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Chocolate Vienna Cake
3/4 cup butter 7/8 cup sugar Yolks 5 eggs 4 squares Baker's chocolate 1½ cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder Whites 5 eggs Apricot or Orange Marmalade Mix ingredients in order given, and bake in small tins. Remove from tins, cool, take out a small portion of cake from tins, cool, take out a small portion of cake from the centre of each, and fill cavity with marmalade.
Cover tops of cake with Marshmallow Frosting or Chocolate Frosting IV.
The ingredient list here has been scrambled in transcription — butter and sugar appear at the end, and a line of the method is duplicated — so read the whole thing before starting and assemble the batter by the standard creaming method.
- Order of workThe printed list is scrambled, so "Mix ingredients in order given" cannot be followed literally. The usual method for a cake of this type is to cream the butter and sugar, add the melted chocolate, then the flour sifted with baking powder, and fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Take the butter and sugar from the end of the list and use them first.
- Baker's chocolateA square is one ounce of unsweetened chocolate, so four squares is 4 oz, melted over hot water and cooled slightly before it goes into the batter. Modern unsweetened baking chocolate is the direct equivalent; do not substitute semisweet without cutting the sugar.
- No liquid is givenAs printed there is no milk or water. The five whites supply a fair amount of liquid on their own, so the batter may have been intended to work without any; if it is too stiff to drop from the spoon, add milk a spoonful at a time.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to 1½ cups of flour works out at two teaspoons per cup, a generous proportion by modern standards. With modern double-acting powder, and five beaten whites already in the batter, two teaspoons is likely to be enough.
- "Small tins"Individual tins the size of a modern muffin cup or small brioche mould. Expect somewhere around a dozen to eighteen cakes, depending on the tin.
- OvenNo oven direction is given. For cakes this size, about 350F for 18 to 22 minutes. They are done when the tops spring back; whites-only batters dry out quickly past that point.
- Hollowing and fillingCool completely before coring, or the crumb tears. A small paring knife or an apple corer taken about two-thirds of the way down leaves a wall thick enough to hold; warm the marmalade slightly so it flows into the cavity, then let it set before frosting.
- The frostingsMarshmallow Frosting and Chocolate Frosting IV are separate recipes elsewhere in the book. Any modern seven-minute frosting or chocolate glaze stands in without complaint.
Cakes called "Vienna" in American books of this period rarely have much to do with Vienna beyond the association of that city with chocolate, apricot preserve and elaborate pastry — the Sachertorte, with its apricot jam layer, was long established by the time this book was written, and the apricot-or-orange marmalade filling may be a nod in its direction. The construction is characteristic of American books of the day: a small individual cake, cored and filled after baking rather than split and layered, and finished with a boiled frosting. The recipe also shows the era's fondness for whites-only cakes.