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Mock Angel Cake
1 cup sugar 1 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking-powder 1 cup milk 2 egg-whites Put dry ingredients into a bowl, mixing and sifting well. Scald the milk in a double boiler. Stir quickly into the dry ingredients, and take care to have no lumps. Beat the egg-whites until stiff and fold them into the batter. Bake in a loaf pan in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) for forty-five minutes.
An economy cake from the era when a true angel food meant a dozen egg whites. The batter is unusually wet and the hot milk does most of the work, so the order and temperature of the mixing matter more than in an ordinary butter cake.
- Let the batter cool before the whites go inScalded milk stirred into the flour leaves the mixture hot, and whipped whites folded into it may collapse. Stir the batter smooth, then let it stand until barely warm to the touch before folding in the whites.
- Scalding the milk is the pointBring the milk to about 180F, just until it steams and shivers at the edges, then pour it over the dry mix. The hot liquid swells the starch and helps give this butterless cake, made with only two whites, the soft, slightly damp crumb that stands in for angel food.
- Oven350F, as the original states, on a rack in the middle of the oven. No preheating instruction is given; preheat fully, since the baking powder begins working the moment the liquid hits it.
- PanThe recipe says only "a loaf pan." A small one, around 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches, will take this batter, though it will bake fairly thin. Grease and flour it, or line the base with paper. This batter is pourable rather than spoonable, so a tube pan is not needed and will not fill properly.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons in one cup of flour is a heavy dose by modern standards, and baking powder of the period was often single-acting. Current double-acting powder will lift more; the cake may dome and crack, which is not a fault.
- Judging when it is doneForty-five minutes is a reasonable estimate, but the wet batter can read underdone by touch. A skewer in the centre should come out clean and the loaf should have pulled slightly from the sides.
- Yield and keepingOne small loaf, eight to ten thin slices. With no butter it stales fast; eat it the day it is made, or serve slices with fruit or a boiled icing.