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Hot Water Chocolate Cake
2 T butter. 1 C granulated sugar 1 egg 2 squares chocolate ¾ t soda 1 rounded t baking powder 1½ C flour 1 t vanilla 1 C boiling water Dissolve chocolate in half the cup of boiling water and the soda in the other half. Mix in order given and bake in a square loaf thirty minutes.
Mrs. V. L. Gerred.
Note: Mrs. Nellie Ray uses 1 C sour milk instead of boiling water. 14 C shortening 1 C sugar 2 eggs 1½ C flour 1½ t baking powder 12 t salt
A single-layer chocolate cake of the community-cookbook type, mixed in one bowl and leaning on boiling water rather than creamed butter. A few of the fractions and the pan size need interpreting before you start.
- The hinge: split the boiling waterHalf the cup melts the chocolate into a smooth paste, the other half dissolves the soda. Combining them before they go into the batter defeats the point, since the hot chocolate slurry is what gives this cake its dark colour and soft crumb.
- Fractions to read carefully"34 t soda" is three-quarters of a teaspoon and "12 t" is half a teaspoon; the printing has lost the fraction bars. Where a quantity is genuinely unclear, err on the low side with soda, as excess gives a soapy, metallic taste.
- Squares of chocolateA square meant one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so two squares is two ounces. Modern bars are often scored differently, so weigh rather than count. Do not substitute semisweet, which will make the cake cloying.
- No fat in the listAs printed, the cake contains no butter or shortening at all. It will bake up lean and brownie-like rather than tender; a tablespoon or two of melted butter stirred in with the vanilla brings it closer to what most cooks expect from a chocolate cake.
- "A square loaf"Probably a square pan of roughly 8 inches, greased and floured. The recipe gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, should suit the thirty-minute bake at this depth, but test with a pick at 25 minutes, since a lean batter dries quickly.
- The sour milk variationMrs. Ray's cup of sour milk replaces the boiling water, which changes the method: melt the chocolate separately and add the soda dry with the flour, since there is no hot liquid to dissolve it. Buttermilk is the modern stand-in.
- YieldOne square cake, about nine modest pieces if baked in an 8-inch pan. It is a plain everyday cake, best served warm or dusted with confectioners' sugar rather than iced.
Hot-water chocolate cakes were a staple of American community cookbooks in roughly the first half of the twentieth century, and they earned their place by being cheap and quick: one bowl, one egg, little or no fat, and boiling water doing the work that creamed butter does elsewhere. The hot liquid also blooms the chocolate, deepening both colour and flavour, which is why the same trick survives in modern devil's food recipes that call for a cup of boiling coffee. Compilations like this one credited each contributor by name and often appended a neighbour's variation directly beneath, as here with Mrs. Ray's sour-milk version.