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Fudge Cake
1 unbeaten egg. 1 t vanilla. 1½ C Swansdown flour 1½ t baking powder 12 t salt 14 C butter 1 C sugar 2 squares unsweetened melted chocolate 1/2 C water Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Cream butter, add sugar slowly and unbeaten egg. Mix thoroughly and add vanilla and unsweetened chocolate, melted. Add water and part of sifted ingredients. Add them alternately until all is used. Put in a square greased and slightly floured pan. Bake. Cool and cover at least ½ inch thick with chocolate icing. Cut into 2 inch squares.
Icing:
Cream 1½ T butter, add 2 C Confectioner's sugar gradually, 12 square melted chocolate, 4 to 5 T hot milk (just enough to make right consistency to spread quickly). 1 C butter DEVILS FOOD (With Fruit) 1 C granulated sugar 1 C brown sugar 1 C milk 4 eggs 4 C flour ½ C molasses 1/2 C chocolate 12 C boiling water Mrs. C. Klepper. 1 t cream tartar 12 t soda 12 t each of allspice, cloves, cin- 2 namon; and a few gratings nutmeg. raisins 1 C citron 1 C English walnuts Cream, butter and sugars: add molasses and yolks of eggs and beat thoroughly.
Mix spices, soda, and cream of tartar in flour. Dissolve grated chocolate in the boiling water and add to mixture.
Cut up citron, raisins, and nuts and roll in flour.
Lastly, add beaten whites.
Four layers: caramel filling, moderate oven.
Front
A butter-and-chocolate sheet cake, iced thickly and cut into squares — closer to what we would now call a brownie-style bar than a layer cake. The ingredient list has lost most of its fractions, so several quantities have to be reasoned out from ordinary practice.
- Swans Down flourA branded soft-wheat cake flour, still sold. If you substitute all-purpose, remove two tablespoons per cup and sift twice; the crumb will be a little firmer either way.
- The ambiguous amountsAs printed, the flour, baking powder, salt and butter quantities have lost their fractions and cannot be read with confidence (the water survives as 1/2 C). The proportions of a cake of this type — one cup of sugar, two squares of chocolate — point to roughly a cup and a half of flour and a quarter cup of butter, but this is inference, not what the page says.
- Eggs and vanillaThe method calls for an unbeaten egg and for vanilla, neither of which appears in the ingredient list. One egg and a teaspoon of vanilla suit the scale of the batter.
- Squares of chocolateAn old baking square is one ounce of unsweetened chocolate. The cake takes two squares; the icing figure is printed as '12 square' and has lost its fraction, most likely half a square.
- Bake — no temperature givenThe original simply says "Bake," and specifies only a square pan, not its size. A cake of this scale wants a moderate oven, around 350F, for about 30 to 35 minutes, until a tester comes out with a few moist crumbs.
- The icing consistencyAdd the hot milk a tablespoon at a time. Confectioner's sugar varies in how much liquid it will take, and the difference between spreadable and running off the sides is about a teaspoon.
- YieldAn 8-inch square pan cut into 2-inch squares gives 16 pieces. Let the cake cool completely before icing or the frosting will slide.
Brand names settled into home baking in the early twentieth century: Swans Down cake flour appears in collections like this one by name because the contributor trusted the box more than a generic measure of flour. The recipe also sits at the moment when chocolate stopped being a special-occasion flavour and became an everyday one — cheap, reliable unsweetened baking squares made a two-square cake unremarkable in a way it would not have been a generation earlier. That the cake is baked flat, iced thickly and cut into squares rather than served in wedges marks it as a plate-and-social cake, made to travel and be picked up by hand.