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Cake Filli Ings and Icings: Filling
Chocolate-Cream Filling. 1 cupful sugar, cupful flour, Dash salt, eggs, teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla, square Runkel's Chocolate 2 cupfuls milk Put into a bowl the sugar, flour, and salt, blend thoroughly, then mix with the eggs well beaten. Scald the milk in a double boiler and add to it the egg mixture, beating steadily till it thickens. As soon as it is taken from the fire, stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla. Pour between layers of a cake when it has cooled. Caramel Filling. 1 tablespoonful butter cupful sugar, cupful cream, cupful caramel, I. teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Boil together the butter, sugar, and cream until it spins a thread. Then add the caramel and vanilla, beat until cool, and pour between the cake. Cream Filling. cupfuls milk, 1 teaspoonful butter Dash salt, 2 eggs, cupful sugar, 3 tablespoonfuls cornstarch, 1 teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexi can Vanilla.
Scald the milk with the butter, sugar, and salt; add the eggs beaten together with the cornstarch. As soon as the mixture becomes creamy, beat it thoroughly, cool, and add the vanilla. To make a coffee filling, use this recipe exactly as given, only adding cupful very strong black coffee and leaving out cupful het milk.
Orange Filling.
Juice and grated rind i orange, 1 teaspoonful lemon juice, 1 teaspoonful orange extract Whites 2 eggs, ½ cupful powdered sugar, 1 teaspoonful gelatin, 2 tablespoonfuls cold water, Put the gelatin to soak in the cold water, then set it into a bowl of boil CAKE FILLINGS AND ICINGS ing water until it dissolves, and add to the juice of the fruit. As soon as it begins to thicken, beat with a fork till fluffy, and mix with the powdered sugar and whites of eggs beaten to a stiff froth.
Peach Filling. 1 cupful whipped cream, cupful powdered sugar, 1 cupful peach pulp.
Cut up 2 or 3 very ripe, juicy peaches and squeeze them through a potato ricer. Add to the pulp the sugar and cream beaten to a stiff froth. Blend thoroughly and put between layer cake. All recipes where whipped cream is added to a filling ought to be eaten as soon as possible after being made. The liquor soaks into a cake if it stands any time.
Five layer-cake fillings from an era when a recipe could name a brand and assume the reader kept a jar of burnt-sugar syrup on the shelf. Several of the quantities in this printing have lost their fractions, so treat the numbers below as guidance rather than gospel.
- Missing fractionsA number of the measures have dropped their fractions in this printing — the flour, cream, caramel, sugar and milk quantities in particular. For the chocolate-cream and cream fillings, a workable ratio is 2 cups milk to 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour or 3 tablespoons cornstarch, and 2 eggs; for the caramel, equal parts sugar and cream by volume, about 1/2 cup each.
- The branded ingredientsMcIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla is simply vanilla extract, and the repeated naming of brands suggests the book is carrying advertising. A "square" of Runkel's Chocolate is almost certainly one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the standard size of the period; two squares gives a filling that reads as chocolate to a modern palate.
- "Cupful caramel"This means caramel syrup — granulated sugar melted dry to a deep amber and let down with a little boiling water — not the chewy candy. Cookbooks of the period treat it as something kept on hand for colouring and flavouring. About 1/4 cup is enough for the quantity of filling here.
- Spins a threadThe thread stage is around 230–235F on a candy thermometer, the point at which a drop falling from the spoon trails a fine strand. Cooked much past 240F the caramel filling is likely to set too firm to spread.
- Cook the starch outThe custard fillings need to reach a full bubble and hold it for a minute or two, not merely thicken. Flour and cornstarch pastes taste raw and starchy otherwise, and undercooked egg yolk enzyme will thin the filling as it stands.
- Raw whites in the orange fillingThe orange filling is never heated and depends on uncooked egg whites for its body. Use pasteurized whites in a carton if the cake is for children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant.
- Peach pulpA potato ricer works, but a food mill or a coarse sieve is easier and keeps the skins out. Peaches must be ripe to the point of collapse or the pulp will be watery and will not hold the cream.
- Yield and assemblyThe custard fillings make enough for a two- or three-layer 8- or 9-inch cake; the orange filling yields noticeably less. The custard fillings must be cold and set before they go between the layers; the whipped-cream ones will begin soaking into the crumb before long, as the closing note warns.
This belongs to a genre of turn-of-the-century American compendia that were part cookbook, part advertising vehicle — the repeated naming of McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla and Runkel's Chocolate is the kind of brand placement often associated with manufacturer involvement, though no arrangement is documented here. The fillings themselves reflect the rise of the layer cake as an ordinary American celebration cake, which is often said to have depended on cheap chemical leavening and more reliable ovens; a boiled flour-or-cornstarch custard was a common sweet mortar between the layers, cheaper than buttercream. Caramel syrup as a bottled pantry staple has largely disappeared from home kitchens, though it survives in commercial baking and in the burnt-sugar colouring of some regional Caribbean and Southern black cakes.