Home › Dainty Dishes › Spice Cake (Two cups of brown sugar)
Spice Cake (Two cups of brown sugar)
Two cups of brown sugar, one-half cup of butter, one cup of sour milk, one teaspoonful of soda even, one cup of raisins, two eggs, spices to taste with plenty of nutmeg, two and one-half cups of flour after sifting.
A plain sour-milk cake of the kind that assumes the cook already knows the creaming method — the original gives ingredients and nothing else. The two things it withholds are the oven and the spices, so both need deciding before you start.
- Oven and panNo temperature or time is given. Bake at 350F: about 40 to 45 minutes in a 9x13 pan, 50 to 60 in two loaf pans, tested with a skewer in the centre.
- Sour milkThis means milk that has soured naturally and gone acidic, not spoiled pasteurised milk, which simply rots. Use buttermilk, or stir a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- "One teaspoonful of soda even"A level teaspoon of baking soda, not heaped. It is the only leavening, and it depends entirely on the acid in the sour milk. Too much and the crumb turns soapy and grey.
- "Spices to taste"For this quantity of batter, a workable set is 1 teaspoon cinnamon, half a teaspoon each of cloves and allspice, and a whole nutmeg grated, which comes to roughly 2 teaspoons. The instruction to use plenty of nutmeg is the recipe's one point of character; grate it fresh, since pre-ground nutmeg is comparatively flat.
- Flour, measured after siftingSift first, then spoon into the cup and level — the two and a half cups is the sifted volume, so measuring first and sifting after gives you noticeably more flour and a drier cake. About 10 oz or 280 g by weight.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter with the brown sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour and sour milk alternately, with the soda stirred into the first addition of flour. Fold the raisins in last, tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Salt and butterButter of this period was usually salted, sometimes heavily. With modern unsalted butter add half a teaspoon of salt, or the spices read muddy.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 squares from a 9x13 pan. It keeps well, and the spice deepens by the second day.
Sour-milk cakes belong to the era when every household with a milk cow had milk going acid on the shelf and no reason to waste it. Paired with saleratus or baking soda, that acid gave a reliable rise decades before commercial baking powder became cheap and standard, and recipes of this type survived in American cookbooks long after the practical need for them had passed. The brown sugar and the heavy hand with nutmeg place it at the plainer, thriftier end of the repertoire: no frosting, no eggs beaten separately, nothing that needs more than a bowl and a spoon.