Wedding Cake
4 pounds raisins
½ ounce ground cloves
3 pounds currants
1 pound butter or shortening
1 pound citron
1 pound brown sugar
1 pound flour
10 eggs
½ ounce mace
2 cups molasses
½ ounce cinnamon
¼ cup strong coffee
½ ounce nutmeg
Seed the raisins and chop them. Wash the currants and remove the little stems by vigorously rubbing them in a coarse towel, then shake in a colander. Cut the citron into small pieces. Sift the flour and spices together so that they are thoroughly mixed. Rub the butter or shortening and sugar together until they are foamy. Beat the yolks until they are thick and lemoncolored, then add them to the fat and sugar. Add the molasses and coffee and stir well. Sift a little of the flour over the fruit and add the rest of it to the cake mixture, beating until smooth. Add the fruit and lastly fold in the beaten egg-whites. Put in deep cake pans lined with greased paper and bake in a slow oven (320° F.) for three or four hours. When cold, frost the top with boiled frosting, maple-sugar frosting, brown-sugar frosting, or coffee frosting.
This is a full-scale wedding fruitcake: roughly eight pounds of fruit against a single pound of flour, which makes the batter little more than glue holding the fruit together. Plan for the pans and the time before you start.
- Scale and yieldThe finished batter weighs somewhere around 13 to 14 pounds. The recipe specifies only "deep cake pans," and you will need a good deal of pan volume for that quantity. Halving or quartering the recipe works cleanly, since nothing here depends on a critical ratio.
- The oven is already numbered320°F is unusually precise for 1920s writing and it is right for this cake. Do not raise it to shorten the time; the fruit and molasses scorch long before the center sets. Three to four hours is realistic for deep pans.
- Line the pans properlyOne layer of greased paper is the minimum. Two or three thicknesses of parchment up the sides, plus a paper cap laid loosely over the top after the first hour, is what keeps the outside from drying into a crust while the middle finishes.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, a small seedless grape, not fresh red or black currants and not raisins. The towel-rubbing step is for removing brittle stems, which modern packaged currants largely lack; check a handful and skip it if they are clean.
- Raisins and citronThe recipe's raisins have seeds and must be seeded before chopping; use seedless and just chop them. Citron is candied citron peel, still sold in tubs around the holidays, or substitute candied orange and lemon peel by weight.
- SpicesHalf an ounce each of mace, cinnamon and nutmeg is roughly two tablespoons each, ground, and half an ounce of cloves is about two tablespoons as well. That is a heavily spiced cake by current taste; two teaspoons of cloves is plenty if you would rather the fruit came through.
- Molasses and coffeeUse unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which turns bitter at this volume. The quarter cup of strong coffee is there for color and to round out the molasses, not for flavor you will identify.
- Testing for donenessA skewer will come out sticky from fruit even when the crumb is set, so go by feel: the top should spring back and the cake should have pulled slightly from the paper. An instant-read thermometer in the center reading 200-205°F is more reliable.
- Cooling and keepingCool completely in the pans, which takes hours. This kind of cake improves for weeks wrapped in paper and stored airtight in a cool place; frost only when you are ready to serve, since boiled frosting weeps if it sits on a cake that is still giving off moisture.
Dark, spice-heavy, fruit-laden cake has been the English-speaking wedding cake since the eighteenth century, when it was often called bride's cake, and by the time this collection appeared the form was fixed: a keeping cake, made well in advance, sturdy enough to be tiered, sliced thin, and posted to absent guests in small boxes. The tradition of saving a piece for the couple's first anniversary rests in part on the cake's chemistry, since the sugar, molasses and dried fruit hold moisture in reserve; in British versions the keeping quality also owed a good deal to spirits. Note what is absent here: no brandy, no soaking in spirits, which was usual in British versions. The book appeared in the era of American temperance agitation and Prohibition, though whether the strong coffee was meant to stand in for liquor is speculation rather than something the recipe tells us. The offered choice of boiled, maple-sugar, brown-sugar or coffee frosting also puts this on the American side of the Atlantic; the English cake of the same period would have been sealed under almond paste and royal icing.