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Snow Cake (C butter C sugar C milk C)
14 C butter 1 C sugar 1/2 C milk 1⅔ C flour 2½ t baking powder Whites two eggs 12 t vanilla Cream butter and sugar. Sift flour and baking powder together and add to butter mixture, alternately with milk. Add flavoring and lastly fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake 45 minutes in deep narrow pan. 1/2 C butter 1 C sugar 1/2 C cold water Mrs. Fred Mordhorst.
A plain white butter cake — "snow" for the egg whites that lift it and keep it pale. Several of the quantities as printed have lost their fractions, so read the notes below before you scale anything.
- The ambiguous amountsThe butter is printed as "14 C" and the flour as "123 C"; in a cake of this size these almost certainly stand for 1/4 cup butter and 1 2/3 cups flour, and the "12 t vanilla" for 1/2 teaspoon. Treat them as unverified rather than settled, and judge by batter consistency: it should drop thickly from the spoon, not pour.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, as was normal in a church-supper book where the cook knew her own stove. A butter cake of this type belongs at 350F; 45 minutes suits a deep narrow pan such as a loaf or tube pan, and a skewer should come out clean.
- "Deep narrow pan"That means a loaf pan or a small tube pan, not a wide layer tin. A shallow pan will dry the cake out well before 45 minutes are up — check a 9-inch round at 25 minutes.
- Baking powder2 1/2 teaspoons is generous by current standards for under two cups of flour. Powders of this period were single-acting rather than double-acting, and strength varied by brand; 2 teaspoons of modern powder will give plenty of lift without the faintly metallic edge.
- Folding the whitesThe whites go in last and unsweetened, so they are fragile. Beat them to firm but still glossy peaks, stir a spoonful into the batter to loosen it, then fold the rest in with a light hand — this is the only leavening beyond the powder and the only reason the crumb stays white.
- CreamingIf the butter is indeed a quarter cup, there is little fat to trap air, so cream it with the sugar longer than feels necessary, three or four minutes, until visibly pale and grainy-light.
- The trailing lineThe half cup butter, cup of sugar and half cup of cold water printed after the method do not belong to the batter as written; most likely they are the opening of the next recipe on the page, though they could be an accompanying icing. Either way, ignore them for the cake.
- YieldProbably one loaf, about eight to ten slices. Good plain with fruit, or split and filled; like other lean white cakes it is best eaten within a day or two of baking.
Snow cake, snow-drift cake and white mountain cake are all names for the same nineteenth-century idea: a butter cake made with whites only, leaving the yolks for custard, curd or noodles the same day. Whiteness was the point — it signalled fine bolted flour, chemical leavening rather than yeast, and a cook who could afford to divide her eggs. Its appearance in the bread and muffin section rather than among the cakes is telling: cakes of this modest sort could sit alongside rolls and quick breads as everyday baking rather than company confectionery, contributed under the maker's married name so that neighbours would know whose cake they were eating.