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Rich Little Tea Cakes
3/4 cup shortening 1 cup granulated sugar grated rind of 1 lemon 5 eggs 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla Cream the shortening and sifted granulated sugar. Add the grated rind of the lemon; then add the well beaten eggs alternately with the flour mixed and sifted with the baking powder and salt. Beat well and after the flour is all in, add the vanilla. Turn into a pastry bag and half fill small patty pans which have been greased. Bake 15 minutes in a 325 degrees oven. Makes three dozen.
A rich, eggy little cake in the pound-cake family, piped rather than spooned into small tins. The batter is stiff enough to hold its shape, which is why the pastry bag is specified.
- ShorteningIn this period "shortening" means hydrogenated vegetable shortening or lard. Butter works and tastes better here, given the lemon and vanilla; use 3/4 cup (170 g) softened, and expect slightly more spread.
- Five eggs is the pointFive eggs to two cups of flour makes this richer and eggier than a modern cupcake. Have them at room temperature and beat them well before adding, as the recipe directs, so the batter is less likely to separate.
- Alternating additionsAdd egg and flour in three or four turns each, beginning and ending with flour. Adding all the egg at once into creamed fat is the usual cause of a separated batter in recipes of this type.
- Patty pansThese are small tartlet or gem tins, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches across and shallower than a modern muffin cup. A mini-muffin pan is the nearest common substitute, though a true patty pan holds somewhat more; a standard 12-cup muffin tin will give fewer, larger cakes.
- Half fill, and mean itFilling more than halfway risks domed, overflowing cakes; the recipe's half-fill keeps them small.
- Oven325F is as printed. In small tins, 15 minutes is about right; check at 12. Larger tins may need 18 to 22 minutes.
- Sifting sugarSifting granulated sugar was a real step when sugar came lumpy from the barrel or bag. Modern granulated sugar needs no sifting; the flour, baking powder and salt still benefit from being sifted together.
- Yield and keepingThree dozen small cakes. Small cakes like these are best the day they are baked; a light lemon glaze or a dusting of confectioners' sugar helps.
The recipe carries the marks of its era: standardized cup measures, a numbered oven temperature and named chemical leavening, all of which appear here. The dish itself is older: it is a small, lightened relative of the pound cake, the eighteenth-century formula of equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, here with baking powder and proportionally more egg. Baking such batter in small tins rather than one loaf was long established and suited the afternoon tea tray; the pastry bag points to a wish for uniform little cakes.