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Strawberry Jam Cake
3 eggs. 3/4 cup butter. 3/4 cup jam. 1-3 cup buttermilk. 2 1/2 cups flour. 1 teaspoon soda. 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
Cream the butter and half of sugar. Color pink with color paste. Beat yolks light with the other half cup sugar; add to butter and sugar. Put soda in milk; add with a little flour, and then the whites and rest of flour, then cinnamon. Lastly fold in the jam. Bake in layers or one sheet. Cover with white or green icing and mark in squares. Put a fresh strawberry on each square if in season.
A jam-enriched butter cake in the old Southern manner, leavened with soda against buttermilk and the acid of the preserves. The written ingredient list is incomplete, so read the method carefully before you begin.
- The missing sugarNo sugar appears in the ingredient list, yet the method calls for creaming half of it with the butter and beating the other half cup with the yolks. Read as a full cup total, split in halves, which is in proportion for 2 1/2 cups of flour and 3/4 cup of butter.
- Buttermilk quantityThe "1-3 cup" is one-third cup. That is a stiff batter by modern standards; the jam supplies the rest of the moisture, so do not thin it further.
- Separated eggsThe yolks go in with their sugar; the whites are added with the flour, and the recipe assumes without saying so that they have been beaten. Treat them gently -- soft peaks, folded rather than stirred -- since they assist the soda in lifting the batter.
- Soda and acidOne teaspoon of soda is a good deal for one-third cup of buttermilk. The jam and the buttermilk together provide the acid; the batter should go into the pan promptly, since the reaction begins in the bowl.
- Fold the jam lastAdding the jam at the end, as directed, leaves it less thoroughly worked into the batter and may show as streaks. Use a thick preserve; a loose or syrupy jam will slacken the batter.
- Color pasteThe pink tint was a period touch. Ordinary gel food coloring does the same job, and the cake is no worse for being left the natural color of the jam.
- Oven and pansThe recipe names no temperature or pan size. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it: figure roughly 25 to 30 minutes for two 8-inch layers, 35 to 40 for a single sheet. Test with a skewer at the center.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen servings as a sheet, marked into squares as directed, or one two-layer cake.
Jam cakes belong to a family of American butter cakes that fold preserves into a spiced batter, long associated with the upland South and with Kentucky in particular, where blackberry jam is often said to be the customary choice. The logic is thrift as much as flavor: a jar of jam past its first season sweetens, moistens and colors a cake at once, and its acidity gives the soda something to work against. Mrs. Wilson published in Philadelphia in the years around the First World War, when she was widely read as a newspaper food columnist urging economy in the household, and a cake built on preserves already in the pantry fits that program. The finishing touch here, icing marked into squares with a fresh berry on each, is a party presentation of its period, meant for cutting at a tea table rather than serving in wedges.