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Quick Cake
1 2/3 C sifted Swansdown flour 1 C sugar 1/2 t salt 2 t baking powder 2 egg whites 1/2 C milk Soft shortening ½ t vanilla Sift flour, sugar, salt and baking powder three times. Put egg whites into cup and add enough soft shortening to half fill the cup, then add milk to completely fill the cup. Turn this into dry ingredients, add flavoring and beat vigorously. Bake in two small layers. Mrs. V. L. Gerred, Mrs. Fred Mordhors+
A wartime-and-after shortcut cake built around a single measuring cup: everything wet goes into one cup by displacement, then straight into the sifted dry ingredients. It works, but the method assumes habits that have largely disappeared from home baking.
- The cup trick, explainedPut the two egg whites in a one-cup dry measure, spoon in soft shortening until the cup is half full, then top up with milk. The point is proportion by volume rather than weight: the whites plus shortening make up the bottom half of the cup, so roughly 1/4 cup of fat, with the milk (given as 1/2 cup in the ingredient line) filling the rest. Use a straight-sided cup so you can judge the halfway line.
- Dry ingredientsFlour, sugar, salt and baking powder are named but their amounts are not given in the ingredient line, so the proportions must come from a standard white layer cake you already trust. Sift them together three times as directed; with no creaming step, that sifting is the only aeration the batter gets before beating.
- Soft shorteningIn a recipe of this period this usually means hydrogenated vegetable shortening at room temperature, soft enough to spoon but not melted; lard or butter could stand in. Butter browns faster, so the edges will be darker.
- FlavoringThe vanilla figure has lost its fraction; 1/2 teaspoon suits a two-layer white cake, and a full teaspoon is not excessive.
- Beat vigorouslyWith no creaming stage, the beating is what aerates the batter. The recipe sets no time; beat until the batter is smooth and noticeably lighter in color.
- Pans and oven"Two small layers" most likely means two 8-inch round pans, greased and floured. No oven temperature or time is given; a moderate oven, roughly 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, is a workable modern starting point -- bake until the centers spring back and a tester comes out clean.
- Yield and finishingAn 8-inch two-layer cake serves 8 to 10. Because the egg yolks are omitted the crumb is pale and mild; cakes of this type were commonly filled and frosted.
Church and club cookbooks of the mid-twentieth century are full of cakes like this one, sold on speed rather than richness: no creaming, no separate mixing bowls, and a measuring cup doing double duty as a scale. The displacement method for fat, filling a cup partway with shortening and topping it with liquid, belongs to a kitchen where a single cup and a spoon were often the whole batterie de patisserie. Using only the whites marks it as a white cake in the older sense, prized for a pale delicate crumb that showed off colored frosting. The double attribution, two names under one recipe, is a common feature of compiled community cookbooks, though the reason for it here is not recorded.