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Chocolate Layer Cake
1/3 cup shortening 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 cup milk 1 3/4 cups flour 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Cream shortening; add sugar gradually, beating well; add beaten egg, one-half the milk and mix well; add one-half the flour which has been sifted with salt and baking powder; add remainder of milk, then remainder of flour and flavoring; beat after each addition. Bake in greased layer cake tins in moderate oven 15 to 20 minutes. Put together with
A plain one-egg butter cake baked in two layers; the chocolate arrives in the filling, and the printed text breaks off mid-sentence before telling you what that filling is. Assume a cooked chocolate frosting or a chocolate cream filling of your choosing.
- The baking powder is the thing to fixFour teaspoons for 1 3/4 cups flour is roughly double what a modern double-acting powder needs. Royal was a single-acting cream-of-tartar powder that spent most of its gas in the mixing bowl; with today's product use about 2 to 2 1/4 teaspoons, or the crumb will taste soapy and dome then collapse.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as 350-375F. Layers this thin are done at 15 to 20 minutes, so check at 15 with a skewer.
- ShorteningIn 1920s usage this means any solid fat: lard, a vegetable shortening such as Crisco, or butter. Butter gives the best flavor here since the cake itself is otherwise plain; 1/3 cup is 5 tablespoons plus a teaspoon.
- Layer cake tinsProbably two round pans, 8 or 9 inches; the recipe does not say. Grease and also line the bottoms with parchment, as this batter is lean and one egg gives little structure to lift out cleanly.
- Mixing order mattersMixing order -- the alternating additions are the standard way of adding liquid and flour to a creamed batter, and are usually explained as keeping the mixture from breaking with only one egg to hold it. The recipe says to beat after each addition; keep those beatings brief, since with a single-acting powder much of the lift is spent once the powder is wet.
- The missing fillingThe instruction ends at "Put together with." A period-appropriate finish is a simple chocolate frosting: about 2 cups confectioners' sugar, 2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate, 3 tablespoons hot milk or cream, and a tablespoon of butter, beaten smooth.
- YieldOne two-layer cake, 8 to 10 slices, depending on pan size. It is a modest everyday cake rather than a lofty one.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like other manufacturer cookbooks of its era its recipes are written to sell the tin on the counter — which is one explanation for the generous four teaspoons and the brand name printed into the ingredient list. Royal was a cream-of-tartar powder, single-acting, and its promotional literature spent decades arguing that alum-based competitors were unwholesome; the leavening disputes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were carried on in advertising, pamphlets and state legislatures alike. The cake itself is a standard "one-egg cake," a common formula of American home baking when eggs were counted carefully, made festive only by what goes between the layers. Here the chocolate belongs to the filling and frosting rather than the batter.