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Coffee Cake (Two cups brown sugar one)
Two cups brown sugar, one of butter, one of molasses, one of strong coffee as prepared for the table, four eggs, one tea-spoon saleratus, two of cinnamon, two of cloves, one of grated nutmeg, pound raisins, one of currants, four cups flour.-Mrs. Wm. Skinner, Battle Creek,
A dark, heavily spiced fruit cake leavened with soda against the acidity of molasses and coffee. The list is complete but the method is entirely absent, so the working details below matter more than usual.
- Read the fruit line correctly"Pound raisins, one of currants" means one pound of each — the second "one" borrows the unit from the first, a common shorthand in this book. That is two pounds of dried fruit against four cups of flour, which is what makes this a fruit cake rather than a spice loaf.
- Saleratus is baking sodaOne teaspoon, and no baking powder alongside it. (Saleratus was potassium bicarbonate earlier in the century and sodium bicarbonate later; either way it acts as baking soda.) The molasses and the coffee supply the acid it needs, so it is not a one-for-one swap for baking powder: an equal measure of powder carries far less soda and will leave the crumb pale and under-risen.
- "Strong coffee as prepared for the table"Ordinary brewed coffee at drinking strength, cold or at most lukewarm when it goes in — period coffee was boiled and stout, so brew it on the strong side rather than using a mild drip pot. Espresso or instant at concentrate strength will overwhelm the spice.
- Method the recipe omitsCream butter and brown sugar, beat in the eggs, then add molasses and coffee alternately with the flour, with the soda and spices sifted into the flour. Toss the raisins and currants in a little of the measured flour before folding them in so they do not sink.
- CurrantsZante currants — the tiny dried grapes — not fresh red or black currants and not raisins again. If you cannot find them, dried sour cherries chopped small are closer in effect than more raisins.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given; household ranges of the period rarely offered any reliable means of reading one, and the cook judged the oven by hand. Bake at 325F; a batter this dense and sugary scorches at anything hotter. Reckon on about an hour and a half to two hours depending on pan, testing with a skewer at the centre.
- Pans and yieldThis is a large cake — nearer six pounds of batter and fruit once the two pounds of dried fruit are counted. A 10-inch tube pan, lined with parchment, is the safer choice; two 9x5 loaf pans will be full to the brim, and a single 9-inch round will not hold it.
- KeepingLike most molasses-and-fruit cakes it improves after two or three days wrapped tightly. The spice reads harsh straight from the oven and settles as the crumb moistens.
"Coffee cake" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks often means what it says — a cake with coffee in the batter — though the term was also used for cake served with coffee, and the sweet yeasted breakfast bread sense is not purely a later development. The coffee here is doing two jobs: it deepens the colour and bitterness of the brown sugar and molasses, and its acidity helps the saleratus lift a very heavy batter. Recipes of this type sit somewhere between a plain fruit cake and the older molasses "election" and "training" cakes, and they were economical in the way a proper fruit cake was not, since coffee and molasses stood in for brandy and citron. The Dixie Cook Book credits its contributors by name and town, and Mrs. Wm. Skinner of Battle Creek is one of many northern contributors in a book marketed as Southern — the compilers appear to have drawn heavily on earlier Midwestern collections, the book sharing much of its material with the Buckeye compilations.