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Dutch Cake
1 pound bread dough 1/2 pound sugar 1/2 pound butter 1 egg 1/2 pound seeded raisins Cinnamon and nutmeg Mix the sugar, butter and beaten egg into bread dough; when thoroughly incorporated flavor with cinnamon and nutmeg; and add the fruit. Put into a greased pan and let rise for an hour or more; then bake slowly. bas
A yeasted butter cake built on a piece of ordinary bread dough, the old cook's way of getting a rich cake without a separate leavening. Everything here turns on giving the enriched dough enough time.
- The hinge: a long second riseBeating a half pound each of butter and sugar into a pound of dough slows the yeast dramatically. "An hour or more" is optimistic; expect two to three hours at warm room temperature, and judge by the dough reaching roughly half again its size rather than by the clock.
- Weights in cups1/2 lb sugar is about 1 1/8 cups granulated, 1/2 lb butter is two sticks, 1/2 lb raisins is about 1 1/2 cups. The pound of bread dough is a risen white dough, roughly what one small loaf would use.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven is 300-325F. Given the sugar and butter, hold to 325F and expect 50-60 minutes for a loaf-shaped cake; the centre should read about 190F.
- Working the butter inThe dough will tear and look broken as the fat and sugar go in. Keep working it, by hand or with a dough hook, until it comes back together smooth and glossy before the raisins go in.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that seeds were added. Modern seedless raisins are the direct replacement; plumping them briefly in warm water keeps them from drawing moisture out of the crumb.
- SpicingNo quantities are given. About a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg suits this amount of dough.
- Pan and yieldA greased 9-inch square pan or a large loaf tin. It gives eight to ten servings and, being a bread at heart, is best the day it is baked or toasted thereafter.
- Filed oddlyThe stray "bas" at the end is a printing artifact.
Bread-dough cakes are one of the oldest shortcuts in European home baking: rather than keep a separate leaven for sweets, the cook pinched off a piece of the week's bread dough and enriched it with butter, sugar, eggs and dried fruit. In American cookbooks "Dutch" in such titles very often stands for Deutsch, the German-speaking settlers of Pennsylvania and the Midwest whose butterkuchen and streusel-topped yeast cakes travelled under that name, though the word was applied loosely enough that it is not always a reliable clue to origin.