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Jelly Layer Cake
7 tablespoons Mazola 2 tablespoons Argo or Kings- 1 cup sugar ford's Cornstarch Rind and juice 1/2 lemon 4 eggs, separated 1½ cups flour 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda Cream Mazola, sugar, egg yolks, lemon juice and rind. When very light, add egg whites beaten stiff alternately with the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda sifted together. Transfer to two layer cake pans, lightly oiled with Mazola, bake in a moderate oven 350 degrees F. for thirty minutes, keeping the cake covered for the first ten minutes. Put together with jelly. WHEN a cold is coming eat simply for two days.
Try taking, instead of meat, a quart of buttermilk combined with a half cup of Karo, a glass for breakfast, lunch, dinner and before retiring. Stewed prunes and Health Muffins for breakfast-a green salad and more muffins for lunch-a Quick Vegetable Soup, muffins and butter and Fruit Salad for dinner; plenty of water, plenty of sleep, and the cold will be conquered.
A two-layer sponge-type cake leavened almost entirely by beaten egg whites, from a corn-products promotional book — hence the oil, cornstarch and jelly filling. A few of its instructions need translating.
- The brand namesMazola is corn oil, Argo and Kingsford's are cornstarch, Karo is corn syrup. All three were products of the Corn Products Refining Company, which published the book. Any neutral oil and any cornstarch will do.
- 7 tablespoonsThat is a scant half cup of oil (½ cup less 1 tablespoon), about 100 ml. The odd figure looks like an oil-for-butter conversion, roughly 7 tablespoons of oil standing in for 8 of butter.
- "Cream" the oilOil cannot be creamed in the butter sense — no air gets trapped. Whisk the oil, sugar, yolks, lemon juice and zest until pale, thick and ribboning, three to four minutes by machine. Most of the lift comes from the whites, with a little help from the soda; the two tablespoons of cornstarch are there to keep the crumb tender.
- Folding, not beatingThe whites go in alternately with the sifted dry ingredients, which means folding by hand with a spatula. A mixer at this stage will knock the air out and the quarter teaspoon of soda will not rescue it.
- The soda needs the lemonThere is no baking powder here. The ¼ teaspoon of soda is activated by the lemon juice, so do not omit the juice or substitute a sweeter citrus.
- "Keeping the cake covered"Lay a sheet of foil or an inverted pan loosely over the tins for the first ten minutes at 350°F. This slows the crust so the sponge can rise fully; remove it for the remaining twenty minutes to let the tops colour.
- Pans and yieldTwo round layer pans, probably 8- or 9-inch. The batter is modest, so the layers bake up thin; figure eight to ten servings.
- The jellyUse a firm, tart jelly; currant or crabapple would suit. Stir it smooth before spreading, and fill only once the layers are completely cold, or the jelly runs out the sides.
- The paragraph about coldsThe buttermilk-and-corn-syrup regimen printed after the recipe is advertising copy for the publisher's syrup, not medical advice, and there is nothing to it. It has no bearing on the cake.
This comes from a manufacturer's cookbook, a genre that flooded American kitchens in the first decades of the twentieth century: the Corn Products Refining Company made Mazola oil, Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch and Karo syrup, and books like this existed to demonstrate that all three belonged in ordinary baking. The cake itself is a standard jelly layer cake, a fixture of American supper tables since the mid-1800s. What makes this version a product of its publisher is the substitution of corn oil for butter and cornstarch for part of the flour he vegetable oils were being promoted as modern and economical, the second a genuine technique that softens the crumb by diluting the flour's gluten. The digression about conquering a cold with buttermilk and corn syrup is pure house copy, and a reminder that these books were sales literature first and cookbooks second.