Home › Cake › Water Cake Decorated with Peanut Stars
Water Cake Decorated with Peanut Stars
butter; three-fourths cup of sweet milk; two cups of sifted flour; whites of four eggs; two teaspoons of baking powder. Mix the flour and baking powder together; beat the whites of the eggs stiff and add last to the other ingredients. Lastly stir in one large cup of chopped hickory nut meats and bake in a square loaf. Frost the top when done.
The page as printed begins mid-sentence: the sugar and the butter quantity have been lost with the previous line, and the title's peanut stars belong to a decoration described elsewhere in the chapter. What survives is a workable white nut loaf, but two amounts have to be supplied.
- The missing quantitiesA white cake of this type, built on 2 cups of flour and 4 egg whites, normally takes about 1/2 cup butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar. That is an inference from the proportions, not from the book — the original figures are not on this page.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or sour milk used with saleratus. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for two cups of flour is still standard. Period powders were commonly single-acting rather than double-acting, so get the batter into the oven promptly rather than letting it stand.
- Order of mixingCream butter and sugar, add milk and flour alternately, then fold the stiff whites in last. Fold — the whites are the only lift beyond the powder, and stirring them down gives a heavy, close crumb.
- Nuts lastAdding a full cup of chopped nuts after the whites will deflate them somewhat no matter how carefully it is done. Toss the nuts with a spoonful of the measured flour first so they suspend instead of sinking.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory was a common wild nut in American kitchens and is rarely sold now. Pecans are the nearest relative in flavor and texture; walnuts work but are more tannic.
- Square loaf and ovenAn 8-inch square pan, greased and lined. The recipe gives no oven direction at all; for a cake this size, 350F for 40 to 50 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back.
- Frosting and yieldFrost only after the cake is fully cool or the icing will slide. The pan gives 9 to 12 squares.
Butterick, the dress-pattern company, published cook books in the same spirit as its sewing manuals: a middle-class household guide with everything standardized and decorative. The book is as interested in how a cake looks on the table as in how it tastes. The cake itself belongs to the large family of American white cakes made possible by cheap chemical baking powder, which spread from around the 1850s and 1860s and let cooks lean on egg whites for color and delicacy rather than for lift alone. Hickory nuts place it in the eastern and midwestern United States, where shagbark hickories were gathered rather than bought; such recipes faded from print as home nut-gathering did.