Spice Cakes
1/2 cup shortening 1 cup brown sugar 1 egg 1 3/4 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon cloves 1/2 cup milk 1 cup raisins Cream shortening, add sugar and well beaten egg; add flour, baking powder and spices which have been sifted together; mix well; add milk; add raisins which have been cut in pieces and dredged with some of the measured flour; mix. Bake in small greased tins in moderate oven about 25 to 30 minutes.
A plain creamed-butter batter baked as small cakes. Nothing here is obsolete, but the leavening, the pan and the oven all need translating.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as around 350°F. The recipe gives 25 to 30 minutes; start testing with a skewer toward the earlier end.
- Small greased tinsA standard 12-cup muffin pan, filled about two-thirds. The batter is stiff enough to spoon rather than pour, and it makes 12 to 15 cakes depending on how generously you fill.
- ShorteningIn a Royal book of this period this would mean lard or a vegetable shortening such as Crisco. Butter gives better flavour and works without adjustment; cream it until genuinely pale.
- Three teaspoons of baking powderThat is heavy for 1¾ cups of flour by modern standards, and this is a baking powder company's book. Two to 2½ teaspoons of modern double-acting powder should give an adequate rise.
- No saltThe original omits it, as many recipes of the period did. A quarter teaspoon sifted in with the flour and spices sharpens both the brown sugar and the spices.
- Cutting the raisinsRaisins of the period were often seeded and large, and cutting them was common. Modern seedless raisins can go in whole; keep the flour dredging, which was traditionally held to stop fruit settling to the bottom.
- Brown sugarLight brown is likely closer to the period product than dark muscovado, which would dominate the nutmeg and cloves.
This comes from one of the branded cookbooks that baking powder manufacturers distributed widely in the early twentieth century — the recipes are sound domestic baking, but the ingredient list typically names the brand, and the leavening tends to be generous. Spice cakes of this type are usually traced to the older English spice and currant cakes, simplified for chemical leavening: no yeast, no long beating, no separated eggs, just cream-add-sift-bake. Cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves are often said to have been the spices an American pantry was most likely to hold, cheap and shelf-stable by this date, and raisins were the standard fruit for a cake meant to be everyday rather than festive. Baked in "small tins" rather than one loaf, these are essentially unfrosted cupcakes for a lunch pail or a tea tray.