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Chocolate Marsh Mallow Cake
Cream half a cupful of butter and gradually beat into it one cupful of sugar. Add the yolks of two eggs, well beaten and half a cupful of milk in which a small teaspoonful of soda has been dissolved. Beat well, and sift in two cupfuls of flour. Then add a chocolate mixture, which has been previously prepared. Put into a sauce pan one cupful of sugar, one-half cupful of milk, half a cupful of grated chocolate, the yolk of one egg and half teaspoonful of vanilla. Beat up the mixture well,
The text as printed breaks off in mid-sentence, so this is a recipe you finish by inference rather than by following. What survives is a straightforward creamed butter cake with a cooked chocolate custard beaten into the batter.
- The recipe is incompleteThe passage stops at "Beat up the mixture well," and nothing further survives. Presumably the chocolate mixture was to be cooked in the saucepan and allowed to cool before going into the batter, though the text does not say so; added hot it would melt the butter and slacken the batter.
- The missing marshmallowTwo egg yolks go into the cake and one more into the chocolate; the whites are never used, and the title promises marsh mallow. Marshmallow frostings of the period were generally a boiled or uncooked egg-white icing with sugar syrup, sometimes with dissolved gelatine. The recipe as printed says nothing about the frosting, or about layers. You will need a current frosting recipe for that part.
- Grated chocolateHalf a cupful of grated chocolate means unsweetened block chocolate shaved from a cake of it, roughly 2 to 2.5 oz by weight. Modern unsweetened baking squares work; cocoa powder does not substitute one for one here.
- Soda and no acidThe small teaspoonful of soda is dissolved in sweet milk, so the only acid available to it is the chocolate. If the full amount leaves the crumb tasting flat or slightly soapy, half a teaspoon of soda plus a teaspoon of baking powder gives a more reliable rise.
- FlourTwo cupfuls of turn-of-the-century soft winter-wheat flour is about 8 to 9 oz. Measure by weight if you can; modern all-purpose flour scooped into a cup runs heavier and will tighten the crumb.
- OvenThe original gives none. Bake at 350F. Two 8-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes, a single 9-inch square 35 to 40.
- YieldEnough batter for two 8-inch layers, serving eight to ten.
Marshmallow frosting is generally traced to late nineteenth-century American home baking, when cooks found that gelatine would hold a beaten egg-white icing glossy and soft instead of letting it dry to a crust. The name is older than the confection: true marshmallow paste was made from the mucilaginous root of Althaea officinalis, a druggist's demulcent, and the sweet took the name once gelatine and gum arabic replaced the root entirely. Paired with chocolate, it makes a cake for afternoon calls and the tea table u on a plate.