Fried Cakes
One cup of sugar Two and one-half tablespoons of butter Two and one-half tablespoons of butter Three eggs One cup of milk Four teaspoons of Larkin Baking Powder One-fourth teaspoon of Larkin Cinnamon One-fourth teaspoon of grated Larkin Nutmeg One and one-half teaspoons of Larkin Table Salt Flour enough to roll.
Cream the butter, and add one-half the sugar. Beat eggs with remainder of sugar, and combine mixtures.
Add three and one-half cups of flour with the baking powder, salt and spices, and more flour if not stiff enough to roll. Turn on a floured board, knead slightly, and roll to about one-fourth inch in thickness. Cut out with a doughnut-cutter and fry in deep fat. Be sure the fat is of the right temperature, as it will soak into the cakes if not hot enough.
A plain raised-cake doughnut from a manufacturer's booklet, which means the ingredient list assumes you own the brand-name tins on the shelf. It also assumes you can supply the one measurement it forgot.
- The missing sugarSugar appears twice in the method but never in the ingredient list, so the quantity is genuinely lost. Comparable cake-doughnut recipes of the period use about one cup for three eggs and a cup of milk; treat that as an estimate, not a conversion.
- Where the milk goesThe method never says to add it. Beat it in with the combined butter, sugar and egg mixture before the flour, alternating with the dry ingredients if the batter looks like it will break.
- Larkin productsLarkin was a Buffalo mail-order house selling its own groceries; substitute any modern baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt one for one. Four teaspoons of baking powder to three and a half cups of flour is on the generous side but not out of range for a rolled doughnut.
- Fat temperatureThis is the hinge, and the recipe says so without giving a number: 365-375F. Below that the dough drinks fat and turns heavy; above 385F the outside colors before the center sets. Use a thermometer and let the fat recover between batches.
- Deep fat, in practiceTwo to three inches of a neutral oil or shortening in a heavy pot. The cakes take roughly 1 to 1 1/2 minutes a side and should be turned once as they rise and crack.
- Handling the dough"Knead slightly" means a few folds only. A chemically leavened dough worked like bread dough goes tough, and adding flour past the point where it just rolls at a quarter inch is the usual cause of dry, bready doughnuts.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 doughnuts with a 2 1/2-inch cutter, plus the holes. Drain on paper or a rack and toss in cinnamon sugar while still warm if you want them sweeter than the dough itself.
"Fried cakes" was the ordinary American name for what most people now call a cake doughnut, and the two terms sat side by side for decades -- note that this recipe calls the finished thing a cake but cuts it with a doughnut-cutter. Usage varied: depending on region and date, "fried cakes" covered both yeast-raised and chemically leavened doughnuts, though a distinction along those lines is often drawn -- yeast-raised doughnuts belonging to bread day, while fried cakes mixed with baking powder could be made in an hour, which may be part of why books like this one lean on chemical leaveners. The Larkin Company of Buffalo built its business on soap sold by mail with premiums attached, then expanded into a full grocery line, and issued cookbooks in which every branded item -- baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg -- carries the company name. The missing sugar quantity is a fair reminder that promotional booklets were proofread as advertising rather than as reference works.