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Jelly Cake
Mrs. John Thomas.
One cup sugar, two tablespoons butter, two eggs, three tablespoons milk, one cup flour, essence, one teaspoon Cook's Friend, or one-half teaspoon cream tartar and one-fourth soda; bake in two jelly tins in a moderately warm oven; beat the sugar and butter well together.
A plain two-layer cake meant to be split and spread with jelly, from an era when the cook was trusted to know the rest. It is a small batter, and the creaming is what makes it rise.
- Cook's FriendA brand of baking powder sold in Canada in the late nineteenth century. Use 1 teaspoon of modern double-acting baking powder, or the stated cream of tartar and soda if you prefer the older chemistry.
- "Essence"Flavouring extract, left to the cook's choice. About 1 teaspoon of vanilla, or lemon, which pairs better with a tart jelly.
- Jelly tinsShallow round layer pans, roughly 8 inches across. The batter is deliberately thin in the pan; a deep cake tin will give you one squat layer instead of two.
- Oven temperature"Moderately warm" corresponds roughly to a modern 350F; period terms are approximate. Thin layers bake fast, 12 to 18 minutes, and are done when the centre springs back.
- The hingeBeat the sugar and butter well together, as the recipe specifically directs, before adding the eggs and milk.
- SaltNot mentioned; butter of the period was often salted. Add a pinch if using unsalted butter.
- AssemblyCool the layers, spread one with about half a cup of jelly or jam, and stack. No frosting or other finish is called for.
- YieldOne small two-layer cake, six to eight slices.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in the 1870s by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada," with proceeds going to the Hospital for Sick Children, and it is generally credited as the first fundraising cookbook published in Canada; it took its model, and a good deal of its content, from the Chicago book of the same name. Recipes signed with a contributor's married name, as this one is, suited a book that was a subscription list as much as a manual. "Jelly cake" was a standard of the period, a lean butter cake baked in shallow tins so it could be layered with whatever preserve the household had put up, and the reliance on a proprietary leavening like Cook's Friend marks the moment when packaged baking powder was displacing the older cream of tartar and soda pairing, which the recipe still lists alongside it.