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Rich Four Layer Cocoa Cake (Light Part)
1/2 cup shortening 1 1/2 cups sugar few grains salt 3/4 cup milk 2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 4 egg whites, beaten stiff Cream shortening and sugar together, until light and creamy; add milk slowly and the flour, which has been sifted with baking powder and salt. Fold egg whites in very lightly. Line two layer or ten inch square pans with heavy paper and bake 20 to 25 minutes in moderate oven, 375 degrees F.
This is half of a two-batter cake: a white layer cake meant to be stacked alternately with the cocoa layers given separately. Made on its own it is a plain, fine-crumbed white cake.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirAll the lift here comes from baking powder plus the air in four stiff egg whites. Once the whites go in, use a spatula and no more than a dozen strokes; a whisk or a mixer will deflate them and the layers will bake low and tough.
- Oven375F is the recipe's own instruction, and 20 to 25 minutes suits two shallow layers, though the recipe gives no pan size. Check at 18 minutes; a skewer should come out clean and the top should spring back.
- Pan reading"Two layer pans" most likely means two round cake tins, probably 8 or 9 inch, though the recipe does not say so; the ten-inch square appears as an alternative and will take longer than the stated 20 to 25 minutes. For four layers you either bake this batter twice or split each baked layer horizontally.
- Lining"Heavy paper" of this period would have been butcher or brown paper. Use parchment cut to the pan bottom and grease the sides; the layers are delicate and will tear if turned out of a bare tin.
- Shortening"Shortening" here probably means hydrogenated vegetable shortening, though lard and butter were also sold under that name; vegetable shortening creams to a very white, high-volume batter. Butter works and tastes better, but the crumb will be slightly denser and less pale.
- Mixing orderThe instruction to add milk to the creamed fat and sugar before the flour will look curdled and broken. That is expected; the flour brings it together. Alternating milk and flour in two or three additions gives a smoother batter if you prefer.
- FlavouringNo extract is listed, which is unsurprising if the cake was to be assembled with a strongly flavoured dark batter and a frosting. A teaspoon of vanilla in the milk is a reasonable addition if this layer stands alone.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect two thin layers, or one 10-inch square. As one half of the four-layer cake it would serve roughly 12 to 16 once filled and iced.
Two-batter layer cakes, light and dark baked separately and stacked in alternating bands, were popular in American company baking from the late nineteenth century onward, by which time reliable chemical baking powder had made a tall, even layer easier to achieve in a home kitchen. Recipes of this type often pair a white batter using only the whites with a dark, cocoa-enriched batter that takes the yolks, so that no yolks are left over. A four-layer cake needed two mixings, two bakings and a frosting.