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Cakes
GEORGIA COCOANUT CAKE. - Grate a pound of cocoanut and dry, cream, one pound butter, add one of sugar, beaten yolks of two eggs, then the beaten whites and one pound of flour alternately, and last the grated nut, beat until perfectly light; bake in a moderate heat for three hours.-L. A. C., Atlanta, Ga.
CORN STARCH PUFFS. - Beat with about one-half cup (scant) butter, one cup each sugar and corn-starch, four eggs, two even teaspoons baking powder, one-half teaspoon vanilla extract; bake in gem irons or patty pans and frost.
DROP CAKES.-One cup each sour cream and sugar, one teaspoon soda, one-half cup currants, one and a half cups flour; flavor with nutmeg and cinnamon, and drop from spoon into a buttered pan, and bake in quick oven. These are delicious if eaten warm, and good cold.
KAFFEE KUCHEN. - Take one-half cake compressed yeast, or teacup home-made, put it in a cup of warm milk, and stir this in the middle of a pan of flour; when light, add one-half pound each butter and sugar, some floured raisins, teaspoon lemon essence, nutmeg and cinnamon; put in dripping pan, let rise, then with a cake brush rub the top with a beaten egg, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and bake. - To bake fruit cake in paste; make it of flour and water, roll out on a board like pie crust, line your greased tins all over the inside with it and pour in the cake batter; do not break off the paste till you want to use the cake. This is especially nice for sponge and fruit cakes.
ANOTHER KAFFEE KUCHEN.--Four pounds of light bread dough, eight ounces each sugar and butter or lard, one egg, (not essential), take the dough at noon and mix in the ingredients all slightly warm, knead on the table with flour sufficient, set to rise until four o'clock, knead it again by spreading it out on the table with the knuckles, folding over and repeating, roll it out to sheets scarcely thicker than a pencil, place on baking pans, brush over with either water or melted lard, or milk, rise about an hour, score the cakes with a knife point as you put them in the oven to prevent the crust puffing up, bake about fifteen minutes. One of the attractions of this plain cake is the powdered cinnamon and sugar sifted on top after baking, the cake being first brushed with sugar and water. Cut in squares and serve hot. The foregoing makes a sheet of cake large enough to cover a stove top.
PIC-NIC LOAF.-Another form of the coffee cake, cheap and good for school pic-nics and the like. Mix a few raisins or currants in the coffee cake dough, roll out pieces to the size of dessert plates and half inch thick, brush over with a little melted lard, double them over like large split rolls, rise and bake like bread, and brush over with a mixture of water, egg and sugar.
A cluster of cake recipes from a period when "cake" covered everything from a pound-for-pound butter cake to sweetened bread dough. The measurements are mostly sound; the oven directions are the part that needs translating.
- The three-hour bake is the hingeThe Georgia cocoanut cake is a full pound cake — a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and coconut — baked in a deep tin over a wood or coal range whose "moderate heat" ran cooler and less evenly than a thermostat. Three hours at a true 350F would scorch it; a cake this dense wants roughly 300–325F, and it is done when a skewer comes out clean rather than when the clock says so.
- Only two eggsA pound cake of this size normally carries eight or more eggs; two yolks and two whites cannot lift four pounds of batter. Expect something closer to a very rich, close-grained coconut shortbread loaf than a modern layer cake, and beat the butter and sugar far longer than feels necessary — the aeration is the only leavening there is.
- Grated coconut, driedThis means fresh coconut meat grated and spread out to dry, not sweetened flake. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest supermarket equivalent; sweetened flake will push an already very sweet batter over the edge.
- Quick ovenFor the drop cakes, read 425–450F. They are small, chemically leavened and meant to go in and out fast; sour cream plus a teaspoon of soda gives a strong lift that collapses if the oven is cool.
- Gem irons and patty pansGem irons are cast-iron muffin pans, patty pans are small tartlet or cupcake tins. Grease and preheat cast iron before the batter goes in.
- Compressed yeastCompressed yeast cakes varied in size, but half a cake is on the order of ⅓ oz of fresh yeast, or about a teaspoon of instant dried. The alternative given — "a teacup home-made" — is a cup of liquid barm or home-made yeast, and is not interchangeable by volume with modern yeast.
- The second Kaffee Kuchen is bread doughFour pounds of risen bread dough enriched at noon with sugar and fat, rolled pencil-thin and baked about fifteen minutes. It covers a whole stove top; halve it unless you have two full sheet pans. Scoring before baking is what keeps the thin crust from blistering away from the crumb.
- Lining tins with flour-and-water pasteA protective jacket to keep the outside of a long-baked fruit or sponge cake from hardening, which is why it is left on until the cake is wanted. Greased paper was used for much the same purpose; baking parchment or a doubled band of paper does the job now. The paste is not meant to be eaten.
- Sour creamThe sour cream in the drop cakes was naturally soured cream, probably thinner than today's cultured product. Modern full-fat sour cream works; if the batter will not drop freely from the spoon, slacken it with a spoonful of buttermilk.
Recipes like these belong to the late nineteenth-century wave of regional compilations built from contributed recipes, and the initialled credit — "L. A. C., Atlanta, Ga." — is the signature of that method: a book assembled from the household receipts of many contributors rather than written by one author. The mix here is telling. A pound cake heavy with grated fresh coconut suggests coconuts were reaching Southern kitchens as an affordable treat, while the two Kaffee Kuchen and the "pic-nic loaf" point to the German-speaking communities of the South and Midwest, whose sweetened, cinnamon-dusted bread dough appears in American cookbooks under its own name — the page itself glosses it as "the coffee cake." The cornstarch puffs mark a newer arrival still: commercial cornstarch and chemical baking powder, both industrial products, turning up in the same chapter as a cake leavened by nothing but beaten butter.