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Marsh Mallow Cake
Beat to a cream a half cupful of butter and two cupfuls of sugar. Sift one heaped teaspoonful of baking powder with three and a half cupfuls of pastry flour three times. Add half a cupful of cold milk to the butter and sugar, slowly and carefully, so that the mixture does not curdle. Add the flour and baking powder. Beat well and then fold in the whites of six eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Bake the cake in three layers. Spread the layers with marsh mallow paste, and ice one thickly with white icing, decorating it with squares of marsh mallow candy. Pin strips of paper carefully around the layers, spread with the paste and let them stand several hours. Then put them together and lay the iced cake over all. Remove the strips of paper when there is no danger of the paste running.
A white layer cake leavened mostly by stiff egg whites, assembled with marshmallow paste that has to be given hours to set before the cake can be stacked. The paper collars are the whole trick and are worth reading twice.
- The hinge: paper collars and waitingMarshmallow paste stays slack for a long time and will creep off the edges under the weight of the next layer. Cut strips of parchment two inches deep, pin or clip them snugly around each frosted layer, and leave the layers uncovered for several hours until the paste is firm to the touch before stacking.
- Marshmallow pasteThe recipe gives no formula for it; period pastes were generally beaten egg white with hot sugar syrup and gelatine. Commercial marshmallow creme or fluff is the nearest jarred substitute, though it is softer and may need longer to firm up. The "squares of marsh mallow candy" for the top appear to be cut marshmallows.
- Oven temperatureThe original assumes you know your own range. Bake these layers at 350F, 20 to 25 minutes for 9-inch pans or 25 to 30 for 8-inch, until the tops spring back and a tester comes out clean.
- Pastry flourPeriod pastry flour is soft and low in protein, closest to modern cake flour. Substitute cake flour cup for cup; if you use all-purpose, remove two tablespoons per cup and replace them with cornstarch, or the cake will be tough.
- Leavening looks thinOne heaped teaspoon of baking powder for three and a half cups of flour is low by current standards because the six stiff whites are doing most of the lifting. Fold them in with a light hand and get the batter into the pans promptly.
- Adding the milkThe warning about curdling is real: cold milk poured fast into creamed butter and sugar will break the emulsion. Add it in a thin stream, or alternate it with the flour in three additions.
- YieldThree layers, perhaps a dozen or more servings depending on how it is cut. The iced top layer is meant to be set on last, so ice it while the other two are setting.
Marshmallow was a fashionable sweet in turn-of-the-century American baking. The name comes from the marsh mallow plant, Althaea officinalis, whose mucilaginous root was once used to make a soft confection, but by the late nineteenth century commercial candy makers had largely switched to gelatine and sugar syrup, and "marshmallow" meant the white fluff and the cut squares rather than any plant. The combination of a white butter cake, white icing and marshmallow trim fit the period's taste for cakes as pale as the baker could manage.