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Chocolate Fruit Cake
1/3 cup butter 1 cup sugar. 1/4 cup breakfast cocoa Yolks 3 eggs 1/2 cup cold water 1¼ cups bread flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon ¼ teaspoon salt 1/3 cup candied cherries 1/3 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces 1½ tablespoons brandy 1/3 cup walnut meats, cut in pieces Whites 3 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla Cover fruit with brandy and let stand several hours. Mix ingredients in order given, and bake in deep cake pan fifty minutes. Cover with White Mountain Cream, and as soon as frosting is set, spread as thinly as possible with melted chocolate. 1/2 cup butter 2 cups sugar Yolks 4 eggs 1 cup milk 3½ cups flour
A small, richly spiced butter cake in the Fannie Farmer style, finished with boiled frosting and a thin veil of chocolate. A few of its terms and proportions need translating before you start.
- Start the day beforeThe cherries and raisins sit under the brandy for "several hours" — plan on four at minimum, or leave them covered overnight.
- Breakfast cocoaThis is plain unsweetened cocoa powder, typically natural rather than Dutch-process. Dutch cocoa will work, though it is less acidic and may taste flatter.
- Bread flourTurn-of-the-century "bread flour" was hard spring-wheat flour; all-purpose is the usual modern stand-in. Measure by spooning into the cup and levelling, not by scooping.
- Read the fractions carefullyThe flour is 1 1/4 cups and the salt 1/4 teaspoon. Three teaspoons of baking powder for that little flour is far more than current practice, which runs about 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons per cup; it is often said that period baking powders were weaker, and the cake may taste soapy at the original rate.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given. Fifty minutes in a deep pan suggests a moderate oven; around 350F is a reasonable modern equivalent. Test with a skewer at 40 minutes.
- White Mountain CreamThe frosting called for elsewhere in the book is a boiled-sugar meringue — hot syrup beaten into stiff egg whites, what a modern kitchen would call Italian meringue. It sets firm enough to take the chocolate.
- The chocolate veilMelt the chocolate gently and spread it the moment the frosting has skinned over. Too hot and it sinks into the meringue; too cool and it drags the frosting off in sheets.
- Pan and yieldA deep round or square pan of about 8 inches will take this quantity, giving roughly 8 to 10 slices. The cake keeps a few days under a dome; boiled frosting tends to weep if refrigerated.
Cocoa powder — sold as "breakfast cocoa" — made chocolate easy to work into a batter without melting a block of it; the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book first appeared in 1896. This recipe sits at a junction of two fashions: the older English-descended fruit cake, with its candied cherries, raisins and spirit-soaked fruit, and the newer American chocolate cake. Calling it a fruit cake is generous by the standards of a Christmas keeping-cake; there is no long slow bake and no months of feeding with brandy, just a single soak and fifty minutes' baking. The double finish of boiled white frosting under melted chocolate recurs elsewhere in the book's cake chapter, where frostings are cross-referenced from one recipe to another.