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Maple-Sugar Cake
1/2 cup butter or shortening 1 1/4 cups maple sugar 6 tablespoons corn-starch 1 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup milk 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla 4 egg-whites Cream the butter or shortening and sugar. Sift the corn-starch and flour together several times and add to the first mixture, alternately with the milk. Add the vanilla, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg-whites. Bake in a greased loaf-cake tin in a moderate oven (380 degrees F.) for forty-five minutes. Cover with any desired icing.
A white loaf cake sweetened entirely with maple sugar, from a period when cornstarch was the standard way to soften ordinary flour into something like cake flour. It rises on beaten egg white alone, so the folding is the whole job.
- The hinge: the egg whitesNo chemical leavening appears in the list, so all the lift comes from the four whites. Beat them to firm peaks that still look glossy rather than dry and crumbly, and fold in three additions with a light hand; deflate them and the loaf bakes dense.
- Maple sugarThis means granulated maple sugar, not maple syrup and not maple-flavoured cane sugar. If yours has come as a hard cake or block, grate or grind it and sift before measuring, or it will refuse to cream into the butter. 1 1/4 cups will weigh somewhere in the region of 8 oz, depending on how fine the grain is.
- OvenThe book gives 380F, and it can be taken literally; 375F on a standard modern oven is close enough. Check at 40 minutes.
- The tinA "loaf-cake tin" here is a straight-sided loaf pan; a modern 9 by 5 inch pan is a fair substitute. The recipe says to grease it; lining the base with parchment does no harm.
- Flour and cornstarchThe 6 tablespoons of cornstarch sifted with 1 1/2 cups flour is a homemade cake flour. Sift them together several times as directed, or the starch stays in pockets and streaks the crumb.
- ShorteningButter gives better flavour against the maple. If using modern vegetable shortening, keep it cool enough to hold its shape while creaming.
- Yield and icingOne loaf, about 10 slices. A maple or brown-sugar boiled icing suits it; a plain confectioners' sugar glaze thinned with milk is the simplest option.