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Cookies and Small Cakes Cocoa Drop Cakes
4 tablespoons shortening 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 1 3/4 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 cup cocoa 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Cream shortening; add sugar and well-beaten egg; beat well and add milk slowly; sift flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa into mixture; stir until smooth; add vanilla. Put one tablespoon of batter into each greased muffin tin and bake in moderate oven about 20 minutes. Cover with boiled icing. Or bake in shallow pan; cool, and before removing cut across diagonally to make diamond-shaped pieces; cover with icing.
These make very attractive cakes to serve at afternoon tea or luncheon.
A straightforward chocolate cupcake batter from a baking-powder promotional book. Two things need attention: the oven temperature is unstated by number, and the leavening is set for a powder weaker than what is on shelves now.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350-375F. At that heat tablespoon-sized cakes may well be done before the stated 20 minutes, so watch them.
- Portion and timingOne tablespoon of batter in a standard muffin cup gives a very shallow cake that sets in about 12 to 15 minutes. The 20 minutes suits either a fuller cup or a slower stove; test with a pick rather than the clock.
- Baking powderRoyal was a single-acting cream-of-tartar powder. Three teaspoons to 1 3/4 cups flour is on the generous side by modern practice; some cooks find 2 teaspoons of double-acting powder gives ample lift with less chance of an off taste.
- ShorteningFour tablespoons is a quarter cup. The period product was lard or a vegetable shortening; butter works and tastes better, though the cake will be slightly firmer when cold.
- CocoaUnsweetened cocoa powder, not a sweetened drinking mix. American cocoa of the period was generally natural rather than Dutch-processed. Sift it in with the flour as directed to avoid lumps.
- Sifting into the batterThe dry ingredients are sifted into the wet mixture, which is the usual order in books of this date. Stir only until smooth.
- Boiled icingThe standard icing of the period: sugar syrup cooked to the soft-ball stage, about 238-240F, beaten into stiff egg whites. The hot syrup partly sets the whites but does not reliably bring them to a safe temperature. A seven-minute frosting made over a double boiler gives a similar result.
- Sheet pan optionAn 8-inch square pan suits this quantity; bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cut the diamonds while the cake is still in the pan, as the instruction says, then lift them out.
- YieldThe recipe states none. At a literal tablespoon of batter apiece this quantity would run to three dozen or more; the sheet-pan version depends on how the diamonds are cut.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like every manufacturer's cookbook of its era it exists to sell the tin named in the ingredient list -- hence the brand appearing in the measurements themselves. Royal's powder was based on cream of tartar rather than the cheaper alum-phosphate blends of its competitors, a distinction the company pressed hard in advertising through the early twentieth century. Cocoa in a home cake recipe is a marker of the period too: once the mass-market cocoa powders of the 1890s and 1900s brought the price down, chocolate moved out of the confectioner's shop and into everyday baking. The closing line about afternoon tea and luncheon points at the intended reader, a middle-class housekeeper expected to produce something small, dark and iced for guests without much fuss.