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Plain Chocolate Cake
½ cup butter 1½ cups sugar 2 cups flour 5 tablespoons boiling water 1 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder ½ cup milk 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter; add the sugar very gradually, yolks of eggs well beaten, flour in which the baking powder and salt have been sifted, milk, and chocolate mixed with water. Beat well; add beaten whites, pour into buttered pans, and bake forty to fifty minutes in a moderate oven. This cake may be baked in small cakes by omitting one fourth cup flour.
Chocolate Cake No. 2 4 ounces Lowney's Premium Choc- 2 cups flour olate 1½ cups sugar ½ cup butter ½ cup milk 3 eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons boiling water Melt chocolate, add boiling water, and cook over hot water until smooth. Cream butter; add sugar gradually; when of a creamy consistency, add chocolate mixture, yolks of eggs well beaten, flour in which salt and baking powder have been sifted, and milk. Beat well; cut and fold in well-beaten whites; add flavoring. Pour into buttered pans and bake in a moderate oven thirty or forty minutes. Frost with white or chocolate frosting.
This mixture may be used for layer cakes by omitting one fourth cup flour and baking in layer cake pans. 1 cup butter 1½ cups sugar cup milk 5 egg yolks 1 teaspoon salt
A butter cake of the 1907 school: creamed butter and sugar, separated eggs, and melted chocolate loosened with boiling water. The method is sound; only the oven language and the chocolate itself need translating.
- Moderate ovenRead that as roughly 350-375F. Forty to fifty minutes suits a single deep pan; shallower layers will be done well before that, and small cakes sooner still, so watch them rather than the clock.
- The chocolateLowney's Premium was unsweetened baking chocolate, and the companion recipe on this page uses 4 ounces. Melt it, stir in the boiling water, and warm it over hot water until perfectly smooth before it goes into the batter, or it will seize into grains in the cold creamed butter.
- Buttered pansButter well and dust with flour, or line with parchment; a chocolate batter of this richness sticks.
- Yolks and whitesThe whites are the only lift beyond the baking powder, so beat them to soft, glossy peaks and fold rather than stir. Overworking here is the difference between a tender crumb and a tight one.
- A teaspoon of saltThat is a full teaspoon in a two-cup-flour cake, which reads high today; if your butter is salted you may want to use less.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons is generous by modern standards. Sift it with the flour and salt as directed and get the batter into the oven promptly.
- Reducing the flourDropping a quarter cup of flour, as the note suggests for small cakes, gives a looser batter that bakes and rises faster in shallow tins. It is the same trick used for layers in the recipe that follows.
- YieldA two-cup-flour, four-egg cake: one deep pan as written, or a couple of layers or a batch of small cakes with the quarter cup of flour omitted.
Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer whose Premium unsweetened cake chocolate this book exists to sell; recipes name the brand in the ingredient list as a matter of course. The technique of melting unsweetened chocolate with a few tablespoons of boiling water before adding it to a creamed batter shows up throughout the Boston cooking-school tradition, since a small amount of water lets a stiff block of chocolate flow smoothly into cold butter and sugar.