Home › Cake › Bell Chocolate Cake
Bell Chocolate Cake
1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk, 1/8 lb. butter, 1 egg, 1¼ cups of flour (measure before sifting), 1 level tsp. soda, 2 squares chocolate or 3 tbsp. cocoa, 1 tsp. vanilla, pinch salt. Dissolve butter and cocoa together, add egg, sugar, part of milk, flour, beat smooth, add rest of milk. No cream of tartar necessary.
— A Friend
A one-egg cocoa cake of the sort that filled church cookbooks, built by the melting method rather than by creaming. The whole thing hinges on the acid balance, which is where a modern pantry will trip you up.
- Use natural cocoa, not Dutch-processThe single teaspoon of soda has little to react with except the cocoa, and natural (non-alkalized) cocoa is mildly acidic, around pH 5. Dutch-process cocoa is alkalized and is likely to leave the cake flat and soapy-tasting. If you use the two squares of chocolate instead, that means 2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate.
- "1/8 lb. butter"Two ounces, which is 4 tablespoons or half a stick. Salted or unsalted both work; the recipe already calls for a pinch of salt.
- Sweet milk and the soda questionCakes of this type were often written for sour milk or buttermilk, and the note "no cream of tartar necessary" may mean the author saw no need for added acid beyond the cocoa. Buttermilk in place of the sweet milk will give the soda more to work with.
- "Dissolve butter and cocoa together"Melt the butter and stir the cocoa into it over low heat until smooth, then let it cool to lukewarm before the egg goes in, or the egg will scramble. The sugar, flour and remaining milk go in cold.
- OvenNo temperature is given, and the recipe mentions no oven at all. 350F is a reasonable modern choice for a cake of this size and richness.
- Pan and batterA cup of milk against 1 1/4 cups flour makes a thin, pourable batter. One greased 8-inch round or an 8x4 loaf pan is the practical choice; the round will take about 25 to 30 minutes, the loaf 35 to 40, until a tester comes out clean.
- YieldA single modest layer, roughly eight small servings. It may have been split and filled, or simply cut in squares and eaten plain with a boiled or fudge icing.
The Philathea classes were the young women's counterpart to the Baraca movement of adult Bible classes, generally traced to Syracuse, New York in the 1890s, and by the early twentieth century their local chapters were raising money the way many American church societies did: by collecting members' recipes and selling the book. That explains both the anonymous attribution here and the shape of the recipe. "A Friend" assumed a reader who already knew what pan to use and how long a one-egg cake takes. Cocoa itself was the modernizing ingredient in this period; tinned breakfast cocoa was cheap and shelf-stable in a way that blocks of baking chocolate were not, and the alternative given in the ingredient list, "2 squares chocolate or 3 tbsp. cocoa," suggests a moment when a household might have had either. The name is most likely a contributor's surname rather than any description of the cake.