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Sunshine Cake (Eggs C granulated sugar C)
6 eggs 1 C granulated sugar 1/2 C water 1 C Swans Down flour 1 t baking powder or cream tartar 1 t flavoring Boil sugar and water until it spins a thread. Then pour slowly over stiffly beaten egg whites and beat until cool. Beat egg yolks until lemon colored and add to this mixture with flavoring. Sift flour and baking powder and fold into egg mixture. Put into ungreased tube pan and bake in moderate oven fifty to sixty minutes.
Note: Mrs. B. Steir uses ½ C of sugar. 1. C sugar
A boiled-syrup sponge cake: the hot syrup cooks and stabilizes the whites, so the only leavening beyond air is a single teaspoon of powder. Everything depends on the syrup and on how gently the flour goes in.
- "Spins a thread"That is the thread stage, 230-235F on a candy thermometer, reached a few minutes after the syrup comes to a full boil. Under-cooked syrup gives a slack, weeping meringue; taken past the soft-ball stage it sets on contact and beads instead of folding in.
- Pouring the syrupBeat the whites to firm but not dry peaks first, then add the syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running. Beating until genuinely cool — the bowl at room temperature, five to eight minutes on a stand mixer — is what keeps the batter from deflating when the yolks arrive.
- Swans Down flourA bleached soft-wheat cake flour, still sold under that name. Any cake flour works; plain all-purpose makes a tougher, coarser crumb. Do not substitute self-rising.
- Baking powder or cream of tartarThey are not interchangeable in function. Cream of tartar acidifies and tightens the whites and should go in during whipping, not with the flour; baking powder is a leavener and is sifted with the flour as written.
- FoldingSift the flour over the surface in three or four additions and fold with a large spatula, cutting down and turning the bowl. Streaks of unmixed flour are less damaging than a batter beaten flat.
- Oven and panA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F; for a tall tube cake 325F gives a more even rise and less crust. Use an ungreased 9- or 10-inch tube pan with a removable bottom or a proper angel food pan — the batter has to grip the sides to climb.
- Timing and coolingStart checking at 40 minutes; it is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean. Invert the pan on its feet or over a bottle neck and let the cake hang until fully cold, or it will compress under its own weight.
- The sugar noteMrs. Steir's 1 1/2 cups makes a sweeter, moister, slightly denser cake. The trailing "1. C sugar" in the original appears to be a stray.
- YieldOne tube cake, 10 to 12 slices. Often served plain or with a light glaze; the crumb is too delicate for heavy frosting.
Sunshine cake belongs to the family of fat-free American sponge cakes that appear in community and church cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward, alongside angel food and "snow" cakes. The distinction usually drawn is that angel food uses whites alone while sunshine cake keeps the yolks, which give it the pale gold color the name advertises. Cakes like these depended on finely milled soft-wheat flour — Swans Down, named in the recipe, was sold by Igleheart Brothers of Evansville, Indiana — and on the rotary egg beater, patented in the mid-nineteenth century, which made whipping six eggs quicker work than by hand. The boiled-syrup method here is the more painstaking version and resembles Italian meringue practice; it produces a foam more stable than raw beaten whites.