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Seed Cakes
Place two ounces of butter in a bowl, briskly beat it with a spatula for five minutes, then add four ounces granulated sugar and thoroughly beat for three minutes; add three eggs, one by one, then stir in very gradually half pound sifted flour and a few caraway seeds. Place the preparation in a tin lined with a buttered paper and bake in a moderate oven for forty minutes. Remove, detach from the paper, cut the cake into six equal pieces and serve.
A plain English seed cake in miniature, written in ounces and with no leavening at all. The lift comes entirely from air beaten into the butter, sugar and eggs, so the mixing is the recipe.
- Weights in cupsTwo ounces butter is 4 tablespoons; 4 ounces granulated sugar is a generous 1/2 cup; half a pound sifted flour is about 2 cups. Weighing gives a far more reliable batter than measuring the flour by volume.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F. At forty minutes a small cake of this size should test clean with a skewer; check at thirty-five.
- No leavening is deliberateNo leavening -- There is no baking powder or soda here, and none should be added if you want the intended result: a close, firm crumb rather than a light sponge. The eggs and the beaten butter are the only aeration.
- Beating timesThe five minutes with a spatula assumes hand work. With a stand mixer, two to three minutes on medium for the butter and sugar is equivalent; add the eggs one at a time and beat until each is fully absorbed before the next, or the batter will curdle and the cake will be heavy.
- Fold the flour, do not beat itThe instruction to stir the flour in "very gradually" matters. This is a flour-heavy, liquid-light batter; working it hard develops gluten and produces a tough, rubbery cake. Fold just until no dry streaks remain.
- A few caraway seedsOne to two teaspoons is the usual reading. Caraway is assertive and bitter in excess; a brief toasting in a dry pan sharpens the flavour without needing more seed.
- The tinAn 8x4-inch loaf tin or a 6-inch round both work. "Buttered paper" is parchment, buttered on the side facing the batter; the paper is what lets you lift the cake out and peel it while still warm.
- Yield and servingSix pieces, as stated, which makes this a tea cake rather than a dessert. It keeps two or three days wrapped.
Seed cake is one of the oldest surviving English baking traditions, and the seed is nearly always caraway. Caraway comfits — seeds coated in hard sugar — were a standard confectioner's line from the sixteenth century onward, and the plain buttery cake studded with the bare seed may follow on from them; it is often associated with the end of spring sowing, when a cake was traditionally given to the farm workers, though that link is folklore rather than documented practice. Seed cake had become a fixture of the tea table and a byword for old-fashioned plainness. The very small quantities and the instruction to cut it into six pieces suggest a restaurant or hotel kitchen making single portions to order rather than a household baking a family loaf.