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Whipped-Cream Cake
One cup sugar, two eggs, two table-spoons softened butter and four of milk; beat all well together; add a cup of flour in which has been mixed tea-spoon cream tartar and half tea-spoon soda. Bake in rather small square dripping-pan. When cake is cool have ready a half pint sweet cream whipped to a stiff froth, sweeten and flavor to taste, spread over cake and serve while fresh. The cream will froth easier to be made cold by setting on ice before whipping. -Mrs. Wm. Brown,
A single-layer butter cake of the plainest kind, finished with whipped cream instead of icing. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, so the two things to settle before starting are pan size and heat.
- Pan and yield"Rather small square dripping-pan" means a shallow sheet or roasting pan; an 8-inch square tin is the modern equivalent. One cup of flour makes a thin layer roughly three-quarters of an inch high, cutting into six to eight squares.
- OvenFor a thin cake of this kind, bake at 350F for 18 to 25 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean. In a shallower pan check at 15 minutes; overbaking dries it out quickly at this thickness.
- Cream of tartar and sodaA teaspoon of cream of tartar with half a teaspoon of soda is the period substitute for baking powder, and behaves like about two teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. It reacts on contact with the milk, so get the batter into the tin and the tin into the oven without delay.
- Sweet cream"Sweet cream" means fresh unsoured cream, not sweetened cream. Use heavy or whipping cream with at least 35 percent fat; half a pint is one cup, which whips up to about two cups.
- Chilling the creamThe note about setting the cream on ice is the operative instruction. Cream at refrigerator temperature or below whips fast and holds; chilling the bowl and beaters as well makes a noticeable difference.
- Sweetening and flavourThe recipe leaves both open. Two to three tablespoons of confectioners' sugar per cup of cream and a teaspoon of vanilla is a reasonable modern reading; lemon extract or rose water are other flavourings found in cookbooks of the period.
- Serving windowThe unstabilised cream will begin to weep within a few hours and will soften the cake surface. Spread it just before the cake goes to the table and refrigerate any that is left, expecting it to be past its best the next day.
Whipped cream as a cake finish, rather than boiled icing or a butter frosting, suggests a household with access to ice — the direction to set the cream on ice before whipping points that way. The Dixie Cook Book, like many regional compilations of its era, carries contributions signed with the donor's married name, so "Mrs. Wm. Brown" is the ordinary form of attribution rather than a claim of invention. The leavening is equally of its moment: cream of tartar paired with saleratus or soda was a standard chemical raiser for cakes before packaged baking powders were widely trusted, and cookbooks of the period print the two separately as a matter of course.