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Favorite Snow-Cake
Beat one cup butter to a cream, add one and a half cups flour and stir very thoroughly together; then add one cup corn starch, and one cup sweet milk in which three tea-spoons baking-powder have been dissolved; last, add whites of eight eggs and two cups sugar well beaten together; flavor to taste, bake in sheets, and put together with icing. - Walter Moore, Hamilton.
A white layer cake from the era when cornstarch was the fashionable way to soften a crumb. The method is written out of the usual order, and following it literally is what makes or breaks the cake.
- Read the mixing order carefullyCream the butter, work in the flour and cornstarch, then the milk, and only at the very end fold in the whites beaten with the sugar. The sugar never touches the butter here, so the mechanical aeration comes from the beaten whites rather than from creamed sugar, with the baking powder doing the rest; fold them in gently and stop as soon as no streaks remain.
- Beating whites with sugar"Whites of eight eggs and two cups sugar well beaten together" most likely points to something close to a soft meringue rather than a quick whisk. Beat the whites to soft peaks first, then add the sugar a spoonful at a time and beat to a glossy, thick foam.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabber that a period kitchen also had on hand. Whole milk is the right substitution.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons in this quantity of batter is generous by modern standards; period powders were generally single-acting and of variable strength. With modern double-acting powder, two teaspoons is likely enough, and the batter should go into the oven promptly.
- CornstarchA full cup of cornstarch against a cup and a half of flour dilutes the gluten sharply and gives the fine, pale, tender crumb the name promises. It is the same principle as modern cake flour; do not swap in more flour.
- Bake in sheetsThis indicates thin layers in shallow tins rather than one deep pan; the recipe does not specify their shape or size. Butter and flour three or four 8- or 9-inch pans and bake at 350F for 18 to 22 minutes, until the tops spring back.
- Flavor to tastePeriod white cakes of this kind were flavored with vanilla, lemon, rose water, or almond extract. About two teaspoons of extract suits this volume of batter.
- Yield and finishingThree or four thin layers, serving 12 to 14. "Put together with icing" meant a boiled white icing or a plain confectioners' sugar icing spread between layers and over the top; a buttercream will read as heavier than intended.
Snow cake belongs to the family of all-white layer cakes that spread through American cookbooks in the second half of the nineteenth century, made possible by two commercial products: cheap refined cornstarch, sold in boxes for kitchen use from the 1850s onward, and reliable chemical baking powder. Cornstarch cakes were prized because they produced a crumb whiter and finer than wheat flour alone could give, at a moment when whiteness in baking signaled refinement and a well-supplied pantry. The eight leftover yolks were no waste in a working household; they went into custards, boiled dressings, or gold cake. The attribution to Walter Moore of Hamilton is characteristic of the community cookbooks of the period, which were assembled largely from contributions solicited by name and town, so that a reader could see whose kitchen a recipe had actually come out of.