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Cream Cake (One cupful of sugar and two) (II)
One cupful of sugar and two eggs creamed together, one-half a cupful of thick, sweet cream, one heaping cupful of flour, one teaspoonful of baking powder. Flavor to taste. Bake in four layers. For filling, take one-half cupful of thick cream whipped; then add one-half cupful of sugar, and beat some more and flavor with same flavoring as used in the cake.
A butterless sponge that leans entirely on heavy cream for fat, with a whipped-cream filling. The batter is small, so the layers are meant to be thin.
- "Thick, sweet cream"Sweet means unsoured, not sweetened, and thick means the heaviest cream on the dairy shelf. Use heavy or whipping cream, ideally 36 percent fat or better; cream below about 30 percent will not whip reliably for the filling and makes a slacker batter.
- No butter is missingThe cream is the shortening. Do not add butter or oil to "correct" the recipe, and do not substitute milk, which leaves the crumb dry and tough.
- Cup measuresA period cupful is close enough to 8 fl oz to use a modern cup. One heaping cup of flour is roughly 5 to 5 1/2 oz, or 150 g; the batter should pour thickly rather than mound.
- OvenThe original gives no heat. Thin layers of this kind want a moderately quick oven, 375F, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops spring back and the edges just pull from the tin.
- Four layers from one small batterThe batter is small for four tins. Divide it by weight among four 8-inch tins for very thin layers, or bake two layers and split each after cooling.
- Creaming eggs and sugarWith no butter, much of the aeration comes from beating the eggs and sugar until pale and ribboning, several minutes with a mixer, with the teaspoon of baking powder doing the rest. Fold in the flour and baking powder last and stop as soon as they disappear.
- Flavoring"to taste" in books of this kind commonly meant vanilla or lemon extract, sometimes rose water. Use the same in the filling, as instructed, or the two halves taste like separate cakes.
- The whipped fillingWhip the half cup of cream to soft peaks before adding the sugar, then beat only to firm peaks. Half a cup of sugar to half a cup of cream is very sweet by modern taste; two tablespoons is closer to current practice.
- Serving and keepingServes six to eight. Cream-filled, it is a same-day cake: assemble within a few hours of serving and keep it refrigerated, as the filling weeps and softens the thin layers overnight.
Cakes called "cream cake" in American books of this period are not one dish but a family, and this is the plainest branch of it: a cake enriched with cream instead of butter, layered and filled with more cream. Recipes of the type multiplied after chemical leavening became reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century, when baking powder let a cook raise a light layer cake with two eggs rather than the six or eight an older sponge demanded. The instruction to use cream as the fat also suggests a household with its own dairy or a good milkman, with thick cream ready to hand for baking. Whatever its place in the book, this is not a keeping cake for the crock but a company cake, assembled and eaten the same afternoon, of the sort a hostess served with tea.