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Simple Layer Cake
1 1/3 cups sugar. 2/3 cup butter. 2 eggs. 2/3 cup milk 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon vanilla Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; add the eggs; then the flour and milk alternately and the baking powder and flavoring last. Bake in layers and fill with chocolate or other filling.
A plain creamed-butter layer cake of the type that filled American cookbooks from the 1880s onward, meant to be split into rounds and stacked with whatever filling was at hand.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe specifies none. Cakes of this kind are usually baked at 350-375F; for two 8-inch rounds, start checking at about 20 minutes.
- Pans"Bake in layers" leaves the size open; two 8-inch or 9-inch round tins, greased and floured or lined with parchment, suit the quantity. The batter from 2 cups flour makes two good layers, or three thinner ones if you prefer.
- The flourMuch household flour of this period was softer than modern all-purpose, though it varied by region. For a finer crumb use cake flour, or replace 2 tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch.
- Baking powder lastAdding the baking powder after the liquid, as written, is the old practice and it works, but it must be distributed quickly and evenly or the rise will be patchy. Sifting it with the flour instead is more reliable and changes nothing else.
- Working ratioThe butter, sugar and egg quantities are missing from the page as printed here; the text only tells us there was more than one egg. A standard butter layer cake on 2 cups flour and 2/3 cup milk would take roughly 1/2 cup butter, 1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar and 2 eggs, which is a serviceable guide for the creamed base.
- Creaming"Beat to a cream" means beating butter and sugar until pale and visibly lightened, three to four minutes with a mixer. Along with the eggs beaten in after, this is the cake's only aeration besides the baking powder.
- AlternatingAdd flour and milk in three and two additions respectively, beginning and ending with flour, and stop mixing as soon as the last streak disappears.
- Filling and yieldTwo layers give 8 to 10 slices. A chocolate filling of this date would most likely have been a cooked, spreadable chocolate mixture; lemon curd, jam or boiled icing all suit the same cake.
The "simple layer cake" is the plain end of a family that dominated American baking once chemical leavening became cheap and dependable: one creamed butter-and-sugar base, baked thin, then varied endlessly by what went between the layers, so a single memorized formula could produce a chocolate cake one week and a jam cake the next. Recipes of the period often instructed that baking powder go in last, a habit generally traced to distrust of early leaveners losing strength if they sat in the batter.