Almond Cake
Make the lady cake mixture--the first receipt of this series--and add to it a pound of almonds blanched (scalded and peeled) and split. Also use almond extract and rose extract to flavor with. Dust the almonds with flour. The snow cake mixture would be too delicate to bear up the almonds.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the lady cake formula from earlier in the book, a white butter cake bound with egg whites only. A few things need translating before it works in a modern kitchen.
- The base cakeLady cake is a creamed butter cake made with egg whites alone, no yolks, giving a pale close crumb. Any modern white butter cake batter of similar richness will carry the almonds; a chiffon or sponge will not.
- Why not the snow cakeThe warning at the end is the hinge of the recipe. A lighter, wetter batter cannot suspend a pound of split nuts, and they sink into a solid layer at the bottom. Keep the batter stiff enough that a spoon stands a moment in it.
- Dust the almondsTossing the blanched, split almonds in flour is what keeps them dispersed. Do it just before folding them in, and fold rather than beat so the nuts do not deflate the batter.
- A pound of almondsThat is roughly 3 cups of split nuts, a large amount by modern standards and enough for a cake baked in two or three loaf pans or a large tube pan. Scale it to two thirds if you want a cake that slices cleanly.
- BlanchingCover the almonds with boiling water, stand two minutes, and the skins slip off between finger and thumb. Split them along the natural seam while still damp; dry almonds shatter.
- Rose extractThe nearest thing on most shelves is rose water, which is much weaker than a concentrated extract. Start with a teaspoon or two of rose water and a half teaspoon of almond extract, tasting the raw batter, since period bitter-almond flavorings were stronger than the bottled almond extract on a supermarket shelf.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. A rich butter cake this heavy with nuts is best at 325F for 50 to 70 minutes in loaf pans. Tent with foil if the top colors before the center sets; lady cake is meant to stay pale.
- ServingLeft plain it keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the late nineteenth-century trade literature written for hotel and restaurant bakers rather than housewives, which explains the shorthand here: the author expects you to know the lady cake formula printed a few pages earlier and simply tells you what to change. Lady cake itself was one of the standard white cakes of the period, made with whites only he silver cake in contrast to the yolk-rich gold cake, and it was commonly flavored with bitter almond, sometimes with rose rather than vanilla. That pairing is older than the book, running back through eighteenth-century English almond cakes and the long European habit of scenting confectionery with rose water, a fashion that faded through the twentieth century as vanilla and cheap chocolate took over the American dessert table. The instruction to flour the nuts is one of those small bakers' insurances that appears again and again in period manuals, applied equally to currants, raisins and citron.