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Orange Marmalade Cake
3 eggs 2 cups brown sugar 1 cup orange marmalade 1/2 teaspoon each of cloves, allspice, cinnamon and baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 cups flour Beat eggs in bowl, add sugar and marmalade, beating well. Mix dry ingredients, add to the first mixture and beat enough to mix thoroughly. Spread batter 1/2 inch thick in an oiled shallow pan, bake 20 minutes in moderate (375 degrees) oven. Remove from fire and while hot frost with powdered sugar and cream frosting, applying the frosting with pastry brush. Cut into small squares and serve with fruit.
This is a spiced bar cake rather than a layer cake: no butter, no milk, and a batter stiff enough to be pressed rather than poured. A few of the original's instructions assume a coal range and a cook who knew the proportions of a plain frosting by heart.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe helpfully gives the number itself: 375F. Period charts put "moderate" broadly in the 350-375F range, so this sits at the warm end of it, which suits a thin sheet that needs to set quickly without drying.
- "Remove from fire"An old range idiom for taking the pan out of the oven, not for moving anything off a burner.
- Pan and thicknessHalf an inch of batter is the whole point of the timing. This quantity spreads to something between a 9x13 and a half-sheet pan; a smaller, deeper pan will likely still be underbaked at 20 minutes. "Oiled" means greased -- parchment is easier here.
- Handling the batterWith three eggs and a cup of marmalade as the only liquid against three cups of flour, this is a paste, not a pourable batter. Press it out with an offset spatula or lightly oiled fingertips to an even depth.
- Brown sugarPacked is the safer assumption for a recipe of this sort. Modern light brown sugar is probably nearer the ordinary soft brown of the day; dark brown will push the spice toward gingerbread.
- MarmaladeA coarse-cut bitter orange marmalade carries the spices best; it and the brown sugar between them give the soda something acidic to work against. A sweet, jelly-style marmalade will taste blander.
- The frostingNo proportions are given. A "powdered sugar and cream frosting" of the era is simply confectioners' sugar stirred with enough cream to brush -- start at about 1 1/2 cups sugar to 2 tablespoons cream and thin by drops. Brushing it onto the hot cake lets it soak in and dry to a thin glaze.
- YieldCut into 1 1/2 inch squares, the sheet gives several dozen pieces -- upwards of seven or eight dozen from a full half-sheet -- a quantity that suits serving squares alongside fruit.