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Cakes (Cup sugar tablespoon butter)
1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon butter 1 egg 1 cup flour 1/2 cup milk 2 teaspoons baking powder Beat the butter and sugar to a cream and add the egg. Then stir in the flour and the milk alternately; add the baking powder last. Pour into a shallow, greased baking tin; and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake in a moderate oven.
A one-egg plain cake of the most economical kind, baked thin and finished with cinnamon sugar rather than icing. It comes together in one bowl and rewards a light hand more than anything else.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. In a shallow tin the batter is done in 20 to 25 minutes, when the top springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- What "shallow tin" meansAn 8-inch square or a 9-inch round pan spreads this small quantity of batter thin, giving a low cake of the sort the sugar-and-cinnamon top suits.
- That single tablespoon of butterThis is not a misprint but a deliberately lean cake, closer to a hot-milk sponge than a butter cake. It will be tender rather than rich, and it stales within a day, so serve it the same afternoon.
- Baking powder lastPeriod recipes often direct the powder in at the end, as here. Sift it with the flour instead and mix only until combined; overworking after the powder goes in is the surest way to a tough crumb.
- Alternating flour and milkAdd the flour and milk in turns as directed, beginning and ending with flour, stirring only enough to bring the batter smooth.
- The cinnamon sugarAbout two tablespoons sugar to half a teaspoon cinnamon covers an 8-inch pan. Scatter it over the raw batter, not the baked cake, so it sets into a thin crust.
- YieldNine squares, or six generous pieces. Cut it in the pan and serve warm with coffee or tea.
This is the plain one-egg cake that is often said to have run through American household cookery for generations. Its defining feature is arithmetic a cook could hold in her head: a cup of sugar, a cup of flour, half a cup of milk, one egg, one spoon of fat. The cinnamon-and-sugar top, baked on rather than iced, puts it in what is generally traced to the family of German-influenced coffee cakes that American cooks knew variously as crumb cake, sugar cake or simply "cinnamon cake," eaten mid-morning or with afternoon tea rather than as a dessert. Entries like this one are stripped to the barest instruction, giving little beyond the proportions.