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Nut Cake
1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar Yolks of 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 2 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 cup chopped nuts Whites of 2 eggs Chop the nutmeats and sprinkle with flour. Cream the butter, sugar and yolks; add the milk, then the flour in which the baking powder has been sifted; then the nut-meats and, last, the wellwhipped whites. Bake in layers or in round cake dish. Remove and ice with caramel icing and nut-meats. Bake with two radiators.
A plain butter cake written for a fireless cooker, where heat came from soapstone or cast-iron discs heated on the range and packed into an insulated box. In a conventional oven it behaves like any two-egg layer cake.
- "Bake with two radiators"The radiators are the round metal or soapstone plates that came with a fireless cooker, heated on the stove top and set above and below the pan inside the insulated compartment. Two was a common charge for baking; there is no dial, so no temperature is given. In a modern oven, 350F is a reasonable equivalent.
- Timing, which the original omitsTwo 8-inch layers take about 25 minutes at 350F; a single deep round dish takes 35 to 45. Test with a skewer in the centre rather than by clock, since the batter is heavy with nuts.
- Flouring the nutsTossing the chopped nutmeats in a little of the measured flour keeps them suspended instead of sinking into a layer at the bottom. Take that flour from the two cups rather than adding extra.
- Folding the whitesThe whites are the only lift beyond the baking powder in a batter this rich, so fold them in with a spatula in two additions and stop while a few streaks remain. Beating them in will give you a tight, close crumb.
- NutsUnspecified, as was common in American baking of this period; walnuts and hickory nuts were among the nuts likely to be meant. Pecans or walnuts, chopped medium and lightly toasted, suit the caramel icing best.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to two cups of flour is generous by current standards. Two teaspoons of modern double-acting powder is usually enough and many will prefer the flavour.
- Caramel icingNo formula is given here; presumably one appears elsewhere in the book. Any cooked caramel icing works; spread it while still warm and workable, then press nutmeats onto the top before it sets.
- YieldTwo 8-inch layers, serving 8 to 10.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American households between roughly 1905 and the 1920s, promoted as a fuel-saving alternative to keeping a coal or wood range hot all afternoon. The cooker was an insulated wooden or metal chest packed with any of several insulating materials, into which soapstone or iron discs, heated on the stove, radiated stored heat for hours; manufacturers and community cookbooks alike published sections like this one showing that even cakes could be managed. Baking is often said to have been the fireless cooker's weakest claim, since a cake wants steady declining heat and a browned top, and the recipes betray the compromise by giving radiator counts instead of temperatures. The cake itself is unremarkable and all the better for it: a standard creamed butter layer cake of the sort that filled the middle pages of every American cookbook of the era, here pressed into service as proof that the appliance worked.</p>