Tea Cakes
1/4 cup Mazola. 1 egg. 2/3 cup sugar. 1/3 teaspoon vanilla. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 2 1/2 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch. 1/2 cup milk 1 1/3 cups bread flour 2½ tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 2 teaspoons baking powder Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat until bubbly. Transfer to cup cake pans lightly rubbed with Mazola, sprinkle with desiccated cocoanut and bake in a moderately hot oven, 350 to 375 degrees F. until done--about twenty-five minutes.
A corn-products promotional formula, terse to the point of being incomplete. Read the ingredient list carefully before you start.
- The list is short by several itemsAs printed there is no sugar, no egg and no fat in the batter, which yields a plain, unsweetened, scone-like cake rather than anything a modern cook would call a tea cake. Whether the omission is a misprint or the formula as intended cannot be told from the page; if you want the result the name implies you will have to add sugar, an egg and a little melted fat, but that is a reconstruction, not the recipe.
- Garbled measurement"21/2 tablespoons" is 2 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch. With 1 1/3 cups flour that is a normal proportion for softening the crumb.
- Cornstarch as a flour substituteCornstarch in the batter -- Here the starch is added alongside the flour rather than substituted for part of it, but the effect is the same: it dilutes the gluten and gives a shorter, more tender crumb. Demonstrating that use is plainly the point of a corn-products formula; do not sift the starch out or swap it for more flour.
- Brand namesArgo and Kingsford's are both cornstarch, interchangeable with any modern plain cornstarch. Mazola is corn oil; any neutral oil or softened butter greases the tins equally well.
- "Cup cake pans"A standard 12-cup muffin tin. Paper liners defeat the point of the greasing instruction but are otherwise fine.
- Desiccated cocoanutUnsweetened fine-shred dried coconut, still sold under that description or as desiccated coconut. Sweetened flake is coarser and browns faster on top; check it at the 15-minute mark if you use it.
- Oven and time350-375F as given is accurate and needs no adjustment. Twenty-five minutes is long for small cakes with this little sugar and no fat; test at eighteen minutes with a skewer.
- YieldNot stated, and the quantities are small, so expect well short of a full 12-cup tin. Best eaten the day they are made, as a batter with no fat in it stales quickly.
This comes from the genre of manufacturer's cookery booklet that flourished in the United States from the 1890s through the 1930s, in which Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch and Mazola oil were promoted side by side because they came from the same corn-milling business. The recipes exist to demonstrate a use for the product, which is why the cornstarch is specified by brand and to the half-tablespoon while other elements go unmentioned. "Tea cakes" in this period covered almost anything small and plain served with tea, from a rolled cookie in the American South to the yeast buns of northern England, and a book like this could apply the name to a batter baked in muffin tins without anyone objecting.