Home › Cakes › Crisco Spice Cake
Crisco Spice Cake
5 whole eggs. 2 cups sugar. 3 1/2 cups flour. 4 level teaspoons baking powder. 1 cup sweet milk. 1 tablespoon cinnamon. 2 tablespoons cocoa. 1 teaspoon nutmeg. 1 cup of strawberry or blackberry jam. 3/4 cup of crisco. 1/2 cup cordial.
Dissolve spices in cordial. Mix as any other cake, adding jam last.
— Mrs. Sanford Duncan'S Angel Cake
12 eggs beaten slowly but not too stiff and dry. 1 1/2 cups sugar. 1 cup flour after sifting several times. 1 teaspoon cream tartar. Pinch of salt.
A creamed shortening cake of the 1910s, spiced, jam-enriched and given no oven temperature or baking time at all — the original assumes a cook who knows what a cake looks like when it is done. Note also that a second, unrelated recipe (an angel cake) has run on at the end of the page and breaks off unfinished.
- Lead with the jamAdding the jam last is the one instruction that matters; it goes in after the batter is mixed, so it is not beaten in from the start. A seedless jam will give a smoother crumb than a seeded blackberry, though the recipe allows either.
- CriscoA hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold by Procter & Gamble from 1911, which is why it appears by brand name. Modern Crisco has been reformulated and is much lower in trans fats, so it creams a little differently, though it behaves much the same in a cake. Butter can be substituted, roughly cup for cup, for better flavour and a slightly denser crumb.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from sour or buttermilk, which was the common alternative in a period kitchen and would have required soda rather than baking powder.
- CordialHere a sweet fruit liqueur or fruit syrup — fruit cordials of this kind were commonly made at home — not a modern squash concentrate. Half a cup is a substantial amount of liquid; if you use a syrup rather than a spirit, the batter will be sweeter. Steeping the spices in it first, as instructed, draws out the cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Oven and timingNone is given. A modern working suggestion: 350F, with two 9-inch layers taking roughly 30-35 minutes and a single tube or loaf pan 50-60 minutes, tested with a skewer.
- "Mix as any other cake"The creaming method: beat the Crisco with the sugar, add the eggs one at a time, then alternate the sifted flour, baking powder and cocoa with the milk and spiced cordial. Jam goes in at the very end.
- YieldThis is a large cake — five eggs and three and a half cups of flour. Expect enough batter for two 9-inch layers, or a 10-inch tube pan, serving a dozen or more.
- The angel cake fragmentThe trailing Mrs. Sanford Duncan recipe lists ingredients only and stops before any method. Twelve egg whites (not whole eggs, despite the wording), sugar, sifted flour, cream of tartar and salt is a standard angel food formula, but do not attempt it from this page — find a complete recipe.
Mrs. Wilson's book sits in a period shaped by commercial sponsorship of recipes: Procter & Gamble launched Crisco in 1911 and promoted it hard through recipe pamphlets and endorsed cookbooks, which is why the shortening appears by brand name in the title of a spice cake. Spice cakes enriched with jam were an American household staple long before that — the jam supplies moisture, acidity and colour, and was presumably also a way of using up preserves as the season turned. The half cup of cordial is the more revealing detail: fruit cordials were made at home from summer berries and kept in the cellar, and using one as a cake liquid rather than water is a thrifty, pre-industrial habit sitting inside a thoroughly modern recipe. The stray angel cake attributed to Mrs. Sanford Duncan reflects the other half of the period's cake economy — a recipe that consumes a dozen egg whites may well have had a companion nearby using the yolks.