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Cup Cake
Mrs. Arthurs.
One cup of butter, one of sifted sugar, one of milk, three cups of flour, three eggs, three teaspoonsful of Cook's Friend baking powder, flavour with essence of lemon; line a dish with buttered paper and bake one hour.
A plain butter cake built on cupfuls rather than weights, from a period when the loaf tin was lined with buttered paper instead of parchment. The method is left entirely to the cook, so a few assumptions need filling in.
- Cream the butter and sugar firstThe recipe names no method, but with a full cup of butter and only three eggs the cake depends on air beaten into the fat. Cream butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add flour and milk alternately. Dumping everything together gives a heavy, close crumb.
- The cupsTake the cup as 8 fl oz throughout: 8 oz (225 g) butter, about 7 oz (200 g) sugar, 1 cup milk, and roughly 12-13 oz (350-375 g) flour, measured by scooping and levelling. The flour of the period may not have behaved like modern all-purpose; if the crumb comes out tough, a blend of two parts all-purpose to one part cake flour will soften it.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian baking powder brand of the period, still sold in Canada. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes directly; three teaspoons for three cups of flour is about the standard modern proportion.
- Essence of lemonLemon extract, not lemon juice or zest. The recipe gives no quantity; one to one and a half teaspoons is enough for this amount of batter.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, since the oven was judged by hand and by the state of the fire. Bake at 350F. A large tube or bundt pan, or two loaf tins, suits the batter better than one deep dish.
- An hour is a maximum, not a targetIn a single deep tin the full hour may be right, but in two loaf tins or a tube pan it will be done in 40-50 minutes. Test with a skewer at the centre and stop when it comes out clean; overbaked butter cake dries fast.
- Buttered paperUse parchment, buttered on the side facing the batter, or simply butter and flour the tin. Waxed paper is not a substitute for a full hour at oven heat.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 lb of cake, or roughly 12-16 slices. It keeps well wrapped for two or three days.
"Cup cake" here means a cake measured in cupfuls rather than a small cake in a paper case; the same sense lies behind the 1-2-3-4 cake, and it reflects a move away from weighing everything on a balance. This one comes from The Home Cook Book, published in Toronto in 1877 and compiled by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," generally described as the first Canadian charity or fundraising cookbook, with recipes signed by their contributors -- hence Mrs. Arthurs. The named brand of baking powder belongs to the same commercial world: books of this kind carried manufacturers' advertising, and recipes of the period often specified a particular tin of baking powder by name.