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Ginger Pound Cakes
Cream one-half pound butter and add gradually one-half pound sugar, continuing the beating. Add three-fourths pound flour, mixed and sifted with two teaspoons baking powder alternately with four eggs beaten until thick and lemon-colored; then add one-half pound Canton ginger cut in small pieces. Bake in small buttered and floured individual cake pans in a slow oven. Cover with White Mountain Cream (see p. 528). 2/3 cup butter ¾ cup sugar 2 eggs 2/3 cup milk ½ cup molasses 218 cups flour
A pound cake built on weights rather than cups, baked as individual cakes and studded with preserved ginger. The proportions are sound; only the vessels, the oven language and one ingredient need translating.
- The weights in cupsHalf a pound of butter is 2 sticks (1 cup); half a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 1/8 cups; three-quarters pound of sifted flour is roughly 3 cups. Weighing is more reliable here than measuring, since the whole structure depends on butter and flour being in balance.
- Slow ovenRead that as 300-325F. A rich, heavy batter in small pans needs the lower heat so the centre sets before the outside colours; small cakes will take roughly 20-30 minutes, a loaf considerably longer.
- Canton gingerThis is stem ginger preserved in heavy syrup, sold in jars or in the old glazed crocks from Canton. Drain and blot it before chopping, or the syrup clinging to the pieces will make them sink and wet the crumb. Crystallised ginger, rinsed of excess sugar, is the nearest common substitute; half a pound gives about a cup chopped.
- Beat the eggs separatelyThe eggs are whipped "until thick and lemon-colored" and then added alternately with the flour, so they contribute some lift of their own alongside the 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Beating whole eggs to that stage takes several minutes with a mixer; stopping early gives a denser cake.
- Flour the gingerToss the chopped ginger with a spoonful of the measured flour before adding it. Added at the very end, off the mixer and by hand, it stays suspended instead of settling to the bottom.
- Pans"Individual cake pans" means small tins about the size of a muffin cup or a large bouchée mould. Butter and flour them thoroughly; the ginger sugar sticks. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works, filled two-thirds full.
- White Mountain CreamThe frosting called for is a boiled-sugar meringue icing - hot syrup beaten into egg whites. It sets firm and very sweet; a simple ginger-syrup glaze does the same job with less work if you would rather not make it.
- YieldThe batter runs to roughly 3 pounds and will fill about eighteen small cakes, or two standard loaf pans if you prefer to bake it whole.
Pound cake takes its name from the old English formula of a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, memorable enough to be carried without a written recipe; by the time Fannie Farmer was teaching in Boston the proportions had been loosened and chemical leavening added, as here. The ginger is the giveaway of the period: preserved stem ginger in syrup arrived through the China trade, packed in the blue-and-white glazed jars that New England households kept long after the contents were gone, and "Canton ginger" appears in grocers' lists and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s. Baking the batter in small individual tins rather than one loaf reflects the era's fondness for cakes that could be handed round at afternoon tea already iced.