or diamonds. The instruction to serve it the same day is sound: the boiled icing dries and crumbles by the second day.
- "A very moderate oven" for the pound cakeThat means 300-325F. A pound of flour, a pound of butter, a pound of sugar and ten eggs is a very large cake; one hour will not cook it through in a single deep tin. Divide it between two loaf pans or a large tube pan and expect 70-90 minutes, testing the centre.
- Loaf sugar and pastry flourLoaf sugar was a hard cone broken and sifted at home, which gave a fine crystal that creamed well. Pastry flour, then a novelty, is lower in protein than all-purpose; a soft or pastry flour still gives the finer crumb the writer is after.
- NutmegA quarter of a whole nutmeg, freshly grated, is about half a teaspoon. Pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of its volatile oil and will taste flat by comparison.
Both of these are contributed recipes, sent in by readers and printed under their names, which is how a great deal of American cookbook writing worked around the turn of the twentieth century: the recipes were collected and credited. The chocolate cake's "Spanish" label is often read as pointing to chocolate itself rather than to Spain's kitchens, since chocolate reached Europe through Spanish hands and the association lingered in nineteenth-century names for chocolate confections. Notice too what unsweetened chocolate meant then: a hard block to be grated and dissolved with sugar and milk, since eating chocolate and cocoa powder were still separate products. The pound cake beside it is the older tradition entirely, a formula memorised by weight rather than measured, and Mrs. Sherman's remark about pastry flour is a small window on a real shift in American baking, as roller-milled graded flours came in.