Sunshine Cake
Seven eggs (both yolks and whites); one cup of sugar; two-thirds cup of flour; one teaspoon cream of tartar; one teaspoon of lemon juice; one-half teaspoon of salt. Put together in the same way as the preceding recipe, and bake in the same way.
A whole-egg sponge in the angel food family, written in the shorthand of a book that assumed you had just read the recipe above it. The method it points to is the standard foam cake procedure, and the details of that procedure are the whole recipe.
- The method the recipe assumesThe preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so this is a reconstruction from standard foam-cake practice: beat the whites to a soft foam, add the cream of tartar and salt, and continue to stiff but not dry peaks. Beat the yolks separately with the lemon juice until thick and pale, fold in the sugar, then the whites, then the sifted flour a little at a time. Overworking at the flour stage is what turns this cake dense.
- FlourTwo-thirds of a cup is a small amount for seven eggs, which is the point: the structure comes from the foam. Use cake flour if you have it, sift it before measuring and again over the batter, and fold rather than stir.
- Cream of tartarNot a leavener here, since there is no soda with it. It stabilises the egg whites and helps keep the crumb white and tender. The lemon juice adds acid and flavour to the yolk mixture. Both are still sold, and the two are to some extent interchangeable as acids.
- PanThe recipe names no pan; a cake of this type is normally baked ungreased in a tube pan of 9 or 10 inches. Foam cakes climb the sides as they set, so grease or a non-stick coating will limit the rise.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction, only "bake in the same way" as the preceding one. In a modern oven, 325F for roughly 45 to 55 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean. Higher heat sets the crust before the interior has risen.
- CoolingInvert the pan immediately and leave the cake hanging until completely cold, then loosen with a thin knife. Cooling upright collapses the crumb.
- Egg sizeEggs of this period were often smaller than today's large grade, so seven large eggs may give a slightly wetter batter; if it looks slack, an extra tablespoon of flour is reasonable.
- YieldOne tube cake, ten to twelve servings. It is best the day it is baked and wants no more than a dusting of sugar or a plain lemon glaze.
Sunshine cake sits between angel food, which uses whites only, and the older yellow sponge, which uses whole eggs beaten together; it takes the yolks back into the batter for colour and richness while keeping the whipped-white lift and the cream of tartar. Names of this sort — sunshine, silver, gold, snow — spread through American community and commercial cookbooks in the late nineteenth century, a period in which tall foam cakes became something an ordinary household could attempt. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book to the same audience of home managers. The recipes are compressed and grouped by type: readers were expected to work down a page of variations rather than treat each one as freestanding.