Home › Layer-Cakes › French Cream Cake
French Cream Cake
Three eggs, one cup granulated sugar, one and a half cups flour, two table-spoons cold water, tea-spoon baking powder. This is enough for two cakes baked in pie-pans, to be split while warm, spreading the hot custard between them, or for four cakes baked in jelly-pans, with the hot custard spread between them, the latter being the preferable plan. For custard, boil nearly one pint sweet milk; mix two table-spoons corn starch with a half tea-cup sweet milk, add two well-beaten eggs; when milk has boiled add nearly a cup sugar, and add gradually the corn starch and eggs, stirring briskly; add a half cup butter, stirring until dissolved, flavor with one tea-spoon vanilla, and spread between cakes while hot. This cake can be used as a pudding by pouring over each piece a spoonful of the custard that is left. - Mrs. Charles Morey. • GOLDEN CREAM CAKE.
Cream one cup sugar and one-fourth cup butter, add half cup sweet milk, the well beaten whites of three eggs, one and a half cups flour, with half a tea-spoon soda, and a tea-spoon cream tartar 0 sifted with it; bake in three deep jelly-tins; beat very light the yolks of two eggs, one cup sugar, and two table-spoons rich sweet cream, flavor with vanilla, and spread on cakes; or to yolks add one and a half table-spoons corn starch, three-quarters cup sweet milk and small lump butter; sweeten and flavor to taste, cook in a custard-kettle till thick, let cool, and then spread. - Mrs. J. M. Southard.
Two contributed versions of the same idea: a plain layer cake split and filled with a cornstarch pastry cream. The cake batters are straightforward; the fillings are where attention is needed.
- Cup and spoon sizesMeasures are close enough to modern ones to use directly: cup = 8 oz, tablespoon = 1/2 oz. A "tea-cup" was usually a smaller vessel than a standard measuring cup, but the recipe gives no equivalence, so treat the half tea-cup of milk for slaking the cornstarch as somewhat under half a cup and adjust to get a smooth slurry.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk. The term distinguished it from sour or buttermilk, which were separate pantry items and behave differently with leaveners.
- Oven and pansJelly-pans are shallow tins of roughly 8 to 9 inches. The recipe gives no oven temperature or time: bake the four thin layers only until just set, the two thicker pie-pan layers correspondingly longer. The recipe calls the four-layer jelly-pan version "the preferable plan," which leaves splitting the warm pie-pan cakes as the more awkward route.
- The first batter is a spongeThree eggs, sugar, flour, two spoons of water and a teaspoon of baking powder, with no fat at all. The lift comes from whipping the eggs and sugar until pale and thick enough to ribbon; the baking powder is insurance, not the engine. Fold the flour in by hand.
- Soda and cream of tartarIn the Golden Cream Cake, half a teaspoon of soda with a teaspoon of cream of tartar is a period baking powder mixed fresh in the bowl. It is single-acting, reacting as soon as it meets the liquid, so get the batter into the tins promptly. About two teaspoons of modern baking powder does the same work if you prefer.
- The custard must actually boilCornstarch needs to reach a full bubbling boil for a minute to thicken fully and lose its raw, chalky taste. Add the slaked starch and beaten eggs to the hot milk in a thin stream while stirring hard, then bring it back up over moderate heat rather than pulling it off at the first sign of thickening.
- Half a cup of butterThat is a great deal of butter for a pint of milk, and it makes something closer to a German buttercream than a boiled custard. Stir it in off the heat in pieces so it emulsifies rather than splitting out as a greasy film.
- Skip the uncooked fillingThe first filling given in the Golden Cream Cake, raw yolks beaten with sugar and cream and spread straight on the layers, is never heated at any point. Use the second option in the same paragraph, the cornstarch custard cooked in a double boiler (the "custard-kettle") until thick.
- YieldThe first batter is stated to be enough for two pie-pan cakes, each split and filled, or four jelly-pan layers. Custard is left over, which is why the recipe suggests pouring a spoonful over each piece to serve it as a pudding.
"Cream cake" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks often means a plain cake layered with a boiled cornstarch-and-egg custard rather than with whipped cream. The style is generally placed in the same family as Boston cream pie, and the frequent "French" label is often said to reflect the prestige of French pastry cream (crème pâtissière); cornstarch, cheap and widely marketed for cooking from around the middle of the century, appears to have served as the American substitute for a flour-thickened crème. Two contributors sent in near-identical versions under different names, so the same dish appears several times over with each household's small preferences intact.