Fruit Cake
2 lbs. raisins 3/8 lb. citron raisins 2 lbs. currants 1 lb. brown sugar 3/8 lb. 3 eggs 1/2 cup molasses 1 cup milk 4 cups flour 1/2 nutmeg, grated 1/2 teaspoon allspice 4 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/4 lb. butter Cream butter, sugar and eggs, add molasses and milk, and 2 cups of flour. Mix fruit with 1 cup of flour, and add spices and flavorings, lastly add cup of flour well sifted with baking powder. Bake in a slow oven. 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar FRUIT CAKE (LIGHT) 1/2 cup raisins, seeded and chopped fine 4 egg whites 2 cups flour 3 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 cup milk 2 ounces citron, cut fine 1/3 cup walnuts, cut in pieces Mix as snow cake (see page 28), adding the fruits and nuts after the butter and sugar. Use any frosting.
Two cakes are given here, a dark spiced one leavened with molasses and a pale one built on beaten egg whites. Both are advertising recipes for a branded baking powder, so quantities assume a strong double-acting product of the kind still sold today.
- Slow ovenFor the dark cake, a slow oven is usually taken as about 300-325F. The book gives no baking time; test with a skewer at the centre rather than trusting the clock, since molasses cakes brown long before they set.
- The missing quantitiesThe dark cake's list gives no weight for the fruit and no measure of sugar, though the method calls for both. Working from comparable loaves of the period, about 1 cup of sugar and 1 to 1 1/2 lb of mixed raisins, currants and candied peel is the usual range. Treat any figure you settle on as your own judgement, not the book's.
- Butter by the pound1/4 lb. butter is 1/2 cup, or one American stick. The light cake states 1/2 cup outright, so the two cakes carry the same fat.
- Half a nutmegGrating half a whole nutmeg yields roughly 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons. Pre-ground nutmeg loses volatile oil quickly, so use slightly less if that is what you have and add it with the allspice.
- CitronThe candied citron peel called for in the light cake is a specialist item now, sold around the winter holidays or by mail. Candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute; ordinary mixed peel is sweeter and less resinous.
- Flouring the fruitTossing the fruit in a cup of the measured flour is not a flourish. It keeps raisins and citron suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of a fairly slack batter, and that cup is part of the four, not extra.
- Mix as snow cakeThe light cake refers to a method given elsewhere in the book (page 28), which is not reproduced here; snow cake methods generally cream butter and sugar, add milk and sifted dry ingredients alternately, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Fold rather than beat, so the whites are not knocked down.
- Pans and yieldThe book names no tin and no yield. The light cake's two cups of flour suit a 9x5-inch loaf or a 9-inch tube tin; the dark cake's four cups plus its fruit make considerably more. Line the tin with parchment; the dark cake in particular sticks where the molasses catches.
Reliable Recipes was published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, and pages like this one exist to put the brand name into a household's habits: the leavened recipes specify Calumet by name and in level teaspoons, the measuring style associated with Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896. The pairing of a dark and a light fruit cake was conventional in American baking books of the period, the dark one carrying molasses, whole spices and heavy fruit in the older English plum-cake line, the light one relying on beaten whites, citron and walnuts for a cake fit to frost and serve at tea. Neither is presented as a long-keeping, brandy-fed Christmas cake; both are chemically leavened, which is precisely the point a baking powder company wished to make.