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Mocha Cakes
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
1½ cups sifted pastry flour
½ cup strong coffee
2 eggs
⅓ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking-powder
½ cup evaporated milk
Cream the sifted powdered sugar with the beaten egg-yolks; add the coffee and the milk, then the dry ingredients sifted together. Bake in a long shallow pan at 350° for twenty minutes, cut in fancy shapes as desired, cover the top and sides with mocha cream. Finely chopped nuts may be used to cover the sides, giving the effect of French pastries.
A lean, butterless sheet cake meant to be cut small and iced on all sides in imitation of a bakery petit four. The batter is thin and the cake is a vehicle for the mocha cream, so the icing is not optional.
- The missing egg whitesThe list calls for 2 eggs but the method uses only the yolks. The whites were most likely meant to be beaten and folded in last, as in comparable cakes of the period; used that way they add lift to a batter with no butter and only a teaspoon of baking powder.
- Powdered sugarConfectioners' sugar, which in this period still often meant a coarser "powdered" grind. Modern 10X contains cornstarch, which slightly dries the crumb here but works; sift as directed since it cakes.
- Pastry flourLower protein than all-purpose, about 8-9 percent. A common stand-in is to replace 2 tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch; straight all-purpose will give a slightly tougher crumb.
- The coffee"Strong coffee" means brewed coffee stronger than drinking strength, cooled before it meets the yolks; the recipe gives no proportion. Not espresso, and not instant granules stirred in dry.
- Evaporated milkUnsweetened canned evaporated milk, then a pantry staple in households without steady refrigeration. Use it undiluted as written; do not reach for sweetened condensed milk, which would wreck the sugar balance.
- Pan and depth"Long shallow pan" with this much batter means a layer about half an inch deep. A 9x9 or a quarter sheet pan is right; a full jelly-roll pan spreads it so thin it bakes dry well before twenty minutes.
- Baking and cutting350F for twenty minutes is accurate for that depth; the cake should spring back and pull barely from the sides. Cool completely, then chill briefly before cutting into squares or diamonds, or the soft crumb tears under the knife.
- Mocha creamPresumably a coffee-flavoured butter icing given elsewhere in the book, stiff enough to hold on cut sides. Ice the top, then the sides, then press chopped nuts onto the sides while the icing is still tacky.
- YieldAbout 20 to 24 small iced squares from a 9x9 pan, which is the point of the recipe rather than a cake to slice at table.
"Mocha" here means coffee, after the Yemeni port of Mocha that shipped much of Europe's early coffee, and by 1900 the word on a cake or icing signalled coffee flavour rather than any particular bean. The recipe's ambition is stated outright in its last line: cut small, iced on top and sides, with chopped nuts on the sides, these are a home cook's version of the French petits fours then appearing in city pastry shops, achieved without a pastry chef's genoise or fondant. The batter is a period type that leans on baking powder and liquid rather than creamed butter, and the tinned evaporated milk suits a kitchen without steady refrigeration.