Snow Cake
1/4 cup butter. 1/2 cup white sugar. 2 egg whites. 1/2 cup milk. 1⅔ cups flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 88 Cream butter, add gradually sugar and vanilla. Beat egg whites to a stiff froth and add. Sift flour and baking powder together thoroughly and add to the first mixture alternately with the milk. Add egg after flour. Bake in a moderate oven 45 minutes. Cover with boiled frosting. (See page 32.) ALUMET
A white butter cake leavened with egg whites and baking powder, of the type that sold baking powder by the tin in the early twentieth century. A few of its conventions need translating.
- Flour measureThe flour figure is 1 2/3 cups. Use plain all-purpose flour and spoon it into the cup rather than scooping, or the cake tightens.
- Calumet Baking PowderCalumet was a double-acting phosphate-and-alum powder, still sold today. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes at the same 2 level teaspoons.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. Forty-five minutes at that heat points to a single deep pan such as an 8-inch square or a loaf, not thin layers; shallow layers will be done in 20 to 25 minutes.
- Egg whites, not whole eggsEgg whites -- The pale colour comes largely from stiffly beaten whites, though the method as printed also calls for an egg added after the flour, so this is not a whites-only cake as written. Note too that the whites go into the creamed butter and sugar before the flour rather than being folded in last. Beating whites to a dry, grainy froth is the usual fault; stop while they still bend at the peak.
- Alternating flour and milkAdd the dry mixture and the milk in three or four turns, beginning and ending with flour, and stir only until the streaks vanish. Overworking after the liquid goes in toughens a plain butter cake more than anything else in the method.
- Boiled frostingThe frosting referred to is presumably the familiar boiled sugar syrup beaten into egg whites, essentially the same principle as an Italian meringue. It sets to a glossy shell and is easiest to spread while still warm and pourable.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a cake on this scale would probably serve about eight, and like most plain butter cakes it is best eaten within a day or so of frosting.
"Snow cake" is a nineteenth-century name for any pale cake made with egg whites alone, the yolks going into a gold cake, custard or sauce so nothing was wasted. The style became far more common after chemical leaveners arrived, since stiff whites plus baking powder gave a fine white crumb without the long beating that older recipes demanded. This version comes from a promotional collection built around one brand of baking powder, a genre that flourished from the 1890s through the 1920s: the companies gave away small cookbooks in which the recipes specified their own tin by name.