Home › Cakes › Roosevelt Spice Cake
Roosevelt Spice Cake
1 cup butter. 2 cups sugar. 1 cup milk. 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 4 eggs. 4 cups flour. 4 teaspoons baking powder. 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. Bake in loaf or two layers.
A bare ingredient list in the style of the period, which assumed the cook knew the creaming method and could judge her own oven. The proportions are a standard 1-2-3-4 butter cake with spice added, so it behaves predictably once the missing steps are filled in.
- The method the list omitsCream the butter and sugar until pale and light, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk in three or four additions. Mixing everything at once gives a coarse, tunnelled crumb.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a cake of this type: two 9-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes, a single loaf in a 9x5-inch pan 55 to 65 minutes, tested with a skewer at the centre.
- Butter and sugar quantitiesA cup of butter is 8 oz, two sticks, and it should be soft enough to take an impression but not melted. Two cups of granulated sugar is 14 oz. No salt appears in the list; whether the butter was salted is not stated.
- Add saltThere is none in the original. A half teaspoon of fine salt beaten into the butter improves the spice enormously; without it the cake reads flat and slightly floury.
- Flour measurementFour cups spooned and levelled is roughly 17 to 18 oz of modern all-purpose flour. Period flour was often softer and lower in protein, so scoop lightly rather than packing the cup, and use all-purpose rather than bread flour.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to four cups of flour works out at a teaspoon per cup, in line with normal practice for a heavy butter-and-egg batter of this size. Sift it through the flour twice so it is evenly distributed; pockets of it leave bitter spots.
- SpicingOne teaspoon cinnamon and half a teaspoon nutmeg in a cake this large is restrained. Grate the nutmeg fresh, and if you want the cake to taste as spiced as its name suggests, double both and add a quarter teaspoon of cloves.
- Yield and finishingEnough batter for one large loaf or two 9-inch layers, serving 10 to 12. As layers it wants a plain boiled or butter icing; as a loaf it is better left bare or brushed with a thin lemon glaze.
Mrs. Wilson's book appeared in 1920, and Theodore Roosevelt died in January 1919. Cakes and cookies bearing his name appear in American cookery of the period, much as Lady Baltimore and Robert E. Lee cakes had carried earlier names. The formula is close to the old 1-2-3-4 cake -- one cup butter, two sugar, three flour, four eggs -- though this version takes four cups of flour; it was a ratio generations of cooks memorised rather than a recipe, which is why the instructions here amount to five words. The spice is what distinguishes it from a plain cake, and cinnamon with nutmeg was a common and inexpensive pairing; wartime sugar and butter economies had only recently lapsed, so a cake using a full cup of each may have read as slightly celebratory in 1920.