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Oberlin Honey Layer-Cake
2-3 cup of butter, 1 cup honey, 3 eggs beaten, 1/2 cup milk. Cream the butter and honey together, then add the eggs and milk.
Then add 2 cups flour containing 1½ teaspoonfuls baking-powder previously stirred in. Then stir in flour to make a stiff batter . Bake in jelly-tins. When the cakes are cold, take finely flavored candied honey, and after creaming it, spread between the layers.
A honey-sweetened layer cake from the era when honey was a household sweetener rather than a specialty item. The batter instructions contradict themselves slightly, and the filling depends on an ingredient most cooks no longer keep.
- "2-3 cup of butter"Almost certainly a typesetting of 2/3 cup butter, which is about 150 g and in proportion with 1 cup honey and 3 eggs. Read literally it is nonsense; do not attempt two to three cups.
- The flour is stated twiceYou are told to add 2 cups flour with the baking powder, then to "stir in flour to make a stiff batter." Treat the 2 cups plus 1½ teaspoons baking powder as the base and add flour only by the tablespoon if the batter will not hold a soft mound — honey batters are naturally slack, and an overfloured one bakes dry.
- Honey browns fastThe fructose in honey scorches at temperatures that suit a sugar cake. Bake at 325–350F rather than hotter, 20–25 minutes for two 8- or 9-inch layers, and check the edges early.
- Jelly-tinsRound shallow layer pans, roughly 8 or 9 inches across and an inch or so deep. Two modern 8-inch cake pans work; the layers will be thicker than the original and need a few more minutes.
- "Candied honey"Honey that has crystallized, not confectionery. Much raw honey will granulate on its own if left at cool room temperature, though some varieties resist it for months; creaming it with a spoon or a mixer gives the opaque, spreadable texture the recipe wants. Commercial creamed or set honey is the direct substitute.
- The filling will not hold a tall cakeCreamed honey stays soft and migrates into the crumb. Spread it thinly, assemble shortly before serving, and expect a two-layer cake rather than a three- or four-tier construction.
- Baking powder of the periodTurn-of-the-century baking powder was often single-acting, so the batter was meant to go into the pans at once. That is still the better practice here, since honey batters slump if they sit.
- YieldTwo layers, about 8 to 10 servings. Keeps well — honey holds moisture, and the cake is arguably better on the second day.
Honey cakes belong to the older stratum of American baking, from the years when a hive in the garden or a neighbor's comb was a cheaper and steadier sweetener than refined sugar. The Oberlin name presumably points to Oberlin, Ohio, though nothing in the recipe itself confirms it; recipes carrying place names like this are usually traditional rather than traceable to any one author, so the attribution is undocumented. The reliance on baking powder rather than saleratus and sour milk suggests a date in the later nineteenth or early twentieth century, when chemical leaveners were cheap and reliable.