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Coffee Fruit Cake
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup light brown sugar 2 eggs 1/4 cup strong coffee 1/3 cup rich milk or cream 1 3/4 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 lb. raisins 1/8 lb. sliced citron 1/4 lb. figs, cut in strips Cream shortening; add sugar; add yolks of eggs, coffee and milk; sift together flour and baking powder and add slowly; add fruit, which has been slightly floured, and fold in beaten whites of eggs. Bake in greased loaf pan from one to one and one-half hours.
A plain fruited loaf rather than a Christmas cake, leavened with a full tablespoon of baking powder and darkened with coffee. A few of the original's assumptions need translating.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. For a fruited loaf baked one to one and a half hours, 325-350F works in a modern oven; the lower end if your pan is dark metal.
- The baking powderRoyal was a cream-of-tartar (tartrate) powder that reacted quickly in the bowl and needed to reach the oven promptly. Modern double-acting powder is stronger; 2 teaspoons is closer to correct for 1 3/4 cups flour, and 3 teaspoons may give a coarse crumb.
- ShorteningIn this period the word means any solid fat: butter, lard, or hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Butter gives the best flavour here against the coffee and figs.
- Fruit by weight1/2 lb raisins is about 1 1/2 cups, 1/8 lb citron about 1/4 cup, 1/4 lb figs about 3/4 cup once cut. That is roughly 2 1/2 cups of fruit to 1 3/4 cups of flour, so the batter will be very heavily loaded and stiff.
- CitronCandied citron peel, not the fruit and not lemon. It is a seasonal item in most supermarkets; candied orange or lemon peel substitutes without much loss.
- Flouring the fruitToss the fruit in a spoonful taken from the measured flour, not extra, or the loaf tightens.
- Rich milkMeans whole milk or single cream. Whole milk is fine; the fat matters less than it did when milk quality varied by the day.
- Pan and timingA 9x5 inch loaf pan, greased and lined on the base with parchment. Start checking at one hour with a skewer; if the top colours before the centre sets, tent it with foil. Cool in the pan 15 minutes before turning out, as the fruit makes the hot crumb fragile.
- YieldOne loaf, about 12 slices. It cuts better on the second day and keeps a week wrapped.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which spent decades publishing free cookbooks in which leavened recipes generally called for the brand by name -- a form of advertising that appears to have shaped American home baking. Royal's product was a cream-of-tartar powder, and the company campaigned hard against cheaper alum-based rivals, so the generous three teaspoons here may owe something to salesmanship as well as technique. The cake itself belongs to the large family of everyday "fruit cakes" that were nothing like the brandied Christmas article: no aging, no soaking, no icing, just a shortening-based loaf carrying raisins, figs and candied peel, baked to be sliced with afternoon coffee. Coffee as a cake liquid was a thrifty touch, said to be valued for the colour and depth it lent without the cost of spices or spirits.