Fudge Cake
Two cups of sugar; one-third cup of butter; one cup milk; two and one-half cups flour; one-half cup cocoa; three eggs (whites and yolks beaten separately); two level teaspoons baking powder; one-half cup broken English walnuts meats; a pinch of salt; vanilla to flavor. Cream the butter and sugar. Sift cocoa, salt and baking powder with the flour; then add the wellbeaten yolks, milk and flour alternately. Add the beaten whites and flavoring. This may be baked as a two-layer or sheet cake. Any good chocolate icing may be used.
LADY BALTIMORE CAKE. (After a Famous Recipe) -Weigh five eggs, and take their weight in sugar. Weigh three eggs and take their weight in flour. For the cake itself will be required just six eggs. Break these, separate, and to the whites add a small pinch of cream of tartar, and salt. Beat till very stiff and dry. Beat the yolks as dry as possible and add to them the sugar; then fold in the whites quickly. Sift the flour three times, with one teaspoon of baking powder and whip into this mixture. Lay a piece of paper over the top of the pan when ready to place in the oven, and bake three-fourths of an hour or more in an oven that is slowly rising in temperature.
Cut into three layers with a sharp knife. The following recipes are to be used for filling:
Chocolate Cream-Two ounces of melted chocolate; two ounces of granulated sugar; two ounces of almond paste; yolks of two eggs; one-half pint of milk. Heat the milk in a double boiler with the sugar and the almond paste; then add the melted chocolate thickening with the two yolks of the eggs until the mixture is the consistency of a thick custard when cold. Set this aside and next make the Nut Cream.
Nut Cream-Two ounces of sugar; two ounces of almond paste; one-fourth pound of citron very finely shredded; one-half cup of pecan nuts ground in the vegetable grinder; one-half pint of milk; yolks of two eggs. Cook as for the other cream, and cool. When both creams are cool enough, spread the layers, using the nut filling for the bottom layer, the chocolate for the second and a soft boiled frosting flavored with vanilla for the top of the cake. This cake was originally made in six layers using the creams on the alternate layers, but three layers are usually sufficient. The almond paste may be bought at the confectioner's for a small sum, or the almonds may be blanched and pounded. One-third of a cup of almonds blanched and chopped makes one ounce of paste.
Four tablespoons are the same as two ounces.
Two cakes share this page: a plain cocoa butter cake and an elaborate egg-weight sponge with two cooked fillings. Neither gives an oven temperature, and the Lady Baltimore measures everything against the weight of eggs.
- Oven for the fudge cakeNothing is stated, so use 350F. Two 8-inch layers take 25-30 minutes; a sheet in a 9x13 pan takes 30-35.
- Oven for the Lady Baltimore"An oven that is slowly rising in temperature" reflects a wood or coal range coming up to heat. Start at 300F and raise to 325F after the first 20 minutes; three-quarters of an hour is the minimum for a deep foam cake of this size.
- Weighing by eggsThe recipe does not say whether the eggs are weighed in or out of the shell; in-shell is the usual convention for cakes of this type. Taken that way, five modern large eggs are roughly 10 oz (285 g) of sugar and three roughly 6 oz (170 g) of flour. Period eggs ran smaller, so weighing your own is more faithful than any cup conversion.
- The paper over the panA sheet of paper laid loosely on top shields the surface while the interior sets, the same job foil does now. It is not a lid and should not be sealed down.
- CocoaUse natural unsweetened cocoa. Dutch-process is alkalized and gives a darker colour and milder flavour; since the leavening here is baking powder rather than soda, the effect on rise is slight.
- English walnutsThe common walnut, specified to distinguish it from the black walnut, which was the cheaper wild nut in American kitchens. Ordinary walnut halves broken by hand are correct.
- Butter and sugar proportionOne-third cup of butter to two cups of sugar will not cream to a fluff; it stays sandy. That is expected. The milk added alternately with the flour brings it together.
- Cooking the two creamsBoth fillings are stirred custards thickened with yolks. Take them to about 170-175F over the double boiler until they coat a spoon, and do not let them boil or the yolks will curdle. They must be fully cold before they go between layers, and a filled cake belongs in the refrigerator.
- Citron and almond pasteCitron is candied citron peel, sold at holidays and in Italian groceries; candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute. The recipe's own conversion is useful: one-third cup blanched chopped almonds makes one ounce of paste, and four tablespoons of paste equal two ounces.
- YieldThe fudge cake serves 10-12. The Lady Baltimore, cut into three layers and filled, serves 12-14.
Lady Baltimore cake takes its name from Owen Wister's 1906 novel Lady Baltimore, set in a lightly disguised Charleston, in which the narrator eats a cake of that name at a women's exchange; the cake is generally traced to Charleston bakers of that decade, with Alicia Rhett Mayberry igman who is said to have given Wister the cake \version version is a white layer cake with a fig, raisin and nut boiled frosting, which is why this one is headed "After a Famous Recipe" rather than claiming to be the thing itself — the editors kept the name and the layered structure but substituted almond-paste custards. The fudge cake above it belongs to a different fashion: fudge began as a chafing-dish candy made in American women's colleges in the 1890s, and by the time this book appeared the word had migrated onto cakes as shorthand for dense, cocoa-rich sweetness, made practical by cheap packaged cocoa on grocery shelves.