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Plain Fruit Cake
Mrs. Arthurs.
One-half pound of well washed currants, and one-half pound of raisins, one cup of butter beaten to a cream, one cup of white sugar, one cup of milk, three cups of flour, three eggs, and three teaspoonsful of baking powder; paper a dish and bake one hour.
A butter cake with fruit in it rather than a true fruitcake — nothing to soak, feed or age. The original gives no oven temperature and no pan size, so the two things worth settling before you start are the heat and the dish.
- Oven temperatureAn hour of baking for a cake this size implies a moderate oven: 325-350F. At 350F a loaf-shaped cake of this batter is usually done in 55-70 minutes; test with a skewer in the centre.
- "Paper a dish"Line the tin with parchment, base and sides, as the buttered paper of the period did. With a pound of fruit the mixture comes to something like 9-10 cups, so use two 9x5-inch loaf tins or one large deep tin rather than a single standard loaf.
- Weights of fruitHalf a pound each of currants and raisins is 8 oz (225 g) each, roughly 1 1/2 cups of currants and a scant 1 1/2 cups of raisins. That is a pound of fruit to three cups of flour — a generous but not overwhelming ratio.
- Washing the currantsNineteenth-century dried currants came loose and needed cleaning of grit and stems, hence "well washed." Modern packaged fruit needs no washing; if you do rinse it, dry it thoroughly or the wet fruit will streak the crumb.
- Keep the fruit from sinkingToss the currants and raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in; fruit can settle during a bake this long.
- Butter "beaten to a cream"Softened, not melted. Cream it with the sugar until pale and aerated; the creamed air contributes lift alongside the baking powder.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to three cups of flour is the standard modern ratio, so no adjustment is needed. Mix the powder into the flour and get the cake into the oven promptly once the liquid is added.
- YieldMore than a single standard loaf: expect two 9x5-inch loaves, or one large deep cake. It keeps well wrapped for three or four days.
"Plain" in a Victorian cake list is a technical word, not an apology: it marks a cake without brandy, without the pounded spices, candied peel and molasses of a proper rich fruit or wedding cake, and without the long slow baking those required. This one is a butter cake stretched with a pound of dried fruit, cheap enough for everyday use and quick enough for an ordinary oven rather than for Christmas. It also shows the arrival of chemical leavening in domestic baking: three teaspoons of baking powder do the work that eggs alone, or a yeast sponge, would have done a generation earlier. Like most of The Home Cook Book, first published in Toronto in 1877 and sold to benefit the Hospital for Sick Children, the recipe came in over a contributor's name. The oven heat and the size of the dish are left to the cook's judgement.