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White Layer Cake
3 egg whites 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup butter 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon lemon or vanilla extract 1/2 cup milk Cream the sugar and butter together. Beat one egg slightly, and add to the creamed butter and sugar. Sift the baking powder with the flour. Add the milk and the flour alternately to the first mixture. Add the flavoring. Beat the remaining egg whites until stiff, and fold into the batter. Bake in layers in a moderately hot oven. Use any desired cake filling between the layers.
A plain butter cake whitened by using only egg whites. The printed ingredient list has a gap that will sink the cake if you follow it literally, so read the notes before you start.
- The missing baking powderThe method says to sift baking powder with the flour, but no quantity appears in the ingredient list. For 2 cups of flour in a creamed butter cake of this period, about 2 teaspoons is a commonly seen proportion. Without any, you will get a dense, close-grained slab.
- "Beat one egg slightly"This means one of the three egg whites, not a whole egg — the whole point of the recipe is a white crumb. Slacken one white with a fork, beat it into the creamed butter and sugar, and reserve the other two for folding in at the end.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" in books of this era generally corresponds to roughly 375-400F. Two 8-inch layers take about 20 to 25 minutes; test with a skewer at 20.
- PansThe recipe says only to bake in layers, without specifying size or number; two round layer tins are the usual reading. Grease and flour them, or line the bases with parchment, as a batter this sugary can catch at the edge.
- CreamingButter should be at about 65F, cool but pliable, and creamed with the sugar until visibly paler and lighter. A good deal of the rise comes from air you put in here.
- Folding the whitesBeat the two reserved whites to soft-firm peaks that still slump slightly, not to a dry, grainy stage. Fold in two additions with a spatula; overworking here is the usual cause of a flat white layer cake.
- FlourFlour sold for cake in this period was often a softer wheat than modern all-purpose. Cake flour gives the finer, whiter crumb the recipe is after; all-purpose works but bakes up firmer.
- Yield and fillingRoughly two 8-inch layers, though the recipe gives no pan size. "Any desired cake filling" is left open; period fillings of this kind included boiled white icing, jam, or a cornstarch-thickened custard.
White cakes are often said to belong to the era when eggs were separated for economy rather than effect: the yolks went into custards, sauces, or gold cake, and the whites were left over, leaving a cook with a bowl of albumen to spend. The pure-white crumb is also generally thought to have carried a certain prestige from the late nineteenth century onward, when chemical baking powders and finely bolted white flour made a pale, even-textured layer cake something a household could produce reliably at home for the first time. That the printed ingredient list omits the baking powder while the method calls for it is an ordinary hazard of period cookbooks, which assumed a cook who already knew the proportions.