Bride's Cake
1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup milk 3 teaspoons baking powder 1½ cups sugar 2½ cups flour ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar Whites six eggs ½ teaspoon almond extract Follow recipe for mixing butter cakes. Bake forty-five to fifty minutes in deep, narrow pans. frosting.
Cover with white
A plain white butter cake, leavened only by baking powder and stiffly beaten egg whites. Fannie Farmer assumes you already know her standard butter-cake method, which is where most of the work lies.
- The mixing method it refers toCream the butter, add the sugar gradually, then add the milk alternately with the flour, baking powder and cream of tartar sifted together. The beaten whites go in last, folded rather than stirred.
- Whites, not whole eggsSix whites is roughly 3/4 cup. Beat them to a soft, glossy peak that still slumps a little; whites beaten dry break into lumps that will not fold into a stiff butter batter.
- Cream of tartar hereThe printed page gives a quarter teaspoon, as our text now reads. The baking powder already supplies its own acid, so the cake will work without it.
- Almond extractA teaspoon and a half is a lot in a cake this size; a modern extract at that quantity will read as marzipan.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits the forty-five to fifty minutes in the deep narrow pans she specifies; in a wider, shallower pan the cake will be done sooner.
- Deep, narrow pansA tall, straight-sided tin. A 9-inch tube pan is the nearest modern equivalent; grease and line the bottom.
- Yield and finishingThe batter runs to roughly 5 to 6 cups. It is meant to be covered with a plain white frosting -- boiled icing or a confectioners' sugar frosting, both of which appear in the cake chapter.
In nineteenth-century American usage "bride's cake" and "wedding cake" were two different cakes, often served at the same table: the wedding cake was the dark, dense, spirit-soaked fruit cake, while the bride's cake was white, and made white deliberately, using only the egg whites and no molasses, spice or fruit that would tint the crumb. The colour was read as a match for the dress, and the almond flavouring is the traditional one, though the often-repeated link to the marzipan of older British bridal confections is folk etymology rather than established fact. Recipes of this kind are the ancestors of the modern white layer cake. Farmer's version is notably economical for the occasion, six whites and half a cup of butter.