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Yellow Cake
1 1 t vanilla 2 level t baking powder 2 C Swansdown flour 1/2 C butter 1 C sugar 4 eggs, (reserve 2 whites) 1/2 C milk Cream butter, add sugar and cream well. Beat eggs and add milk, flour and baking powder alternately. Beat all well and bake in layers.. Put together with following filling: 20 marshmallows Marshmallow Filling 2 egg whites Dissolve marshmallows in double boiler with 2 t water. Beat the whites of 2 eggs stiff, and when marshmallows are dissolved, add the beaten whites and beat well until cool. Spread between layers. 1½ C sugar ½ C butter 3 egg yolks, beaten 1 C cold water 2 C flour ¼ C milk Boil until thick.
A four-egg layer cake in the old church-supper style, filled rather than frosted. The ingredient list mixes whole eggs and reserved whites, so read it through before you start creaming.
- The egg splitFour eggs go in, but two whites are held back for the filling. That means the batter takes four yolks and two whites, which is what gives the cake its yellow crumb.
- Swansdown flourSwans Down is a bleached soft-wheat cake flour, still sold. Any cake flour works; if you substitute all-purpose, remove 2 tablespoons per cup and expect a slightly tougher crumb.
- Pan size and ovenNo temperature is given. Two 8-inch round layers at 350F, 20 to 25 minutes, until the centre springs back. Three thinner layers will take about 18 minutes.
- Mixing orderCream the butter and sugar thoroughly, then add the beaten eggs and alternate milk with the flour and baking powder. Alternating keeps the batter from breaking; the final beating should be brief once the flour is in.
- Marshmallows by weightTwenty marshmallows is roughly 5 ounces, or about 20 large marshmallows or 2 cups of miniatures.
- Melting the marshmallowsTwo teaspoons of water is very little, but it is enough to keep the sugar from scorching over the double boiler, and more will give you a filling too loose to hold layers apart.
- Beat until coolThis is the hinge. Warm marshmallow slumps; the mixture must be beaten off the heat until it comes down to room temperature and holds a soft peak, or the layers will slide.
- Uncooked whitesThe whites are folded into melted marshmallow and never reach a cooking temperature. If you are serving anyone vulnerable, use pasteurised whites or a cooked boiled-icing filling instead.
- YieldTwo 8-inch layers, twelve modest slices. The filling is generous for two layers and thin for three.
Brand-name flour in a recipe title or ingredient list is a good marker of date: Swans Down cake flour was introduced in the 1890s and was advertised to American home bakers in the decades that followed, and its appearance here suggests a cook who had absorbed the milling industry's argument that soft-wheat flour made a finer cake than the family's ordinary sack. The marshmallow filling belongs to the same commercial moment. Once marshmallows were manufactured and boxed rather than made at home, they turned up in church and club cookbooks as a shortcut to the fluffy white icings that had previously meant boiling sugar to a thread. A yellow cake, by a naming tradition that is received rather than documented, is often said to be the yolk-rich counterpart to the white cake made from the whites -- the two were sometimes baked in sequence so that nothing was wasted, and here the split is managed within a single recipe.