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Fruit Filling (Cup fruit jelly cups water cup)
1/2 cup fruit jelly 1 1/2 cups water 1/2 cup raisins 1/4 lb. chopped figs 1/2 cup chopped blanched almonds or walnuts 2 tablespoons sugar juice of 1/2 lemon 2 tablespoons corn starch Cook jelly with water; add fruit, almonds, sugar and lemon juice; thicken with corn starch, which has been mixed with a little cold water. Cook until thick, remove from fire, cool and spread between layers of cake.
A cooked fruit-and-nut filling for a layer cake, thickened with cornstarch rather than eggs. It is straightforward, but the proportions repay attention: the mixture must be cooked thick enough to hold between layers without weeping.
- The hinge: cook the starch outOnce the slurry goes in, keep the pan at a steady bubble for two to three minutes, stirring. Cornstarch reaches full thickening power at the boil, and underboiled starch tastes chalky and slackens as it cools.
- Which jelly"Fruit jelly" in a book of this period means a clear home-put-up jelly — currant, grape, apple, quince. Currant would be a likely choice, and its acidity balances the figs. A modern jarred jelly works; a low-sugar or pectin-heavy spread will behave differently and may set stiff.
- Make the slurry coldTwo tablespoons cornstarch into two to three tablespoons cold water, mixed smooth, then stirred into the hot liquid. Dumping dry starch into the pan gives lumps that will not cook out.
- The figsA quarter pound is about 4 oz; the count varies with size, roughly half a dozen large figs or up to a dozen small ones. Cut off the hard stem nubs before chopping; they stay woody no matter how long the filling cooks.
- Blanched almondsBlanching means skinned — cover shelled almonds with boiling water for a minute and the skins slip off. Bought slivered or blanched almonds save the step. Walnuts, the stated alternative, need no such treatment.
- Cool it fullySpread warm, the filling soaks into the crumb and the top layer slides. Cool to room temperature, when it will be thick enough to mound on a spoon.
- YieldNearer three cups, enough to fill a two- or three-layer 8- or 9-inch cake generously. It will keep covered in the refrigerator for a few days and stiffens as it chills; stir before spreading.
Cooked fruit fillings of this kind belong to the era when a layer cake was assembled from plain butter cake and given its character by what went between the layers — fig, raisin, lemon, coconut and caramel fillings are often found grouped together in American cookbooks of the period. The distinguishing feature here is the jelly base: rather than stewing dried fruit from scratch, the cook draws on the jelly cupboard that any household putting up summer fruit would have had, turning a half cup of currant or grape jelly into the sugar, acid and flavor of the whole filling. The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, one of the many corporate cookbooks distributed cheaply or free to promote a branded leavener; recipes like this one, which uses no baking powder at all, filled out the volume and made it useful enough to keep on the shelf beside the tin.