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Prune Cake (C brown sugar C butter eggs)
1½ C brown sugar 1/2 C butter 3 eggs, beaten separately 1 C (good-sized) stewed prunes cut not too fine, also some juice 1 C sour cream 1 t soda (dissovled) 1 t cinnamon ½ t allspice ½ t ginger ½ t cloves 1 t lemon extract 3½ C flour with 2 level t baking powder. 3/4 C chopped nuts Mix as given in rotation. This makes a large-sized cake, either in loaf or layer. Frost with caramel frosting. 1/2 C butter ½ C sugar Yolks of 3 eggs 2 C flour
A big spice-and-fruit loaf leavened twice over, with soda for the sour cream and baking powder for lift. The original gives no oven setting or baking time, so those are the first things to settle.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. A single large loaf or tube cake will want 55-70 minutes; two 9-inch layers, 25-30 minutes. Test with a skewer in the centre, and expect the prune juice to keep the crumb quite moist.
- The spice quantitiesThe allspice, ginger and cloves are each a half teaspoon, not twelve. Read the figures as ½ t; twelve teaspoons of cloves would be inedible.
- Sour cream and sodaThe teaspoon of soda is there to neutralise the acid in cultured sour cream. Modern full-fat sour cream works; thickened or ultra-pasteurised sour creams behave differently in the bowl, so judge the batter rather than the label. Buttermilk can stand in at the same volume, but it is thinner and leaner and will give a looser batter.
- Eggs beaten separatelyBeat the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar; the whites, stiffly beaten, can be folded in at the end, though the recipe's own instruction to 'mix as given in rotation' would add them before the flour. With both soda and baking powder in the batter, the whites are an aid to lightness rather than its sole source.
- The prunesStew pitted dried prunes in water until soft, then chop coarsely and add a few spoonfuls of the cooking liquid. Cut too fine, they dissolve into the batter and the cake loses its dark pockets of fruit.
- FlourPeriod soft flour was weaker and lighter in the cup than modern all-purpose, so 3½ cups may prove too much. Hold some back and add only as much as gives a thick, dropping batter.
- YieldOne 10-inch tube cake or two 9-inch layers, serving 12-16. Caramel frosting means brown sugar boiled with cream or milk and butter to the soft-ball stage, cooled and beaten smooth.
Prune cake belongs to the family of American sour-cream spice cakes that appear in community and fundraising cookbooks. Dried prunes were cheap, kept well on the pantry shelf, and gave both sweetness and moisture at a time when fresh fruit out of season was a luxury; stewed, they served at breakfast as well as in cake. The combination of sour cream with soda is older than reliable commercial baking powder, and recipes like this one, using both, sit on the hinge between the two eras.