Berry Cake
1/4 cup butter 1 egg 1 cup milk 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 pint blueberries, huckleberries, or blackberries Mix the same as Plain Cake, adding the berries, well washed and drained and dusted with flour.
The page as printed runs two ingredient lists together: the first is the berry cake's own additions, the second is the Plain Cake formula it refers back to. Read them as one recipe and the proportions make sense.
- Reconciling the two listsThe batter appears to be the Plain Cake base — 1/4 lb butter, 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon soda, 3/4 cup milk — with a pint of berries folded in. The opening line (1 cup milk, 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder) reads as an alternative leavening and liquid for the berry version; use one scheme or the other, not both. The baking-powder-and-1-cup-milk scheme is the more predictable of the two for a modern cook.
- Quarter pound of butterThat is one US stick, 8 tablespoons, 113 g. Have it soft enough to cream but not melting.
- A pint of berriesA dry pint is roughly 2 cups, about 10-12 oz of blueberries. Frozen berries work if used straight from the freezer, unthawed, or the batter turns grey.
- Why the flour dusting mattersBerries tossed in a little of the measured flour are said to stay better suspended rather than sinking to the bottom; wet or thawed berries will not hold the coating.
- Mixing method"Mix the same as Plain Cake" almost certainly implies the standard creamed method: cream butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs, then add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Fold the berries in last, by hand, with as few strokes as will distribute them.
- Oven and panNo oven or pan is specified. For a modern kitchen, 350F suits this batter: an 8- or 9-inch square pan or a 9-inch round takes roughly 35-45 minutes; a loaf pan runs closer to an hour. Test with a skewer in the centre, avoiding a berry.
- YieldOne cake, 9 to 12 squares. It is a plain everyday cake rather than a dessert cake — good warm, and best on the day it is baked.
Berry cake of this kind belongs to the American plain-cake tradition, where a single creamed butter batter served as the base for a whole column of variations: add spices for spice cake, cocoa for chocolate, fruit for berry. The format encourages exactly this sort of cross-reference — the berry recipe carries only its own additions and sends you back to the master formula. The berries named, blueberries, huckleberries and blackberries, were commonly gathered wild across much of the northeastern United States well into the twentieth century, which is why a summer cake could call for a pint of them without comment on cost.