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Cake Filli Ings and Icings
Whipped-Cream Filling.
Pour a cupful double cream into a bowl and whip with a Dover egg beater till stiff. Stop as soon as it begins to be quite thick or it will change to butter. Sweeten with 2 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar and flavor with teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla. This may be spread between layers of cake, then the top ornamented with a little of the cream squeezed through a pastry bag Maple-Cream Filling.
Boil cupful maple sirup until quite thick. Then add to it a teaspoonful granulated gelatin which has been dissolved in 2 tablespoonfuls cold water. Allow it to cool, and as soon as it begins to thicken, beat with a fork, then add it to a cupful thick cream which has been beaten stiff.
Two layer-cake fillings built on whipped cream, from an era when a rotary beater was the newest labor-saving device in the kitchen. Both are straightforward; the pitfalls are in the dairy and in the syrup.
- Double creamIn American books of this period the term appears to have meant simply the richest cream available, broadly comparable to what is sold now as heavy or whipping cream (about 36 percent butterfat). British double cream, at around 48 percent, will whip faster and is more likely to break; watch it closely if that is what you have.
- Dover egg beaterA hand-cranked rotary beater. A stand mixer on medium-high or a hand mixer does the same work in two to three minutes. The warning about butter is real and the most important line in the recipe: stop at soft-to-medium peaks, when the beater leaves a trail that holds.
- Chill everythingCream whips faster and holds better when the bowl, beater and cream are all cold. Ten minutes with the bowl in the freezer is worth more than extra beating time.
- Powdered sugarA finely ground sugar; modern confectioners' sugar is the usual substitute. Two tablespoons per cup is a restrained sweetness by modern standards.
- McIlhenny's Mexican VanillaA brand name of the day, not a proprietary flavor. Use a teaspoon of any good vanilla extract. Note that vanilla sold as "Mexican" in bargain form has sometimes contained coumarin from tonka bean; buy from a reputable source.
- Granulated gelatinUnflavored powdered gelatin. A teaspoon is a little under half a standard quarter-ounce envelope. Bloom it in the cold water for five minutes before stirring it into the hot syrup, or it will stay grainy.
- Boiling the maple syrupThe recipe does not define "quite thick." Reduce it until it is noticeably thickened but stop short of the candy stage, or the filling sets hard once the gelatin goes in.
- Folding, not beatingThe maple mixture must be cool and only beginning to thicken before it meets the whipped cream, and it should be folded in rather than beaten, or the cream deflates. Warm syrup will melt the cream outright.
- Yield and keepingEach filling makes enough for a two-layer eight- or nine-inch cake. Both are perishable: keep the finished cake refrigerated and eat it within a day. The plain whipped-cream filling has nothing to stabilize it and will weep.
The Dover beater named here was the household workhorse of late-nineteenth-century American kitchens, and it is often said to be one reason whipped-cream fillings turn up so casually in books of this period; whipping a cup of cream by hand had been a chore, and the rotary beater made it far quicker. The maple version reflects a distinctly North American pantry, where maple syrup was a domestic sweetener rather than a specialty item, particularly in New England and the Great Lakes states. The reference to "McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla" is a reminder that books of this kind sat close to the advertising trade of their day, naming brands in the body of a recipe as a matter of course. Gelatin as a stabilizer for cream fillings became practical once reliable granulated gelatin was sold in packets, which spared cooks the older labor of boiling down calves' feet or isinglass for the same effect.