Home › Dainty Dishes › Delicious Cake
Delicious Cake
Whites of eleven eggs, yolks of six, one and one-half cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of flour, small teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Bake like angel cake.
A sponge in the angel-food family, enriched with six yolks — essentially a hybrid between angel cake and a gold sponge. The whole structure comes from beaten whites, so the folding and the pan matter more than anything else.
- The hinge: whites beaten to soft, not stiff, peaksCream of tartar is here to stabilize the foam and keep it elastic. Beat only until the peaks bend over at the tip; whites whipped dry will tear when you fold in the yolks and flour, and the cake will bake short and coarse.
- Egg sizes have grownA period egg is generally reckoned nearer today's medium than large. Eleven whites is roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/3 cups; six yolks about 6 tablespoons. Measure by volume if your eggs are large or extra-large rather than counting.
- CupfulsThe cup is most likely the half-pint (8 fl oz) measure. One cup of unsifted flour is about 4 1/2 oz / 125 g. Sift it two or three times with a portion of the sugar before folding, as angel-cake methods of the period generally direct.
- What the recipe leaves outThere is no salt, no flavoring and no fat. A quarter teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla or a little lemon zest appear in many comparable period recipes and will not affect the structure.
- Flour choiceUse a soft, low-protein flour. Cake flour is the closest equivalent; all-purpose will give a tougher crumb.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature. In modern terms, bake as for angel cake: 325 to 350F, allowing 40 to 50 minutes in a 10-inch tube pan; done when it springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- The pan is never greasedThe batter climbs the sides of an ungreased tube pan as it rises. A greased or nonstick pan gives it nothing to grip. Invert the pan onto a bottle or its own feet the moment it leaves the oven and leave it hanging until completely cool, or the crumb will compress.
- Yield and the leftover yolksOne 10-inch tube cake, 10 to 12 servings. Eleven eggs broken for six yolks leaves five yolks over; they can be used the same day in custard, salad dressing or a gold cake.
Angel cake and its many relatives spread rapidly through American cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and by the time of the Twentieth Century Cook Book a household collection was expected to carry several variations under their own fanciful names. The form is often said to have depended on two things arriving together: cheap, reliable cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking sold as a baking staple, and the geared rotary egg beater, which made whipping a dozen whites a task of minutes rather than a long arm-aching job by hand. Recipes of this kind are also a quiet record of egg economy in a house that kept hens: this one takes only six yolks, and the cook knows what to do with the remaining five. The instruction "bake like angel cake" is characteristic of the genre: the method was considered common knowledge, so only the proportions needed writing down.