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Dessert Cake
A dessert cake (proper) consists of either a pound or sponge cake mixture baked in a high mold; if you have no other use, an ice cream mold as represented in the sketch. Well clean and fully dry your mold, then warm it and butter it with butter by the aid of a brush (by warming it the butter goes in all parts); when buttered turn it bottom up to drain out all excess of butter; when drained dust it out with sifted flour, give it a knock to remove any excess of flour; it is now ready; now place it, small end down, in a tin or something which will prevent its falling over; now fill it threefourths full with the cake mixture and bake in a steady heat; when No. 1.
Top of Bride, or other Cake.
Bride, or other Cake Top.
Side for above Cake.
Side for above Cake. (361) baked remove it from the mold. When cold, if to be ornamented, have ready prepared some icing (see "icing") thin enough to just run smooth but not to run off. Place the cake on a plate, and with a spoon place the icing on the top of the cake, and allow it to run down the sides; continue this until all parts are covered; let it drain down a minute or so, then place a knife under the bottom of the cake, remove it to another plate, and set it in a warm place to dry. This method of icing shows up the pattern of the cake, and the prettier the mold the prettier pattern of cake you will have. To ornament this cake, simply pipe it (as before described), allowing the pattern of the cake to be the guide; if you come to any part where there is no pattern, then ornament it as you fancy, but usually the pattern of the cake will furnish the design. In an icecream mold there is not much pattern further than fluting. I give a sketch of one baked in a pyramid ice-cream mold, (page 353,) together with some idea as to how you are to ornament it. Where the dots appear, you can substitute red and yellow gum drops if you so desire. When you have piped this cake set it on a plate or salver on lace paper, place a bouquet or spray of flowers on top (see sketch), add a few silver leaves where you see fit, and it is complete. This cake looks very pretty iced a light pink and piped in white; you can not well use chocolate ice for this cake (as the chocolate sets too soon), unless you are pretty well accustomed to chocolate icing.
This is a confectioner's method rather than a formula: it assumes you already have a pound or sponge batter and want it baked tall and then poured over with icing. The hinge is the icing consistency — thin enough to flow over the flutes, thick enough to stay on them.
- "A steady heat"The book gives no temperature. For a deep mold, something in the region of 325F is a reasonable modern equivalent; at 350F or above a tall, narrow cake is more likely to crust and dome before the center sets. Timing will vary a good deal with depth — test with a skewer in the thickest part.
- The moldAn antique tin or pewter ice-cream mold is not what most kitchens have. A kugelhopf mold, a tall fluted tube pan, a charlotte mold or a heavy pudding basin all give the ridged pattern the icing is meant to reveal. Avoid a hinged ice-cream mold with a loose lid — batter rises where ice cream does not.
- Buttering and flouringWarming the mold before brushing does genuinely help the butter reach the recesses. Draining it upside down matters more than it sounds: pooled butter in the flutes fries the batter and blurs the pattern you are about to ice.
- Three-quarters fullTake this literally. Pound and sponge batters both climb in a narrow mold, and an overflow ruins the fluting at the rim, which is the part the icing shows off.
- The icingThe recipe points the reader to its own "icing" entry, not reproduced here; a poured water or glace icing (sifted confectioners' sugar with water, or royal icing thinned with a little egg white) will behave as described. Test it on the back of a spoon: it should coat and move slowly. Too thin and it sheets off, leaving the cake showing through; too thick and it fills the flutes flat.
- Setting it "in a warm place to dry"A warm dry spot, not a hot one — the top of a stove or an oven turned off and cracked open. Glacé icing dries to a shell in a couple of hours and should never be refrigerated, which makes it sticky and dull.
- Silver leaves and gum drops"Silver leaves" of this period may well have been stamped metal foil ornaments meant to be lifted off rather than eaten. Use edible silver leaf or silver dragees if you want the effect, and treat any flowers as removable decoration unless you know the variety is food-safe and unsprayed.
- Chocolate icingThe warning holds. A chocolate glaze sets fast and will stiffen halfway down the sides, leaving ridges. Work quickly with a warm bowl and a single generous pour if you attempt it.
- YieldBaked in a mold of roughly 8-9 cups this would serve perhaps ten to twelve in thin wedges; the recipe itself gives no mold size and no yield.
"Dessert cake" here appears to mean a cake for the dessert course proper — the sweet, ornamented thing brought to the table at the end of a formal dinner, as distinct from the plain cakes served with tea. The text reads as the work of a working confectioner rather than a housekeeper: it references earlier sketches and piping instructions and assumes the reader has a piping bag and an eye for pattern. Note that the ice-cream mold is offered only as a fallback — "if you have no other use" — rather than as the expected vessel, though molds of this kind were clearly repurposed freely. The finishing touch — lace paper, a spray of flowers, metal leaves — belongs to a period when a centerpiece cake was judged first as an object and only afterward as something to eat.