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Oundation, or Plain Cake
Two eggs; one cup of sugar; one-third cup of butter; one-half cup of milk; one and three-fourths cups sifted flour; two teaspoons of baking powder. Mix the baking powder well with the flour, cream the butter and sugar, add the wellbeaten eggs and milk, and stir the flour in gradually, adding flavoring. Bake in layers.
A basic 1-2-3 style butter cake, given as a foundation to be flavored, layered and filled as the cook likes. The original assumes you know your own oven and your own pans, so both need supplying.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. Bake layers at 350-375F for 20-25 minutes, until the center springs back and a tester comes out clean. A single 8-inch square or a loaf from this batter will need 30-40 minutes.
- Pans and yieldThe batter is about 3 cups and fills two 8-inch round layers thinly, or one 8-inch square. It serves 8. Grease and flour, or line the bottoms with parchment.
- One-third cup butterThat is 5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon, roughly 75 g. Rounding to 5 tablespoons does no harm. The proportion is deliberately lean for a butter cake, which is what makes it a plain, everyday one rather than a rich one.
- Sifted flour"One and three-fourths cups sifted flour" means sift first, then measure, which gives noticeably less flour than scooping. If you weigh, use about 200 g of all-purpose flour, or 190 g if you want a tenderer crumb.
- Creaming matters mostWith only 2 teaspoons of baking powder doing the lifting, the air you beat into the butter and sugar is doing real work. Cream them until visibly pale and fluffy, several minutes with a mixer, before the eggs go in.
- Adding eggs and milkBeaten eggs and cold milk added together to creamed butter will often curdle the mixture. Have both at room temperature, beat the eggs in first, then alternate milk and flour in two or three additions to keep the batter smooth.
- Baking powderTurn-of-the-century powders were often single-acting and lost lift on standing. Modern double-acting powder is more forgiving, but still get the pans into a preheated oven promptly.
- FlavoringThe book leaves this open. A teaspoon of vanilla is the default; lemon zest, almond extract or a little grated nutmeg all suit the plain batter. Stir it in with the last of the flour.
- FinishingLayers this plain want a filling: jam, lemon curd, whipped cream, or a simple boiled or butter icing. Unfilled, the cake stales within a day.
"Foundation cake" is a category rather than a dish. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century American cookbooks organized their cake chapters around one or two base batters that a cook was expected to vary endlessly, splitting the batter and adding spice, chocolate, currants or coconut, or baking the same mixture as layers, cupcakes or a loaf. The proportions here belong to the family often called 1-2-3-4 cake in its richer form; this is its economical cousin, with a third of a cup of butter instead of a half or more. The whole approach depended on reliable chemical baking powder, commercially available in the United States from the 1850s onward, which freed household bakers from yeast-raised and heavily egg-raised cakes and made a quick layer cake an ordinary weekday possibility. The title as printed here appears to be missing the initial F of "Foundation".