Caramel Cake
3/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup syrup 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup milk cups Northern flour 2 2 eggs 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful vanilla and little salt Cream sugar and butter, add syrup and beaten egg yolks. Add sifted flour and milk, and fold in beaten whites of eggs. 2 Filling for Cake tablespoonfuls melted butter tablespoonfuls chocolate 11/½ cup powdered sugar 1/2 teaspoonful vanila, add cold coffee.
Ghirardelli's Brown Stone Front Cake.
Three-quarters cup Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 1/2 cup Sweet Milk; 2/3 cup Brown Sugar; yolk of one Egg. Beat all together. Soft boil until like a custard; set to cool. This is the Cream. Take 1 cup Brown Sugar; 1/2 cup Butter; 1/2 cup Sweet Milk; 2 Eggs; 2 cups Sifted Flour. After the cake is mixed then stir in the above cream. Then add 1 teaspoon Soda dissolved in a little warm water. Spread white boiled icing over and between the layers.
Chocolate Bavarian Cream.
Two cupfuls Cream; 4 tablespoonfuls Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 2 cupfuls Milk; 1/2 cupful Sugar; ½ cupful Water; 1 teaspoonful Vanilla Extract; 1½ box Gelatine. Soak gelatine in cold water until soft, then add it to the milk, which has been scalded with the chocolate, stirring until dissolved. Remove from the fire, add sugar and extract. Turn into granite basin and set in a pan of ice water, stirring until it begins to thicken; then add the cream whipped to a stiff froth. Line a mould with peaches, turn in the mixture, set in cold place until firm. Unmold and serve with whipped cream.
Ghirardelli's California Chocolate Cake.
One cup of Sugar; piece of Butter size of egg, creamed; 2 Eggs; ½ cup of Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 1½ teaspoonful Cinnamon; 1/2 cup of Milk; 1 cup of Flour; 2 teaspoonfuls Baking Powder; mix with Flour, bake in layers, spread with either strawberry jam or white of egg beaten to froth with cup of sugar.
Ghirardelli's Chocolate Fudge.
Four rounded tablespoonfuls of D. Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 2 cupfuls Sugar; 1 cupful Milk; Butter the size of a small hen's egg; 1 teaspoonful Vanilla; 2 drops Lemon Extract. Boil Sugar, Butter and Milk until thick and add Chocolate; cook until thread spins when tried; then add Extract and take from fire, stirring until nearly cold or becomes sugary. Turn on a well-buttered dish and cut in squares. Topsy Turvy Dainty.
Two level tablespoonfuls Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 1½ cup Sago; 1 cupful Water; 1 piece stick Cinnamon; 1/2 cup chopped Citron; 1/2 cup chopped Almonds; 1/2 cupful Sugar. Soak Sago over night and drain next morning; put in a double boiler with water and boil until thick; add Cinnamon and Citron and cook thirty minutes; remove Cinnamon and add Almonds, Sugar and Chocolate. Remove from fire as soon as sugar is dissolved and set away to cool. Serve with cream flavored.
Chocolate Sauce.
One Egg; 1 cupful Milk; 1 teaspoonful Cornstarch; 1/2 cupful Sugar; 2 teaspoonfuls Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate; 1 teaspoonful Vanilla. Scald milk and add the Cornstarch, which has been dissolved in a little of the cold milk; beat egg and add to the mixture with the sugar, chocolate and vanilla. Chocolate Icing.
Place 2 ounces of Ghirardelli's Ground Chocolate in an enameled saucepan with a quarter pint of boiling water; set on the stove for a few minutes, stirring constantly. Then remove, add 1/2 pound of pulverized Sugar and stir again until perfectly smooth.
A plain brown-sugar butter cake in the late-Victorian layer-cake mould, given without a pan size, temperature or baking time. The filling is a simple uncooked chocolate butter icing loosened with coffee.
- Flour quantityThe flour line is garbled and reads "cups Northern flour 2 2 eggs"; two cups of flour with two eggs is the proportion this batter needs and matches the sugar, butter and milk given. Treat any other reading as unsupported.
- Northern flourApparently a trade term for flour milled outside California and shipped in; what exactly it denoted is not certain from the book. Modern all-purpose flour is the nearest practical equivalent; there is no need to seek out bread flour.
- "Syrup"The book does not say which. A light table syrup (corn or cane) is the likeliest reading rather than maple. Molasses will work but pushes the flavour toward gingerbread.
- Where the caramel isNothing in this recipe is caramelised. The name here rests on the brown sugar and syrup alone, so do not expect a cooked caramel note.
- OvenNo temperature or time is given. Two 8-inch layers of a batter this size bake at 350F for roughly 22 to 28 minutes, until the centre springs back.
- Folding orderAdd the flour and milk alternately in two or three additions rather than all at once, and fold the beaten whites in last with as few strokes as will incorporate them. The whites are the only lift beyond the two teaspoons of baking powder.
- The filling proportionsThe filling line has lost its numbers: the butter and chocolate are each given as tablespoonfuls with no figure, and the powdered sugar reads "11/½ cup". Work from about 2 tablespoons melted butter, 2 tablespoons of the ground chocolate the book calls for, and 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, adding cold coffee a teaspoon at a time until it spreads.
- YieldTwo thin layers, cutting into eight to ten slices.
Caramel cake in this period rarely involved cooked sugar at all: brown sugar and a measure of table syrup were enough to claim the name, and the darker, softer crumb they produced was prized at a time when refined white sugar was the more expensive choice. The specification of "Northern flour" is a reminder that flour was still sold and discussed by its region of milling, and that a cook in one part of the country could not assume her neighbour's flour behaved like her own. Community and bridal cookbooks of the era such as this one carry a great many branded chocolate recipes in the surrounding pages; the unbranded family cake sits among them without comment.