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Fruit Drop Cakes
2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful salt 4 tablespoonfuls currants 4 tablespoonfuls chopped nut meats 2 tablespoonfuls chopped candied citron peel 3 eggs 2/3 cupful milk 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract Cream Crisco and sugar together, add yolks of eggs well beaten. Beat whites stiffly and add alternately with milk. Add sifted flour, baking powder and salt, then fruits, nuts and extract. Divide mixture into Criscoed and floured gem pans, and bake twenty minutes in moderate oven. Sufficient for eighteen drop cakes.
Breads, etc.
A small butter-cake batter enriched with dried fruit, nuts and citron, baked in muffin tins. Note first that this printing of the ingredient list is incomplete.
- Missing quantitiesThe list as printed begins at the baking powder: the amounts of Crisco, sugar and flour called for in the method are absent from this page. Working from comparable cakes of the period, the proportions would be in the region of 1/2 cup shortening, 1 cup sugar and 2 cups flour for three eggs and 2/3 cup milk, but that is inference, not the book's text.
- Gem pansGem pans are cast-iron muffin pans; cup shapes and sizes varied. A standard 12-cup muffin tin is the nearest substitute; the batter is meant to fill eighteen cups, so expect to bake in two batches or use two pans.
- Moderate ovenConventionally reckoned at about 350-375F. Twenty minutes at that heat suits cakes this size; test with a skewer at eighteen minutes, since fruit-heavy batters brown at the edges before the center sets.
- "Criscoed and floured"Grease with shortening and dust with flour. Paper liners work as well, though they were not a common domestic item at this date.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. If they are hard, soak them briefly in warm water and dry them before folding in, or they will draw moisture from the crumb.
- Candied citron peelThe candied rind of the citron fruit, a fixture of American baking through the 1940s and now sold mainly at Christmas. Candied lemon or orange peel is the nearest replacement; use the same volume.
- Adding the whitesBeaten whites folded in alternately with milk is the hinge of the method. Fold rather than beat, and add the flour last with a light hand, or the aeration that stands in for extra leavening is lost.
- YieldEighteen small cakes.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, two years after Crisco itself went on sale, and the recipes in it were compiled by Marion Harris Neil, credited on the title page as cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. The product was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and the book's job was to persuade cooks that a shelf-stable white fat could stand in for butter and lard in every application, which is why an ordinary fruit cake batter opens with "cream Crisco and sugar together" and why the pans are "Criscoed" rather than greased. "Drop cakes" here means small individual cakes of a batter soft enough to be dropped or spooned into the cups, a usage common in American books of the period.