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Layer Cake with Coffee Filling and Frosting
One cup sugar, 3 tbsp. butter beaten to a cream, 2 eggs beaten light, 1 cup milk, 2 cups flour with 1½ tsp. Royal baking powder sifted with flour, 1 tsp. vanilla. Bake in two or three layers. Coffee filling: 3/4 cup strong coffee, 1/2 cup milk, heat until boiling, then stir in 2 tbsp. flour, 3/4 cup sugar, pinch salt, well beaten egg; mixed together. Cook in double-boiler, stirring until it thickens. Let cool and spread between layers. Coffee frosting: 1 heaping cup confectioner's sugar, 1 tsp. butter, 3 tsp. cocoa; mix with hot coffee.
— Mrs. C. W. Illingworth
A plain two-egg butter cake with a coffee pastry-cream filling and a cocoa-coffee glaze. The batter method is left entirely to the cook's judgment, and the frosting has no liquid measure at all.
- The filling is the hingeIt is a flour-and-egg pastry cream, and it must be cooked in the double boiler until it visibly thickens and loses any raw-flour taste — several minutes past the first sign of thickening. Undercooked, it will slump out from between the layers as the cake sits.
- Read the baking powder as 1 1/2 tspThe "11/2 tsp." is a typesetter's fraction. Royal was a cream-of-tartar brand in this period; modern double-acting powder works at the same measure.
- Oven and time, since none is given350F. Two 8-inch layers take 25-30 minutes, three thinner layers 18-22. A tester should come out clean and the edges just pull from the pan.
- Mixing orderCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the sifted flour and milk alternately in two or three additions, vanilla last. Stop as soon as the flour disappears.
- Only 3 tablespoons of butterThis is a lean batter by modern standards. Low-fat cakes tend to stale faster, so it is best filled and eaten within a day of baking.
- Frosting consistencyThe recipe gives no liquid measure. Sift the confectioner's sugar with the cocoa, work in the softened butter, then add hot strong coffee a little at a time until it is barely pourable; it goes from stiff to runny very quickly, so add the last of it drop by drop.
- Cool both components fullyFilling spread warm will thin and soak the crumb, and glaze poured over a warm cake will run off the sides. Cool the layers completely and chill the filling before assembling.
- YieldNo pan size is given; assuming 8-inch tins, one layer cake serving 8 to 10. Because the filling is an egg custard, keep leftovers refrigerated.
Philathea cook books were produced by Philathea classes — the young women's Bible-study groups that spread through Baptist and other Protestant Sunday schools in the early twentieth century, paired with the Baraca classes for young men — and were sold to raise money for the class or the church. That accounts for the form of this page: a signed contribution from a member, written for someone who already knows how to make a layer cake and needs only the proportions. The naming of Royal baking powder is characteristic of the era, when brand-name leaveners were widely advertised and community cook books frequently specified one. Coffee appears here as a flavoring rather than a beverage, and it is used where its strength is not baked away: in the filling and the frosting.