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July 24
Menu: Lamb Potpie; Summer Squash; Mashed Potatoes; Dressed Cucumbers; Raspberry Float; Cushion Cake; Iced Coffee Cushion Cake-Cream 1 cup Crisco with 1/2 cup sugar, add 2 well beaten eggs, and 1/2 cup milk. Sift 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and add to Crisco mixture, with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Divide into 2 parts, add to 1 part 2 tablespoons molasses, 1 cup seeded raisins, 1/2 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 14 teaspoon grated nutmeg. Bake in Criscoed and floured cake tin for 20 minutes. Take out of oven, spread white part on top, return to oven and bake until done.
A two-tone butter cake in which one half of the batter is spiced and fruited and the other left plain, baked in stages so the pale layer sits on top like a cushion. The instructions assume a cook who knows her own oven, so the numbers below fill the gaps.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Treat this as a moderate oven, 350F. The dark half goes in for its first 20 minutes, then the plain batter is spread over and it returns for roughly 25 to 30 minutes more, until a skewer comes out clean.
- CriscoCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold under that name though reformulated over the years to cut trans fats. Any solid white shortening works; an equal weight of butter gives better flavour but a slightly firmer, less tender crumb.
- NoteGrease the tin with shortening and dust with flour, which is all the phrase means. A 9-inch square tin or a 9x5 loaf tin suits this quantity.
- The nutmegThe printed quantity for grated nutmeg has lost its fraction. A quarter teaspoon is consistent with the cloves and cinnamon alongside it and is what the proportions call for.
- Sugar is low by modern tasteHalf a cup of sugar to a cup of fat and two cups of flour makes a mildly sweet, almost tea-bread cake. The molasses and raisins carry most of the sweetness in the dark half; the plain half will taste distinctly restrained.
- Spreading the second batterThe plain batter is stiff and the part-baked dark layer is soft. Drop it in spoonfuls over the surface and level it with an offset spatula rather than trying to spread from one corner, or you will tear the layer beneath.
- Milk quantityHalf a cup of milk in two cups of flour gives a thick, spoonable batter, not a pourable one. That is correct for this cake; do not thin it.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 slices. It keeps well wrapped for two or three days, and the spiced half improves on the second day.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil to teach American cooks what to do with a product that had only existed since 1911: a shortening made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold by Procter & Gamble as a cheaper, shelf-stable alternative to lard and butter. Neil's Crisco material also appeared in a "Calendar of Dinners" arrangement, giving a menu for each day of the year, which is why this cake sits beside tournedos of lamb and rissole potatoes rather than among the other cakes. Two-tone ribbon and marble cakes were a fixture of the period, letting one batter and one tin produce something that looked deliberate on a tea table; the name "cushion cake" is sometimes said, without any documented source, to describe the plump pale layer settled over the dark, spiced base.