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Honey Drop Cakes
1/3 cup shortening 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup honey 1 egg 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice 1 1/2 cups flour 1 1/2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder Cream shortening and add sugar slowly; add honey, beaten egg yolk and lemon juice; mix well and add flour and baking powder which have been sifted together; fold in beaten white of egg. Put into greased individual tins or drop from tip of spoon on greased baking sheet and bake in hot oven 10 to 15 minutes.
A small, soft honey batter leavened with baking powder and a folded egg white. It comes together in a few minutes; the only real difficulty is the oven, since honey browns well before a plain sugar batter would.
- "Hot oven"In books of this period the term generally covers something in the range of 400-450F, but honey scorches. Bake at around 400F and check at 10 minutes; the cakes are done when the edges are set and the tops spring back.
- ShorteningIn books of this period the word covers any solid fat: butter, lard, or a vegetable shortening. Modern vegetable shortening works as written; softened butter gives more flavour and slightly more spread.
- Baking powder quantity1 1/2 teaspoons to 1 1/2 cups flour is about a teaspoon per cup, an ordinary proportion, and the same quantity of modern powder works here. No soda is called for.
- Individual tinsThese are gem or muffin pans, smaller than today's standard cups. A modern 12-cup muffin tin filled about half full works; grease well, as honey batters stick.
- ConsistencyThe batter is soft rather than stiff. Dropped on a sheet it will spread into thin, chewy rounds; baked in tins it stays domed and cakier. Chilling the batter 20 minutes gives neater drops.
- The eggYolk goes in with the honey, white is whipped and folded last. Fold it in gently after the flour rather than stirring it through, so the air is not knocked out.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 small cakes, depending on spoon size. They keep noticeably better than sugar cakes because honey holds moisture; store airtight and they stay soft for several days.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which for decades gave away recipe pamphlets in which its own product was named by brand in every ingredient list. Honey cakes of this kind appeared with particular frequency in American cookbooks around and after the First World War, when sugar was conserved and households were encouraged to substitute honey, molasses and corn syrup where they could, though there is nothing in this recipe itself to date it to that moment; here honey carries twice the sweetening load of the sugar. The lemon juice is doing more than flavouring, cutting the slightly cloying quality that honey gives baked goods.