Chocolate Cake
3 squares grated unsweetened chocolate 2 tablespoons sugar 1 1/2 tablespoons milk 4 tablespoons butter or other shortening 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 2/3 cup milk 1 1/3 cups flour 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/8 teaspoon salt Cook slowly together until smooth chocolate, 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons milk. Cream butter; add sugar and beat well. Add yolks of eggs and beat again. Stir in chocolate mixture and then add alternately the milk and flour with which have been sifted the baking powder and salt. Fold in carefully the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Bake in greased loaf pan in moderate oven 50 to 60 minutes. If desired, cover with white or chocolate icing.
A plain one-bowl-era chocolate loaf from a baking powder company's promotional book. Nothing here is unsafe; the only real translations are the chocolate, the oven, and the pan.
- Chocolate squaresA "square" of unsweetened chocolate is one ounce, so this calls for 3 oz total. Chopped chocolate works as well as grated; grating would have helped the hard block chocolate melt evenly over direct low heat.
- The chocolate pasteCooking the chocolate with 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons milk gives a thick, glossy paste rather than plain melted chocolate. Use very low heat or a bowl over simmering water; 3 oz of chocolate with barely 2 tablespoons of liquid will scorch quickly if hurried.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. In a deep loaf pan the full 50 to 60 minutes is realistic, but start testing at 40 minutes with a skewer in the centre.
- Pan sizeThe recipe says only "loaf pan"; a 9x5-inch or the smaller 8x4-inch tin will both take this batter. Grease it and, unlike the original, line the base with parchment. An 8-inch square pan also works and will bake faster, so check early.
- "Butter or other shortening"4 tablespoons is half a stick, which is a lean amount of fat by modern standards, so expect a firmer crumb than a modern chocolate cake. Butter gives much the better flavour.
- Egg handlingSeparate the eggs cold, then let the whites come to room temperature before whipping. The folded whites are the only lightening beyond the baking powder, so fold in thirds and stop while streaks are barely gone.
- Baking powder2 teaspoons to 1 1/3 cups flour is generous but correct for the period's single-acting powders. Modern double-acting powder in that quantity can leave a faint metallic edge; 1 1/2 teaspoons is enough if you find that.
- YieldOne loaf, about 10 slices. The suggested white or chocolate icing is not optional in spirit — unfrosted, this reads as a rather austere cake.
Royal Baking Powder issued cookbooks for decades as advertising, and their recipes are written to demonstrate that chemical leavening could stand in for the beaten-egg and yeast methods older cooks trusted; the brand name appears in the ingredient list of nearly every formula, which is the whole reason the book exists. This chocolate loaf sits at the point where chocolate cake had become an ordinary weekday cake rather than a luxury: unsweetened block chocolate was cheap and widely sold in one-ounce squares by the early twentieth century. The preliminary step of cooking chocolate with a little sugar and milk into a paste is a common touch in American cake books of the era, generally explained as a way to keep the chocolate from streaking or seizing in the batter.