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Chocolate Jelly Cake
Make a sponge cake according to old family recipe, bake either in jelly tins or moulds; then slice the cake for the following preparation: one teacupful of milk, half a cake Baker's chocolate, scraped or grated, one egg beaten with sugar enough to make it sweet; flavor with vanilla. Let it boil (stirring all the time) till quite thick. Place it evenly and thickly between the slices of cake. Instead of the sponge cake, some use the ordinary jelly-cake recipe.--Mrs. B.
A layer cake filled with what is essentially a boiled chocolate custard. The original assumes you already have a sponge cake recipe in hand and a familiar brand of chocolate on the shelf; both need translating.
- Half a cake of Baker's chocolateBaker's sold unsweetened chocolate in solid cakes, commonly of a half pound, so half a cake is likely to be around 4 ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate, i.e. roughly one modern 4-ounce bar. Sizes were not uniform, so treat this as an estimate.
- A teacupfulNineteenth-century teacups were smaller than a modern measuring cup, generally reckoned somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup. With 4 ounces of chocolate to so little milk the filling will be very stiff; a full cup gives a more spreadable result.
- Sugar enough to make it sweetUnsweetened chocolate needs a great deal. Figure 1/2 to 2/3 cup of granulated sugar for 4 ounces of chocolate, beaten into the egg before the hot milk goes in, and taste before it thickens.
- Boiling with an egg in itTaken literally this scrambles. Warm the milk and chocolate together, whisk a little of it into the beaten egg and sugar, return everything to the pan and cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens and just begins to bubble. Off the heat it will set considerably firmer as it cools.
- Jelly tinsShallow round layer pans, 8 or 9 inches across, filled thin so each layer bakes in 12 to 15 minutes. A sponge baked in a single deep mould and then sliced horizontally, as the recipe also allows, is harder to keep even; a serrated knife and a steady hand help.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. A sponge cake of this kind is best baked at about 350F; bake until the top springs back and the edges pull from the pan.
- Assembly and yieldSpread the filling while it is warm and still workable, then let the assembled cake stand an hour so the layers set together. The recipe puts the filling between the slices only, so the top is left plain.
- KeepingThe filling is an egg custard. Once cool the cake should be refrigerated rather than left out on the sideboard, and eaten within two or three days.
Jelly cake in nineteenth-century American cookery meant a construction, not a flavor: thin layers baked in shallow "jelly tins" and stacked with something spread between them, most often a fruit jelly or preserve. Here Mrs. B. substitutes a boiled chocolate custard for the usual jelly. Walter Baker & Company of Dorchester, Massachusetts, was among the best-known American suppliers of unsweetened chocolate, familiar enough that a writer could specify "half a cake" and expect to be understood. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of recipes written in this shorthand: the sponge cake is left to "old family recipe," and only the new part, the chocolate filling, is spelled out.