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Light Dough Fruit Cake
One pint of light bread dough; one cup of sugar; one cup of butter; three eggs; one teaspoon of soda; a pound of seeded raisins; nutmeg and cloves, to taste. Let this rise again before baking.
This is a raised, or yeast-leavened, fruit cake: bread dough enriched after the first rise with butter, sugar, eggs and fruit. The book assumes you already have dough working in the kitchen and gives no pan, temperature or time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- What "light bread dough" meansOrdinary white bread dough that has completed its first rise and is puffy and full of gas. A pint measures by volume, not weight, so the actual weight depends on how far the dough has risen.
- Working in the enrichmentsCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then work this into the torn-up dough until no streaks remain. It will look broken and slack at first and come together with several minutes of kneading or a few minutes on a mixer's dough hook. This is the step that decides whether the cake is even-grained or greasy and patchy.
- The sodaOne teaspoon is there to neutralize the acidity of a well-risen, slightly sour dough and to give a small lift alongside the yeast, which the sugar and fat will slow considerably. Dissolve it in a spoonful of water so it disperses rather than leaving bitter flecks.
- A pound of raisinsThat is a heavy load of fruit for a pint of dough. Toss the raisins in a tablespoon of flour before adding them so they stay suspended, and fold them in last, briefly.
- Spicing "to taste"For this quantity, about a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and half a teaspoon of ground cloves is in keeping with period raised cakes. Cloves dominate quickly, so err low.
- The second risePut the dough in a greased tube pan or two small loaf pans, filling them no more than two-thirds. Enriched dough this heavy rises slowly: expect 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours in a warm room, and judge by the dough being visibly puffed and slow to spring back rather than by the clock.
- OvenBake at 325 to 350F. A tube pan takes about an hour, small loaves 45 to 55 minutes; the sugar and fruit brown early, so tent with foil if the top colors before the center sets. A skewer should come out clean of batter.
- Yield and keepingOne tube cake or two small loaves, twelve to sixteen servings. Like most heavily fruited cakes it slices better on the second day and keeps a week wrapped.
Raised or "light dough" fruit cakes belong to a long era when yeast was the only dependable leavener and a household kept a batch of bread dough going most days. Pinching off a pint of it for a sweet cake cost nothing extra, and the technique is much older than chemical leavening; the German Stollen and the English yeast-raised "bun loaf" work on the same principle. The teaspoon of soda is a holdover from the saleratus habit, added partly to sweeten dough that had gone a little sour and partly for extra rise, and it sits here beside the yeast rather than replacing it. The Butterick book was published by a pattern company for readers keeping house on a budget.