Cinnamon Cakes
½ cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1¼ cups flour ½ cup milk 2½ teaspoons baking powder 1 tablespoon cinnamon Mix ingredients in the order given, and bake in individual buttered cake tins. ½ cup butter ¼ cup sugar ½ cup milk
A plain butter cake batter carrying an unusually heavy dose of cinnamon, baked as small individual cakes. The chief puzzles are Farmer's compressed shorthand for mixing and the orphaned ingredient list at the end.
- "In the order given" is a method, not a shrugThe standard butter-cake procedure of this period is to cream the butter, add the sugar gradually, beat in the well-beaten eggs, then add the flour (sifted with the baking powder and cinnamon) alternately with the milk. Note that the list as printed puts the baking powder and cinnamon last. Mixing everything at once in one bowl will give a coarser crumb.
- The stray second listThe three lines after the instructions -- half a cup butter, quarter cup sugar, cup and a half milk -- have no directions attached and do not belong to this batter. It is almost certainly type dropped in from a neighbouring recipe. Ignore it.
- Individual buttered cake tinsThese are the small deep tins we now call muffin or cupcake pans, used without paper liners. Butter them well and fill about two-thirds full; the recipe makes roughly a dozen small cakes.
- OvenThe original gives no heat. Small butter cakes of this size want 350-375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- A tablespoon of cinnamonThat is three teaspoons in a batter built on only 1 1/4 cups of flour -- assertive by modern standards and it will colour the crumb tan. It is not an error, but cut it to two teaspoons if you want the butter and egg to read at all.
- Baking powder2 1/2 teaspoons to 1 1/4 cups flour is high by modern standards; the powders of the period were single-acting, and recipes of this date routinely call for more than we would. With modern double-acting powder, 2 teaspoons is plenty; more can leave a faint soapy or metallic edge.
- Measuring the flourFarmer's cup of flour is sifted before measuring and levelled with a knife -- about 4 ounces, noticeably less than a scooped cup. Weigh 5 ounces total for the 1 1/4 cups if you want the batter to behave as written.
- ServingBest eaten the day they are baked, with tea or coffee. A dusting of cinnamon sugar over the buttered tins before filling will give them a crust if you want one.
Cinnamon turns up throughout the cake chapters of books like this one. What makes this particular entry a period document is the format: a single line of ingredients followed by the words "mix in the order given," which only works because the standard butter-cake method has been set out elsewhere for the reader. Cookbooks of this kind were built on exactly that idea -- level measurements and one repeatable technique -- so a recipe could be reduced to a list and a cross-reference. The "individual buttered cake tins" belong to the tradition of small cakes baked in their own pans.