Mocha Cake
Use rule for Hot Water Sponge Cake. Bake in layers.
Cool; cut in rounds; arrange in three layers, with confectioners' frosting between; spread sides and top with Mocha Frosting; sprinkle sides with cocoanut, and garnish top with Mocha Frosting, put through pastry bag. If a coffee cake is preferred, substitute hot coffee for hot water in Hot Water Sponge Cake. 8 eggs
This is an assembly formula rather than a standalone recipe: it directs you to the book's Hot Water Sponge Cake and two of its frostings, then tells you how to stack and finish them. A few conventions need translating.
- The hinge: bake thin, cool completelyHot water sponge is a fatless foam cake, and the rule says plainly to cool it before cutting; handled warm, the layers tear. Frosting a warm sponge is asking for the layers to slide.
- "8 eggs"The figure appears as a tag on the entry, apparently the egg count of the base sponge rule, serving as a rough scale marker. Period eggs are often assumed to run smaller than a modern large egg, so some cooks reduce the count slightly, but nothing here fixes the weight.
- OvenThis page gives no oven direction; the heat comes from the Hot Water Sponge Cake rule it refers to. In practice shallow sponge rounds take a moderate heat, around 350F for 12-18 minutes; too hot and the crust sets before the foam has risen.
- "Cut in rounds"The instruction implies the baked layers are trimmed to matching circles with a plate or a large cutter, whether baked in sheets or in shallow pans. Baking directly in three 8-inch pans gets you to the same place with less waste.
- Confectioners' frostingConfectioners' sugar moistened with water, milk or a little egg white to a spreadable paste. It goes between the layers as a thin, setting glue; the Mocha Frosting, a coffee-flavoured icing given elsewhere in the book, is reserved for the outside and the piped garnish.
- CocoanutShredded or desiccated coconut of the period was generally drier than modern sweetened flake, though sweetened shredded coconut was also sold. Unsweetened desiccated coconut keeps the sides from becoming cloying against two sugar frostings.
- The coffee variationSubstituting hot strong coffee for the hot water works because the liquid is what dissolves the sugar and loosens the egg foam; brew it double strength, since the flavor is much diluted by the eggs and flour.
- Yield and keepingA sponge on this scale, cut into three layers, will serve a dozen or so, though the page gives no yield. Fatless sponge dries out quickly, so it is best filled, frosted and eaten within a day or two of baking.
"Mocha" in American cake books of this period means coffee, after the Yemeni port of Mocha that gave its name to the coffee trade long before it named a coffee-and-chocolate drink. A mocha cake was built from plain fatless layers, a coffee butter frosting, coconut on the sides and piped rosettes on top. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate and cocoa manufacturer; the coffee variation noted at the end is the sort of one-line economy that let a single sponge rule serve more than one entry.