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Caramel Cake (One and a half cups sugar)
One and a half cups sugar, three-fourths cup butter, half cup milk, two and a fourth cups flour, three eggs, one and a half heaping tea-spoons baking-powder, or a small tea-spoon soda, and two tea-spoons cream tartar; bake in jelly-tins. Make caramel as follows: Butter size of an egg, pint brown sugar, half cup milk or .
A plain butter cake baked in shallow layers, with a boiled brown-sugar frosting. Note that the original text breaks off mid-sentence in the caramel directions, so the icing has to be finished from experience.
- The truncated frostingThe line ends "half cup milk or" — almost certainly "or cream." As written you have butter the size of an egg (about 2 oz), a pint of brown sugar (roughly 2 cups packed, 14 oz), and half a cup of milk or cream, boiled together and beaten until it thickens. Cook it to the soft-ball stage, 238F on a thermometer, then take it off the heat and beat until it loses its gloss; undercooked it runs off the cake, overcooked it sets to candy before you can spread it.
- Jelly-tinsShallow round pans, 8 or 9 inches across, for thin layers. This batter fills three 8-inch pans or two 9-inch. Butter and flour them, or line the bottoms with parchment.
- OvenThe original gives no oven direction. Bake at 350F; thin layers take 18 to 22 minutes — start checking at 18, since a dry layer under boiled frosting is unpleasant.
- The leavening choiceHeaping teaspoons hold appreciably more than level ones; for 1½ heaping teaspoons use about 2 level teaspoons of modern baking powder. The alternative given — a small teaspoon soda with two teaspoons cream of tartar — is homemade baking powder in the usual proportion, and works, though the soda should be sifted with the flour to avoid dark flecks.
- Method, which the original omitsCream the butter and sugar thoroughly, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted flour and leavening alternately with the milk. The recipe assumes the cook knows this; the cake is heavy if the butter and sugar are not well beaten first.
- Butter and saltThree-fourths cup is 6 oz. Period butter was often salted to taste; with unsalted butter add a scant half teaspoon of salt to the flour.
- Brown sugarNineteenth-century brown sugar was less refined and more strongly flavored than light brown sugar today. Dark brown sugar gives a closer result in the frosting.
- YieldA three-layer 8-inch cake, 10 to 12 servings. Frost between the layers as well as on top; the boiled icing sets firm and the cake keeps two or three days under a cover.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to a family of late nineteenth-century American compilations built on the same plan — the well-known Buckeye Cookery among them — in which recipes were gathered from contributing housewives and printed in a dense, telegraphic style that names quantities and assumes the technique. "Caramel" here means the boiled brown-sugar frosting rather than cooked white sugar; in the American South the same icing, beaten by hand over long minutes, became the defining feature of what is still called caramel cake. The alternative leavening — soda with cream of tartar — is a survival from the years when commercial baking powder was newer and more expensive, and it is often said that it was not yet trusted in every kitchen.