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Custard Nut Cake
4 beaten egg yolks 12 C Swansdown flour 2t Royal baking powder 1 t vanilla 9 T milk, added slowly Mix and divide into two greased cake pans. Beat the egg whites with ½ C sugar and pour over the layers. Sprinkle with 1 scant cup chopped nuts and bake slowly 1/2 hour. Put the layers together with lemon filling: 2/3 C milk 1/2 C sugar 1 egg 1 lemon 1 T corn starch Mrs. Geo. Ives.
Cook until thick. Use whip cream over top. 3 eggs 1/8 t salt ½ C flour 1 C sugar
This is a Blitz torte in disguise: a thin butter-cake layer spread with raw meringue, baked together, then stacked with lemon curd. The transcription has suffered badly, and the amounts need reading with care before you commit.
- The garbled fractions"12 C flour" and "12 C sugar" are most likely 1/2 C in the original print, where the fraction bar dropped out. The stray line at the end (3 eggs, 1/8 t salt, 1½ C flour, 1 C sugar) may belong to this cake, printed out of order, or to a neighbouring recipe; note that it calls for 3 eggs where the method calls for 4 yolks and separately beaten whites, so the two lists cannot simply be added together without judgement.
- Missing fatNo butter or shortening appears anywhere, where most Blitz torte batters include some. Either it was omitted in setting the page or this was meant as a sponge-type batter. A comparable published recipe is worth checking before you scale it.
- Swans Down flourA bleached soft-wheat cake flour, still sold. Substitute cake flour, or for each cup of all-purpose flour remove 2 tablespoons and replace with cornstarch.
- Royal baking powderA cream-of-tartar (tartrate) powder, faster-acting than modern double-acting types. Use the same measure of ordinary baking powder and get the pans into the oven promptly.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven, which in this period generally meant somewhere in the region of 300-325F; the book gives no temperature. The meringue lid needs a gentle heat to dry and set to pale gold without scorching while the crumb underneath cooks through. Half an hour suits two thin layers in 8- or 9-inch pans.
- Meringue over raw batterBeat the whites with the sugar to firm, glossy peaks and spread gently to the pan edge so it seals. It bakes into a crisp crust; the nuts go on before baking, not after.
- The lemon fillingCook it in a heavy pan or over simmering water, stirring constantly, until it visibly thickens and just reaches a bare bubble to cook out the cornstarch. Cool it completely before it meets the layers, or the meringue will weep. The recipe specifies only "1 lemon"; juice and grated zest is the likely intent.
- Assembly and yieldMeringue side up on both layers, filling between, whipped cream on top; serve the day it is made, as the crust softens overnight. Two thin layers give 8 to 10 servings.
Cakes of this construction — batter and meringue baked in the same pan, then layered with a cooked fruit filling — are usually traced to German and Austrian home baking, where the name Blitzkuchen or Blitztorte ('lightning cake') is conventionally understood to refer to the speed of making. It reached American church and club cookbooks in the early twentieth century, often under names like Custard Nut Cake or Nut Torte that say nothing about its origins. The brand names in the ingredient list are the period's real signature: Swans Down flour and Royal baking powder were heavily advertised to home bakers, and contributors to books like this one wrote them in as a matter of course.