Home › Cake › Maple Sugar Layer Cake
Maple Sugar Layer Cake
Follow recipe for plain layer cake. Use maple filling. See recipe for this filling in chapter on Cake Fillings and Frostings.
This is an assembly note rather than a full recipe: it sends you to two other pages in the book. What follows is what you need to know to make the cross-references work in a modern kitchen.
- What "plain layer cake" means hereIn books of this period it is generally a creamed butter cake lightened with baking powder and milk. The book's own plain layer cake recipe governs; the quantities are not given on this page. A sponge or chiffon is a poor match, as the maple filling is heavy and wants a firm crumb under it.
- Maple filling is a candy, not a buttercreamMaple filling is likely a boiled sugar filling, not a buttercream -- Period maple fillings of this kind are usually maple sugar or syrup boiled and beaten as it cools; check the recipe in the frostings chapter, which is not reproduced here. If it is a boiled filling it needs the soft-ball stage, about 234-240F, or it will stay slack and run from between the layers.
- The hinge: beat it at the right momentBoiled maple filling is beaten only after it has cooled somewhat — to around 110F — and then spread quickly. Beat it while it is still hot and it grains coarse and dull; wait too long and it sets in the pan and cannot be spread at all.
- Maple sugarHard cake maple sugar was still readily sold in maple-producing regions when this book appeared, and is specialty stock now. Granulated maple sugar substitutes by weight; pure maple syrup can also be used but carries more water, so the filling needs longer boiling to reach the soft-ball stage.
- Layers must be coldHot boiled filling on warm layers soaks in and the cake slumps. Cool the layers completely, and trim any dome so the filling sits in an even sheet.
- YieldTwo 9-inch layers give 8 to 10 slices. Check the quantity given in the filling recipe itself; fillings of this type are often sized for between the layers and a thin coat on top rather than the sides.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the New York pattern and magazine publisher, and it is built on cross-references: a handful of base recipes, then dozens of variations that consist of a single line telling you which base and which filling to combine. Maple was the obvious northern flavoring for such a variation. Maple sugar is often said to have served as a common household sweetener in New England, upstate New York and the upper Midwest, sold in hard cakes and grated as needed, though cane sugar was also widely used in those regions well before 1911; by the time this book appeared maple had become something of a luxury, prized for flavor rather than economy. A maple-filled layer cake sat squarely in the American tradition of using a plain butter cake as a neutral vehicle for whatever boiled sugar filling the season and the pantry allowed.