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Dominoes
Make "Mrs. Jennison's sponge cake," bake in long pie-tins (two such tins will make twelve dominoes, and if no more are required, the rest of the batter may be baked in a loaf). The batter in the pie-tins should not be more than one-third of an inch deep; spread it evenly, and bake in a quick oven. Have a brown paper nearly twice the size of the cake on the table, and the moment one of the cakes comes from the oven turn it upside down in the center of the paper, spread it with a thin layer of currant jelly, and lay the other cake on it upside down, cut it with a hot, sharp knife lengthwise, directly through the center, then divide it across in six equal parts, push them with the knife about an inch apart, and ice them with ordinary white icing, putting a large dessert-spoonful on every piece; the heat of the cake will soften it, and with a little help the edges and sides will be smoothly covered. All of the icing that runs over on the paper may be carefully taken up and used again. It must then dry, which it will do very quickly. Make a horn of stiff white paper about five inches long, one and a half inches across the top, and one-eighth of an inch at the other end; put in it a dessert-spoon of dark chocolate icing, close the horn at the top, and pressing out the icing from the small opening, draw a line of it across the center of every cake, and then make spots like those on ivory dominoes; keep the horn supplied with icing. - In the Kitchen.
A sponge sheet sandwiched with jelly, cut into bars and iced to look like a set of ivory dominoes. The whole thing hinges on speed: everything from the oven to the icing happens while the cake is still hot.
- The base cakeThis depends on "Mrs. Jennison's sponge cake" elsewhere in the book. Any thin-baking sponge sheet batter works; avoid butter cakes, which will not stay flexible or cut cleanly at a third of an inch.
- "Long pie-tins"Oblong shallow tins. Two tins of batter a third of an inch deep give twelve finished dominoes, each half the width of the tin by a sixth of its length; line with parchment rather than greasing, since the cakes must invert instantly.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-450F. A thin sponge at that depth should be done in about 5-8 minutes — watch it from four minutes on. Overbaked sheets crack when you cut them and refuse to take the icing smoothly.
- Work hotThe whole method depends on residual heat: the jelly loosens, the icing slumps and self-levels over the edges, and the sheet cuts without shattering. Once the cake cools you are icing bars by hand with a spatula, which is a different and slower job.
- Brown paperParchment or a silicone mat. The original uses paper so the run-off icing can be scraped up and reused; parchment does this better.
- Dessert-spoonAbout two teaspoons, or 10 ml — between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. One per bar is roughly right for full coverage.
- Ordinary white icingPeriod "white icing" of this type was usually confectioners' sugar beaten with egg white and a little lemon, i.e. royal icing. It sets hard and pipes well, which is what the domino spots require; if raw white is a concern, use pasteurized whites or meringue powder.
- The paper hornA cone rolled from stiff paper with a 1/8-inch opening, i.e. a piping bag with a fine plain tip. Chocolate icing for the pips should be stiffer than the white flood coat or the spots will spread and run together.
- Yield and keepingTwelve dominoes from two tins, with leftover batter baked as a loaf. They are best the day they are made; the sponge dries quickly once cut on all four sides.
Cakes cut and decorated to imitate other objects were a staple of late nineteenth-century American "fancy" baking, when a hostess was judged partly on novelty at the tea table, and dominoes were small, rectangular, and easy to render with two colors of icing. The credit line "In the Kitchen" is generally taken to point to Elizabeth S. Miller's cookbook of that title, published in the 1870s and widely borrowed from; compilers of such volumes assembled much of their contents from printed sources alongside contributed household recipes, and generally acknowledged them in this abbreviated way. The technique itself is a useful piece of confectionery practice: the cook rolled her own cone from stiff paper, and relied on the heat of the cake to make a poured sugar icing flow and set.