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Cinnamon Cakes (Quarts flour or eggs the yolks)
2 quarts flour. 6 or 8 eggs, the yolks only. 1/2 pound butter. 1/2 pound sugar. 1 spoonful cinnamon.--Mrs. Dr. R.E.
An ingredient list rather than a method, which is normal for this book: the contributor assumed a cook who knew what to do with flour, butter, sugar and yolks. What is described is a stiff rolled-and-cut tea cake, closer to shortbread than to anything with a crumb.
- Scale it downTwo quarts of flour is roughly 8 cups, about 2 pounds, and yields something like six to eight dozen small cakes. Quartering the recipe (2 cups flour, 2 ounces butter, 2 ounces sugar, 2 yolks) gives a manageable batch.
- Weights, not cupsHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (8 oz); half a pound of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups granulated. Flour measured by volume varies a good deal with how it is scooped, so if you want to match the original ratio, work by weight: about 32 oz flour to 8 oz butter and 8 oz sugar.
- "1 spoonful cinnamon"A plain "spoonful" in books of this period is usually read as a tablespoon, though nothing here defines it. Three teaspoons of cinnamon in two quarts of flour is a mild scenting; if you like it forward, double it.
- The missing liquidWith only yolks and half a pound of butter to two quarts of flour, this dough will not come together dry. Add milk or water a spoonful at a time until it just coheres; rose water was also used in cakes of this kind.
- No leavening is intentionalNo leavening is specified -- There is no soda, saleratus or baking powder here. Expect a dense, crisp, snappy cake. Adding leavening gives a softer biscuit than this ingredient list suggests.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll about 1/4 inch thick on a floured board and cut with a small round cutter or a glass. Thinner rolling gives a crisper cake; thicker gives a shortbread texture.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, around 350F, for 10 to 14 minutes, until the edges are just colouring, suits a thin rolled cake. Watch them, as they go from pale to scorched quickly.
- KeepingDry cakes with this little fat to flour keep well. Cooled completely and kept in a tin, they hold a week or more.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and first published in 1877, advertised contributions from two hundred and fifty of Virginia's noted housewives, which is why so many entries end with a set of initials rather than a name: these were real households sharing what they actually made, in the shorthand one cook uses with another. "Cinnamon cakes" in this tradition are not cupcakes but small rolled tea cakes, part of the large family of hard, keepable spiced biscuits. The yolks-only instruction suggests a kitchen where the whites were being kept for another use, such as a meringue, a white cake, or the clarifying of jelly or coffee. Cinnamon was among the cheaper imported spices by the 1870s and appears freely in everyday baking of the period.