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Peach Short Cake
4 C Swansdown cake flour 6 T shortening Gladys Suydam. 4 t baking powder 2 eggs 1 to ½ C milk 1 t salt Sift dry ingredients together and cut in the shortening with two knives. Beat the eggs light. Add 1 C milk and stir into the flour. Beat well, and if too thick, add a little more milk. Spread into two layer cake pans and bake in a moderate oven. Turn out and spread with butter. Put together with sliced and sweetened peaches and pile sliced peaches on top. Serve with whipped cream.
A biscuit-style shortcake, unsweetened in the dough, baked as two thin layers rather than split by hand. The original assumes a cook who knows what a moderate oven feels like and how long a shortcake takes; here are the numbers.
- Swans Down cake flourSwans Down is a soft-wheat bleached cake flour, still sold and still fine here. All-purpose will work but absorbs more liquid and gives a tougher crumb; if you substitute it, start at 1 cup milk and expect a firmer dough.
- Moderate oven350°F to 375°F. Two layers in 8- or 9-inch pans need roughly 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are pale gold and a tester comes out clean.
- Shortening6 tablespoons means solid fat, hydrogenated vegetable shortening or lard. Cold butter cut in the same way gives better flavor. Keep it in pea-sized pieces; that unblended fat is what makes the crumb flaky rather than cakey.
- The milk rangeThe 1 to 1½ cups is real, not vague — flour absorbency varies. Stop when the batter is thick and just spreadable, closer to a drop biscuit dough than a cake batter. Overthinning gives a soggy layer.
- No sugar in the doughThere is none; all the sweetness comes from the macerated peaches. Adding sugar to the flour changes the character of the layers and encourages them to brown faster.
- Butter the layers hotTurn the baked layers out and spread butter over them while they are still steaming, so it soaks in before the peach juice goes on.
- The peachesSlice, sugar to taste, and let them stand 20 to 30 minutes before assembling so they release syrup. Assemble at the last moment; a shortcake left sitting under fruit goes to paste.
- YieldTwo 8- or 9-inch layers serve eight to ten. Figure 2½ to 3 pounds of peaches for a cake this size.
Shortcake in the American sense is a biscuit dough rather than a sponge, and recipes of this shape -- strawberry shortcake above all -- appear in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century, with peaches, raspberries and blackberries taking their turn as the season moved. Worth noting is the branded flour: Swans Down cake flour was heavily advertised to home bakers, and Gladys Suydam names the brand in the recipe itself. Where contributors' names are attached to each entry, they serve as both credit and endorsement -- a recipe was worth making partly because you knew whose kitchen it came from.