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Cream Cake (One cupful of sugar and two)
One cupful of sugar and two eggs creamed together, one-half cupful of thick 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, sweet cream, whipped; then add one-half cupful of sugar, and beat some more, and flavor with same flavoring as used in cake.
LAYER CAKE USED FOR MAPLE SUGAR CAKE.
One-half cup of butter, two cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of milk, three cupfuls of flour after sifting, two even teaspoonfuls of cream tartar, one even teaspoonful of soda, four eggs.
Two related formulas run together here: a small four-layer cream cake with whipped cream filling, and a separate, larger butter cake noted as the base for maple sugar cake. Neither gives a temperature or a time, and the second gives no method at all.
- Thick creamIn a period household this would have been the rich cream skimmed off the top of the milk, roughly comparable in fat to today's heavy whipping cream. Use heavy cream at 36 percent or more; light or half-and-half will neither carry the cake nor whip for the filling.
- No butter in the first cakeThe half cup of cream supplies nearly all the fat, with a little more from the egg yolks. The result is a tender crumb that stales quickly, so assemble and serve the same day.
- Four layers from one cup of flourThe batter is small. Expect four very thin layers in 8-inch pans, closer to 6 inches for real height, or bake two layers and split them once cooled.
- Oven and timeBake at 350F. Thin layers this size are done in 10 to 14 minutes; a quarter of an hour of guesswork will overbake them.
- Cream and sugar creamed with eggs"Creamed together" here means beaten until pale and thick, since there is no butter to cream. Beat the sugar and eggs several minutes to build volume, then fold in cream and flour with a light hand.
- The fillingWhipping the cream before adding the sugar, as written, works but deflates easily. Whip to soft peaks, add the sugar gradually, and stop at 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.
- Cream of tartar and sodaIn the second cake these two are the leavening, in the classic 2:1 ratio used before commercial baking powder was common. Two teaspoons cream of tartar plus one teaspoon soda corresponds to roughly four teaspoons of double-acting baking powder.
- The second recipe is ingredients onlyNo mixing method, pan size, temperature or maple frosting is given. Cream the butter and sugar, add eggs, then alternate the dry ingredients with the milk; it fills two or three 9-inch pans and bakes at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes. The maple sugar filling is left to the cook.
- YieldRoughly, the small four-layer cream cake will give 8 to 10 modest slices and the larger butter cake rather more.
Layer cakes filled with sweetened whipped cream belong to the late nineteenth-century American dessert repertoire: light, pale, quickly made, and more suited to company or an afternoon table than to everyday eating. The recipe's reliance on "thick cream" suggests a household that skimmed its own milk, where the fat content varied by cow and season and no cook expected a number on a carton. The second formula, with its cream of tartar and soda in place of baking powder, reflects the older leavening system in use before commercial baking powders became standard in home kitchens. Maple sugar cake points to the Northeast and to Canada, where maple was a local sweetener and boiled maple frostings were a common finish for a plain butter layer cake.