Golden Cake
1/4 cup butter or shortening 1/2 cup sugar 3 egg-yolks 1 cup flour 2 teaspoons baking-powder 1/4 cup milk 1 teaspoon orange extract Cream the butter or shortening and add the sugar gradually. Beat the yolks until thick and lemon-colored. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add to the first mixture alternately with the milk. Flavor. Bake as loaf or layer cake, in a moderate oven (380 degrees F.) for forty-five minutes.
A small one-bowl butter cake built on egg yolks alone, of the kind that used up the yolks left from a white cake. The batter fills a single 8-inch layer or one small loaf pan.
- Add the yolks after the sugarBeat the yolks until thick and pale, then beat them into the creamed butter and sugar before the flour and milk go in. The written method leaves the point at which they join the batter unstated.
- Oven temperature380F as given is accurate for a loaf and needs no adjustment; most modern ovens are set at 350F for cakes of this size, which will simply take a little longer.
- Baking time is for the loafForty-five minutes suits a small loaf. A single 8-inch layer is done in 20 to 25 minutes, and two thin layers in about 18. Test with a skewer rather than trusting the clock.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to one cup of flour is a strong lift by current standards, though such proportions are common in cookbooks of this period. With modern double-acting powder, about 1 1/2 teaspoons is likely to give a finer crumb and less aftertaste.
- Orange extractA full teaspoon of extract in a cake this small is assertive. Grated zest from half an orange, creamed with the sugar, gives the same flavor with more roundness.
- Pan preparationGrease and flour the pan, or line the loaf with parchment. The batter is thick and modest in fat, so it can stick.
- YieldAbout six servings from a loaf, or one thin 8-inch layer. Double the quantities for a two-layer cake.
Golden cake and silver cake were a matched pair in American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward: one made with yolks, the other with whites, so that a cook who had beaten whites for angel food or white mountain cake had a use for what remained. Egg-yolk cakes are deep yellow and often slightly denser than white ones, and they were frequently flavored with lemon or orange while the white cake took almond or vanilla. The New Delineator Recipes came from the test kitchen behind The Delineator, a Butterick magazine.