Home › Breads, Rolls, Muffins, Etc. › Washington Pie
Washington Pie
1/3 C shortening ¾ C sugar 12 C milk 1/4 t salt 1½ C flour (Swans Down) 2 eggs, beaten light 3 t baking powder 1 t vanilla Cream the butter, add the sugar gradually and cream. Add the eggs. Sift the flour, measure, add baking powder and sift again. Add milk and flour alternately to first mixture, beating hard. Add vanilla. Bake in shallow layer cake pans in a moderate oven from 20 to 25 minutes. Put layers together with the following cream filling: 7% C sugar 1/3 C flour 2 eggs 2 C scalded milk 1/8 t salt 1 t vanilla Mix dry ingredients, add eggs slightly beaten and pour on gradually the scalded milk. Cook in double boiler, stirring constantly until thickened. Sprinkle powdered sugar over top.
Mrs. H. E. Gaddis. 1/2 C butter ⅔ C sugar 1/2 C milk
A standard two-layer butter cake filled with vanilla pastry cream, from the era when "pie" still meant anything baked in a round tin. A few of the quantities as printed need judgment before you start.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven here is about 350F. The recipe does not specify a pan size; shallow layers will be done in 20 to 25 minutes, when the centre springs back and the edges pull slightly from the tin.
- The cake proportionsThe printed figures are garbled; read against the method and the flour quantity, they are most likely 1/3 cup shortening, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup milk and 1 1/2 cups flour.
- The filling sugar is unclearThe sugar quantity given for the cream filling is not legible as a usable number. A vanilla pastry cream built on 1/3 cup flour, 2 eggs and 2 cups milk conventionally takes somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 cup sugar.
- Swans DownSwans Down is cake flour, still sold. If you substitute all-purpose, remove two tablespoons per cup and expect a slightly firmer crumb.
- Butter or shorteningThe ingredient list says shortening, the method says butter. Butter gives more flavour, vegetable shortening a lighter, drier crumb.
- Tempering the fillingPour the scalded milk onto the egg and flour mixture in a thin stream while whisking, then return it to the double boiler. Straining the cooked cream catches any threads of egg and is worth the extra minute.
- Cooling before assemblyThe filling must be cold and set before it goes between the layers, or it will slide out. Press plastic wrap onto the surface and chill it while the cake bakes and cools.
- Yield and keepingTwo layers, eight to ten servings. Because the filling is an egg custard, the assembled cake keeps in the refrigerator rather than on the counter, and is best within two days.
Washington pie is a New England name for a plain butter cake split and filled, close kin to Boston cream pie, which in its modern form is the same cake with a chocolate glaze poured over the top instead of a dusting of powdered sugar. The "pie" is a survival from the days when cakes and pies alike were baked in shallow round tins and the words were used loosely; jelly-filled versions under the same name appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks well before this one. The association with George Washington is traditional rather than documented, and the name was in wide enough circulation by the early twentieth century that a contributor like Mrs. Gaddis could set it down without explanation.