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Jelly Cake (IV)
Mrs. J. H. Mead.
Two eggs, one cup of sugar, one tablespoon of butter, one and a-half cups of flour, one tablespoon of Cook's and a-half cups of flour, one tablespoon of Cook's Friend baking powder, two-thirds of a cup of milk; beat the butter to a cream, and add the yolks of the eggs, well beaten: beat the whites to a froth and add them to the sugar ; mix all together; then put in the flour with the baking powder well mixed in; last of all add the milk; flavour with essence.
A thin-layer jelly cake in the shorthand of 1870s community cookbooks: the batter is given in full and the baking is left to the cook's judgement. Two points need settling before you start, and a third is a printer's error.
- The duplicated line"one tablespoon of Cook's and a-half cups of flour" is a typesetting slip in which the compositor repeated part of the flour measure. The recipe uses one and a half cups of flour in total, not three.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand widely sold when this book appeared in Toronto. Substitute the same volume of any modern double-acting baking powder — though one tablespoon for a cup and a half of flour is generous by current practice, where two teaspoons would be normal. Reducing it to two teaspoons gives a cleaner flavour and less risk of a metallic aftertaste.
- No baking instructionThe original gives none, so shape, temperature and timing are left to the cook. Divide the batter between two or three greased 8- or 9-inch round tins so each layer is thin; as a modern equivalent, bake at about 350F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the centre springs back. Thin layers overbake quickly.
- Assembling it"jelly cake" means the layers are stacked with a thin spread of fruit jelly between them; tart jellies such as currant, quince or crabapple suit it. Cakes of this kind were often finished with nothing more than a dusting of sugar, though this recipe gives no instruction either way.
- "Flavour with essence"Essence means a flavouring extract; lemon and vanilla were both common in cakes of this sort. A teaspoon suits this quantity of batter.
- The mixing orderWhites beaten to a froth and stirred into the sugar, then combined with the creamed butter and yolks, is characteristic of older cake method. Fold rather than beat once the whites are in, and add the milk last, as directed.
- YieldAbout 8 servings from a two- or three-layer cake. The cake is best the day it is made; the jelly softens the layers overnight.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," with proceeds going to the Hospital for Sick Children — one of the earliest Canadian fundraising cookbooks, in the mould of the American church-and-charity compilations that followed the Civil War. Compilations of this kind commonly carried several versions of the same cake, one from each contributor, printed under a shared heading and distinguished by number. Jelly cake itself belongs to the age of chemically raised layer cakes, when commercial baking powders made thin, quick-baking rounds practical for home ovens; the filling was whatever jelly the household had put up the previous autumn. The naming of a specific brand, Cook's Friend, is typical of these books.