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Yeast-Raised Plum Cake
The slowest to rise. Use the liveliest dough, and in winter, it had better be saved over night and mixed up with the main part of the ingredients; add the fruit next morning, and bake after dinner. 2 pounds of light bread dough. 1 pound of black molasses and sugar, mixed. 1 pound of butter. 6 eggs. 12 ounces of flour. 1 ounce of mixed ground spices. 1 1/2 pounds of seedless raisins. 1 pound of currants. 8 ounces of citron. Brandy, and lemon extract.
Warm the dough and all the ingredients slightly. Mix well, except the fruit and brandy. Beat the batter, and set to rise in the mixing pan about 3 hours. Beat again and add the fruit, previously floured. Line the moulds with buttered paper, half fill and set to rise again about 2 hours. Bake from one hour to two, according to size. Large cakes should have a coating of paper tied outside the moulds to protect the crust during the two hours baking. These cakes should not be turned out of the moulds till at least one day old. Hotel pastry cooks who think yeast-raised cakes too tedious, should nevertheless remember that in some places no others are believed in, or allowed to be made, and these are simple enough after a few trials to learn the routine.
To clean seedless raisins, rub the fine stems off them with the hands and some flour mixed in, then stir around in a colander till the siftings all go through and leave the raisins clean.
A hotel-scale yeast fruitcake: the bread dough is the leavening, so there is no baking powder anywhere in it. Everything else follows from that.
- The hinge: dough temperature"Warm the dough and all the ingredients slightly" is the whole trick. A pound of cold butter and six cold eggs will stall the yeast outright, so bring butter to a spreadable 70F, eggs to room temperature, and keep the mixed batter around 78-80F while it rises. Cold winter kitchens are exactly why the original tells you to start the sponge the night before.
- "Light bread dough"Two pounds of ordinary risen white bread dough, at the point where it has doubled and is still active. A straightforward lean dough of about 1 lb 2 oz flour, 11 oz water, 2 tsp salt and a teaspoon of instant yeast gives roughly the right weight.
- Black molassesDark cooking molasses rather than blackstrap. The pound is a pound of molasses and sugar mixed together, so 8 oz of each is one plausible reading.
- Mixed spicesOne ounce is about 4 tablespoons of ground spice, which reads as a lot until you weigh the fruit against it. A workable blend is cinnamon, then lesser amounts of nutmeg, allspice, mace, clove and ginger.
- Brandy and lemon extractUnmeasured in the original. About 1/4 cup brandy and 2 teaspoons lemon extract suits this weight of batter; the brandy goes in with the fruit, at the end, not into the first rise.
- Moulds and paperButter and line the tins with parchment rather than buttered paper. The outer collar tied around large cakes does what a doubled band of parchment or a folded newspaper wrap does now: it slows the crust so the centre can finish.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the original leaves it to the cook's judgement. Bake this at 325F, dropping to 300F for the largest tins. Done is an internal reading of 200-205F, not a clean skewer, since the fruit stays wet.
- Rising timesThree hours and two hours were written for the yeast and the rooms of the period. Judge by volume instead: the batter should be visibly puffed and domed, half-filled tins risen to about two-thirds. Modern instant yeast in a warm kitchen can get there considerably sooner.
- Yield and the day's restThe formula runs to roughly eight and a half pounds of batter, or two 9-inch round cakes plus a loaf. Leaving them in the moulds a full day is not sentiment; a yeast fruitcake this heavy is fragile hot and firms up as it cools and settles.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black grape, not fresh red or black currants. Rinse and dry them, and toss both fruits in flour as directed so they hang in the batter instead of sinking.
Fruitcake was raised with ale barm or bread dough long before chemical leavening reached domestic kitchens, and the older method survived in professional bakeshops well after baking powder made it optional. That is the argument being made here: the author concedes that hotel pastry cooks find yeast cakes tedious, but notes that "in some places no others are believed in, or allowed to be made" - a reminder that regional or house standards still governed what a hotel could put on its table. The book reads as a trade manual, which would explain the large batch, the paper collars for large moulds, the instruction to bake after dinner, and the aside on cleaning stems off seedless raisins by hand, a job that came with buying fruit by the box rather than the packet.