Cake: Cream
Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the cocoa, the yolks of eggs well beaten, cinnamon, cloves, and milk, then the flour sifted with the baking powder; last add the whites of eggs whipped to a stiff froth. Bake in a moderate oven.
Devil's Food. 2 cupfuls sugar, cupful butter, 4 eggs, 1 cupful milk, 24 cupfuls flour, 4 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, 2 squares Runkel's Chocolate, ½ teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, add the well-beaten yolks of eggs, then alternately mix with milk and flour sifted with the baking powder, stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla, then the whites of eggs, whip to a dry froth. Bake fifty minutes MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK m a long narrow pan. Cover with a boiled white icing.
Chocolate Marshmallow Cake.
Use the recipe given either for chocolate cake, devil's food, or cocoa sponge, and bake in a shallow pan, letting the batter half fill. It ought to rise to the top of the pan. As soon as the hot cake is taken from the oven, turn it out and cover the top with marshmallows, which have been pulled apart; the soft inside of the sweetmeats will run together into a sort of frosting. When cool, pour over them a frosting made of Runkel's Sweet Chocolate melted over hot water.
Spanish Cake. 1 cupful sugar, cupful butter, 2 eggs, cupful milk, 1½ cupfuls flour, 2 teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, Dash salt, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the yolks of eggs, then the flour, with which has been sifted cinnamon, salt, and baking powder, alternating with it the milk; the whites of eggs whipped to a stiff frotl. may be added the last thing. Bake in a large shallow pan and cover the top with caramel frosting. Coffee Cake. 2 cupfuls sugar, 1 cupful butter, 2 tablespoonfuls molasses, 14 cupfuls cold coffee, 3 cupfuls flour, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon, teaspoonful cloves, teaspoonful nutmeg, teaspoonful allspice, teaspoonfuls Calumet baking powder, cupful raisins, cupful currants, cupful citron, 5 eggs.
Cream the butter and sugar, add the molasses and well-beaten yolks of eggs, then sift together the flour, spices, and baking powder. Beat in alternately with the coffee. Dredge the fruit with flour, stir it in, then the whites of eggs. Pour into deep cake tins and bake slowly in a moderate oven.
Pound Cake. 2 cupfuls butter, 2 cupfuls sugar, 10 eggs, 4 cupfuls flour, teaspoonful mace, 2 tablespoonfuls milk.
Cream the butter and sugar, add the yolks of eggs beaten till thick, then the milk, flour, and whites of eggs. Pour into a square tin and bake an hour.
A run of cake formulas from the era when a printed recipe assumed the cook already knew how to handle a creaming bowl. The quantities are workable, but several of the fractions and most of the brand names need translating.
- Moderate oven, slow ovenThe book gives no temperatures. "Moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350F. For the coffee cake's "bake slowly in a moderate oven," something lower, nearer 325F, suits a deep fruited batter -- it wants a full hour or more and a skewer test rather than a clock.
- Missing fractionsSeveral butter and milk quantities read simply "cupful" where a fraction has probably dropped out in printing, and two figures are plainly garbled: the devil's food's "24 cupfuls flour" and the coffee cake's "14 cupfuls cold coffee" (the coffee cake's flour, 3 cupfuls, is intact). Something like 2 1/2 cups flour and 1 1/4 cups coffee is a reasonable guess; with a bare "cupful" of butter, judge by the batter rather than assuming a figure.
- Chocolate squaresBaking chocolate of this period was commonly sold in 1-ounce squares, so "2 squares" is most likely 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate, melted. The sweet chocolate called for in the marshmallow frosting is sweeter than modern semisweet, though semisweet is the nearest easy substitute.
- Brand substitutionsCalumet was a double-acting phosphate baking powder; any modern double-acting powder measures the same. McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla is ordinary vanilla extract. Four teaspoons of baking powder to 2 1/2 cups flour is heavy by current standards; 3 teaspoons gives a better crumb.
- Cup sizeAn early twentieth-century cupful is the 8-fluid-ounce measure still in use, but flour was scooped and levelled rather than weighed. Reckon a cup of flour at about 4 1/4 oz (120 g) and a cup of butter at 8 oz (225 g).
- Separated eggsMost of these cakes fold in stiffly beaten whites at the end (the pound cake simply says "whites of eggs"). The whites give lift alongside the baking powder, so fold rather than stir, and get the batter into the pan promptly.
- MarshmallowsCommercial marshmallows of the period were probably softer and less stabilised than today's. Modern ones will slump on a hot cake but not melt into a sheet; a few minutes back in the turned-off oven will finish the job before the chocolate goes on.
- Pans and yieldThe devil's food's "long narrow pan" is roughly a loaf or a 9x5 tin; the Spanish cake wants a quarter-sheet or 9x13. The pound cake, with 10 eggs, 2 cups each of butter and sugar and 4 cups flour by volume, fills a large square tin or two loaf pans -- the recipe says an hour, so check it then and expect it may need longer.
These pages come from the period when cookbooks and manufacturers were openly in business together: Calumet baking powder, Runkel's chocolate and McIlhenny's Mexican vanilla appear by name in recipe after recipe, a practice that paid for a good many household compilations in the decades around 1900. The cakes themselves belong to the period when chocolate was moving from a drink and a flavouring into the centre of American home baking. "Devil's food" appears in American print by the 1890s, its name usually explained as a foil to the pale angel food cake, and the reddish tinge of older versions is usually attributed to soda or other alkali reacting with natural-process cocoa. The chocolate marshmallow cake is a period novelty of a familiar kind -- an existing batter plus a packaged confection, marshmallows having become widely available commercially around this time. The pound cake at the end descends from the old equal-weights formula, though here it too is given in cupfuls.