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Chocolate Cake
Follow the preceding directions and bake in two layers. Cool and put together with Chocolate Icing.
This is a variation entry: the batter comes from the recipe printed immediately above it, and all that changes is the pan and the finish. A few things the compressed wording assumes you already know.
- The missing half of the recipe"the preceding directions" refers to the recipe printed immediately before this one, so this entry is unusable on its own. Whatever creaming, mixing and liquid proportions that recipe gives are the ones to follow here.
- Two layers, and what that meansLayer tins of the period were commonly 8 or 9 inches across. The entry gives no pan size, so match the tins to whatever quantity the preceding batter makes.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given in this entry; any heat and timing must come from the preceding recipe. Thin layers are done when the centre springs back and the edges have begun to pull from the tin.
- Preparing the tinsGrease and flour, or line the bottoms with parchment. The entry gives no instruction for the tins at all.
- Cool completely"Cool and put together" is doing real work in this sentence. Icing a layer that is even faintly warm will make the filling slide and soak in rather than set between the layers.
- Chocolate IcingAs far as this entry shows, the chocolate comes from the icing rather than the batter, which is what gives the cake its name; the icing itself is a separate recipe elsewhere in the book.
- YieldA two-layer cake of this size will cut into roughly 8 to 10 wedges.
Layer cakes of this kind became a standard of American home baking once chemical leavening and reliable cast-iron ranges made a light, even crumb achievable at home; a plain butter batter was treated as a base recipe and given a different name according to what went between and over the layers. That is exactly what this entry does, which is why it runs to two sentences. Naming a cake for its icing rather than its batter is often said to have been common practice in books of this sort, and may hint at how chocolate reached most households, as a frosting and a beverage before it became a routine ingredient in the crumb itself.