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Rich Coffee Cake
1 cup butter. 2 cups sugar. 4 eggs. 3/4 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces. 2 tablespoons molasses 1 cup cold boiled coffee 3¾ cups flour 5 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon clove 3/4 cup raisins, seeded and 1/2 teaspoon mace 1/2 teaspoon allspice cut in pieces 3/4 cup currants 1/4 cup citron, thinly sliced and cut in strips 2 tablespoons brandy Follow directions for making butter-cake mixtures. Bake in deep cake pans.
A spiced fruit cake in the older sense of "coffee cake" — brewed coffee is an ingredient, not a beverage served alongside. The instruction to "follow directions for making butter-cake mixtures" assumes you know the book's standard method, which is the hinge of the whole thing.
- The butter-cake methodThe cross-reference points to the book's standard procedure, which is not reproduced on this page. In general terms it means creaming the fat with the sugar, beating in the eggs, then adding the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the coffee and molasses, mixing only until smooth. Treat the details as a reconstruction.
- Fat, sugar and eggsThe quantities of butter, sugar and eggs are not stated in the ingredient list as it stands here. A rich butter cake of this era on 3¾ cups flour would run roughly a cup of butter, two cups of sugar and four eggs; treat that as a reconstruction rather than the book's figure.
- Flour"334 cups" is 3¾ cups. Measure by dipping and levelling, and sift the baking powder and spices through with it so the leavening is evenly distributed.
- OvenNo temperature or time is given. A moderate oven, around 350F in modern terms, suits a deep, fruited butter cake; deep pans mean a long bake, so judge by a clean skewer rather than the clock, and tent the top if it colours before the centre sets.
- Cold boiled coffeeOrdinary strong brewed coffee, cooled. "Boiled" describes the period's method of making it in an open pot, not a special preparation. It must be cold, or it will melt the creamed butter.
- Raisins and currants"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed by hand; modern seedless raisins need only be chopped. Currants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Toss all the fruit with a spoonful of the measured flour to keep it from sinking.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold near the holidays or from baking suppliers. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes without harm, though citron is milder and less perfumed.
- Clove and mace1½ teaspoons of ground clove is assertive by current taste; a teaspoon is plenty. Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg and is worth buying rather than replacing with nutmeg, which is coarser in this company.
- Yield and keeping"Deep cake pans" is all the recipe says; a tube pan or two loaf pans would suit. Like most fruited butter cakes it improves after a day or two wrapped tightly.
"Coffee cake" in American usage now generally means a plain, often streusel-topped cake eaten with coffee, a sense associated with the German Kaffeekuchen tradition; the phrase was also used, as here, for a cake with coffee in the batter. Cold leftover coffee may well have been easy enough to come by in a household that brewed in the morning, and it does real work here: it darkens the crumb and carries the molasses and spice. Cakes of this type sit between the everyday spice cake and the full wedding fruitcake, using a modest handful of raisins, currants and citron with brandy rather than the pounds of fruit a proper fruit cake demanded. The cross-referenced "directions for making butter-cake mixtures" is characteristic of cookbooks that set out a few master procedures and then varied the ingredients, so a cook who had once learned to cream butter and sugar could work through many cakes without being told again.