Dark Fruit Cake
2 eggs ½ cup milk 2 cups flour cut in pieces 1/2 teaspoon soda ¾ cup currants 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ cup citron, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon allspice and cut in strips ½ teaspoon mace ½ cup molasses ¼ teaspoon clove 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract Follow directions for mixing butter cake mixtures. Bake in deep cake pans one and one-quarter hours.
A molasses-and-spice loaf of the plainer sort — closer to a dark spice cake with fruit than to the brandied, months-matured fruit cake of Christmas. The instruction to "follow directions for mixing butter cake mixtures" carries most of the weight here.
- The creamed base"Butter cake mixtures" in Farmer's book means cream the fat and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the liquid and dry ingredients alternately. As printed here the ingredient list has lost its butter and sugar (note the stray "cut in pieces" left hanging on the flour line); the cake needs both, but the amounts cannot be recovered from this text.
- Soda and molassesThe half teaspoon of soda is there to neutralise the acid in the molasses, not merely to lift. Sift it with the flour rather than dissolving it in the milk, or the batter starts foaming before it reaches the pan.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven direction. Fruit and molasses batters scorch, so a moderate oven of about 325F suits it; the sugars in molasses colour long before the centre sets.
- Deep pansTwo loaf pans or one deep 8-inch round, lined on bottom and sides with buttered parchment. The stated hour and a quarter suits a deep pan; shallower tins will be done in 45 to 55 minutes.
- Flour the fruitToss the currants and citron strips in a few spoonfuls of the measured flour before folding them in, or they sink to the bottom during the long slow bake.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks near the glacé fruit at holiday time. It is firmer and less sweet than candied orange; candied orange or lemon peel substitutes acceptably if citron is unavailable.
- MaceMace is the outer aril of the nutmeg — warmer and less sharp than the nut itself. Ground mace stales quickly; if yours has been open a year, buy fresh rather than doubling the quantity.
- Doneness and keepingA skewer should come out clean and the cake pull slightly from the sides. Cooled and wrapped tightly, it improves for two or three days as the molasses moisture redistributes.
The book separates "light" fruit cakes, built on white sugar and pale fruit, from "dark" ones like this, where molasses and a heavy hand with cinnamon, clove, allspice and mace do the colouring. This is a domestic, everyday cake rather than a wedding or Christmas one — no brandy, no almond paste, no long curing — and its place in the Cake chapter alongside dozens of butter-cake variations shows how the school taught by method: learn one mixing procedure, then vary the flavourings.