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Sponge Jelly Cake (II)
Mrs. Carson.
Three eggs beaten separate, one cup sugar, one cup flour, two teaspoons Cook's Friend baking powder put into the flour, and three tablespoons boiling water. Mix all together and cook in jelly tins in a quick oven ; place either jelly or chocolate frosting between the cakes.
A hot-water sponge built for thin layers, of the sort that was split and stacked with jelly between. It has no butter and no milk, so the whipped eggs and the boiling water are doing all the work.
- The hinge: keep the air inThe whites are beaten separately for a reason. Beat the yolks with the sugar until pale, stir in the flour and powder alternately with the boiling water, then fold the stiff whites in last with a light hand. Overmixing at that final stage gives a flat, tough layer.
- Boiling waterThree tablespoons of boiling water thins the thick yolk-and-sugar batter so it can be folded without deflating, and it is added hot on purpose. Measure it after it boils, not before.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Canadian brand associated with Montreal. Any modern double-acting baking powder can stand in at the same measure, though two teaspoons to a cup of flour is generous by modern standards.
- "Jelly tins"Shallow round tins, roughly 8 to 9 inches across, filled only deep enough to give a layer a half-inch thick. This quantity makes two or three such layers, or one shallow sheet to be cut. Grease and line the bottoms; a fatless sponge sticks.
- A quick ovenUsually glossed as roughly 400 to 425F. At that heat thin sponge layers are done in about 8 to 12 minutes, when the top springs back and the edges just begin to pull from the tin. Watch them from minute seven; another two minutes turns them dry and brittle.
- FlourMuch nineteenth-century household flour was softer than modern all-purpose, though it varied by mill and region. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, gives a closer texture.
- No salt, no flavouringThe recipe gives neither. A pinch of salt and a half teaspoon of vanilla or a little lemon zest are consistent with period practice and improve a plain sponge considerably.
- Filling and keepingSpread the jelly or chocolate frosting while the layers are fully cool or it will soak through. A fatless sponge stales fast; this is a cake for the day it is baked.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children, and it is generally counted among the first cookbooks published in Canada. Its method was to gather contributions under contributors' names, which is why this page reads simply "Mrs. Carson" and why a second Sponge Jelly Cake appears alongside a first. Jelly cake of this kind belongs to the moment when chemical leavening became reliable in the home kitchen: thin, quick-baking sponge layers stacked with preserves were far less trouble than a rich creamed cake, and the presence of a named brand of baking powder in the ingredient list shows how quickly commercial products worked their way into handwritten family receipts.