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California Cake
Mrs. Charles Rogers.
Two cups sugar, one cup butter, one cup milk, two eggs, three teaspoons Cook's Friend baking powder, put in three cups sifted flour, flavour and add fruit. This receipt makes two cakes.
A plain butter cake in the 1-2-3 mould, written for a cook who already knew how to fill and bake a tin. Everything unstated — oven, time, pan, quantity of fruit — has to be supplied.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand (McLaren's) that appears in Canadian receipts of this period and is still sold in Canada. Any modern baking powder can stand in one for one: three teaspoons to three cups of flour is about the standard proportion.
- No oven temperature is givenA cake of this richness wants a moderate oven, about 350F. Wood ranges were judged by hand and by simple browning tests rather than by numbers, so the writer saw no reason to say so.
- Pans and timingTwo cakes means two round tins of about 8 inches, or two loaf tins. Reckon 30-35 minutes for rounds and 45-55 for loaves, testing with a skewer.
- Mixing orderThe receipt lists ingredients rather than method. Cream the butter and sugar thoroughly, beat in the eggs, then add the sifted flour and baking powder alternately with the milk. Two eggs for three cups of flour is lean by modern standards, so the creaming is what carries the crumb.
- "Flavour"Meaning an extract or spice to taste: a teaspoon of vanilla, or lemon, almond or rose, all in use in this period. Nutmeg and mace are also common in Canadian cake receipts of the time.
- "Add fruit"Unquantified, as it often is in these books. A cup to a cup and a half of raisins, currants or chopped peel per cake is in keeping; toss it in a spoonful of the measured flour first so it does not sink.
- YieldTwo cakes, each serving eight to ten. Halving the whole thing for one cake works cleanly except for the eggs — use one large egg and a splash more milk.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children; it is generally regarded as the first Canadian fundraising cookbook, and its receipts carry the contributors' names, as this one carries Mrs. Charles Rogers's. The recipe itself is a variant of the proportional butter cake — the family that includes 1-2-3-4 cake and pound cake — in which the cook remembers cups rather than a method. Place-names attached to plain cakes (California, Washington, Portland, Dover) are often said to have been more fashion than provenance in this period, and there is nothing Californian about the ingredients. The page also names a proprietary baking powder in the text, rather than saying simply "baking powder."