Mocha Cake
To one-half recipe for Sunshine Cake add one-half cup English walnut meats broken in pieces. Bake in a mediumsized angel-cake pan; cool, split, and fill with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with coffee essence. Cover top with Confectioners' Frosting, flavored with coffee essence. Whites 8 eggs
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the Sunshine Cake formula (a sponge leavened with beaten whites and cream of tartar) in front of you. Everything hinges on treating it as an angel-type cake, which means no greased pan and an inverted cool.
- "Whites 8 eggs"This trailing line is an egg-count tag of the kind the book appends to cake recipes. Whether it counts the whites for the parent Sunshine Cake or for this half-recipe variation is not clear from the page; look up the Sunshine Cake entry and scale from there.
- Coffee essenceA period coffee essence was a strong, syrupy extract, either reduced brewed coffee or a bottled preparation. Instant espresso powder dissolved in a teaspoon of hot water is a close modern stand-in that will not thin the cream or the frosting.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven direction. Sponge cakes of this type are usually baked moderately, around 325-350F, and a medium tube pan will take roughly 40 to 50 minutes; judge by the cake rather than the clock.
- The panA "medium-sized angel-cake pan" is probably something close to a 9-inch tube pan. Leave it ungreased so the batter can climb the sides, and invert it over a bottle neck to cool completely before attempting to loosen the cake.
- Folding in the walnutsHalf a cup of nuts is heavy for a foam batter. Chop them fine rather than merely breaking them, toss with a spoonful of the recipe's flour, and fold in at the very last so the whites do not deflate.
- Confectioners' FrostingConsult the book's own entry. Frostings under that name are generally sifted confectioners' sugar moistened with a little liquid to a spreading consistency rather than a butter frosting. Use the coffee essence as part of the liquid and keep it stiff enough to sit on the cut top without running.
- Whipped cream fillingSweeten lightly and whip only to soft-firm peaks. A cream-filled cake will not hold at room temperature; refrigerate and serve the same day, and split the cake with a long serrated knife or a length of thread.
- YieldThis is a half recipe, so the cake will be shallow for its pan and will serve fewer than a full-sized tube cake.
"Mocha" in a turn-of-the-century American cookbook means coffee, after al-Mokha, the Yemeni Red Sea port that shipped the beans Europe first knew; only later did the word drift toward coffee-and-chocolate together. Coffee-flavored fillings and icings were fashionable in the late nineteenth century alongside light, egg-white sponge cakes. Cookbooks of this school are full of small chain entries, where one master cake spawns several dressed-up versions by way of a nut, a filling and a flavored frosting -- an efficient habit for a cooking school teaching students to work from a foundation rather than memorize dishes one at a time.