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Foundation or Plain Cake
1/3 cup butter or shortening 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 3/4 cup flour 2 teaspoons baking-powder 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter or butter substitute, add sugar and continue creaming. Add well-beaten eggs. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add alternately with the milk. Add flavoring. Bake in layers at 380 degrees for twenty minutes. Any good filling and frosting may be used.
The batter may be varied by adding nuts, coconut, spices, etc., and may be baked as a loaf cake.
A standard creamed butter cake of the 1920s, written as a base formula rather than a finished dessert. The proportions are sound and translate directly to a modern kitchen with only a note or two on pans and heat.
- Oven setting380F reflects the newly numbered dials of the period. Set a modern oven to 375F; layers will take 18 to 22 minutes and are done when the centre springs back and the edges have just pulled from the pan.
- Pan sizeNo pan is specified. This quantity fills two 8-inch round layers comfortably; two 9-inch pans give thinner layers that bake in about 16 minutes.
- As a loafBaked in a single 8x4 or 9x5 loaf pan, drop the oven to 350F and allow 45 to 55 minutes. The deeper batter needs the gentler heat or the crust sets before the centre.
- "Butter substitute"In 1929 this meant oleomargarine or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Butter gives the better flavour; shortening gives a slightly higher, softer crumb. Either should be at cool room temperature, not melted.
- Creaming is the leaveningCreaming matters -- the 2 teaspoons of baking powder do the chemical lifting, but the air worked into the fat and sugar contributes to the crumb as well. Beat the fat and sugar until visibly pale and fluffy, three to five minutes with a mixer, before the eggs go in.
- Alternating dry and liquidBegin and end with the flour mixture, in three additions of dry to two of milk, mixing only until each disappears. Overworking after the milk goes in toughens the crumb.
- FlourThe recipe says only "flour." Period soft-wheat flours may have been weaker than today's all-purpose, so cake flour is a safe choice; with all-purpose, replacing two tablespoons per cup with cornstarch gives a finer texture.
- YieldTwo 8-inch layers, filled and frosted, serve ten to twelve.