Post by Glen Carman aka Delmonico on Sept 5, 2017 2:46:45 GMT -6
Cake
In the distant past, the terms cake and bread pretty much meant the same thing, today cake is most often a lighter, more sweetened and often flavored bread most commonly eaten for dessert. Today most cakes are leavened with baking powder, beaten egg whites or a combination of the two, yeast leaven cakes are seldom seen although they were common in the past.
Today most cakes in this country are done with a pre-made mix; not only people at home but a majority of commercial bakers use pre-made mixes also. These prepackaged mixes date to sometime in the 1920’s, the exact date really not being that important to us. What did change cake baking was the introduction in the 1890’s of cake flour. (See flour and meal.)
When making a cake, the results will be better if you let the ingredients warm up to room temperature first if possible. Dry ingredients should mixed together before adding to the liquid part, unless specified, a wire whisk is best for this task. Also unless specified, the pans or the dutch ovens need greased and then dusted with flour to prevent sticking, invert the cake and pan when done to facilitate faster cooling and hydroscopic action in humid weather, the moisture can suck back into a cake pretty fast and ruin it if it is extremely humid. Always let it cool thoroughly before frosting to prevent tearing.
The baking times in these recipes will vary because for one it will take longer to bake a larger cake in a dutch oven only and less time to bake it in separate, smaller pans, although for most cakes it will take two cake pans and two dutch ovens over the cake baked directly in the dutch oven. The standard way to be sure is to insert a fork or knife to test it, if it comes out clean with no batter clinging to it, then it is done. May older recipes say to use a broom straw.
Most modern recipes call for using two 9 inch cake pans, these will have 63 square inches of surface are so two will have 126 square inches of surface area, a 12 inch shallow dutch oven will have 113 square inches of surface area and with the taller height, this size is the one to use for most cake recipes that are baked right in the oven.
Sponge cakes are a cake that is made with out any extra oils or fats; they are leavened with eggs although sometimes baking powder is also added, the original ones only used the beaten eggs as a leaving, but by the time of the Civil War, most recipes call for either baking powder or the cream of tarter,/baking soda mix. (See Leavening) They have the look of a sea sponge, hence the name. This type of cake goes back to at least the early 17th Century in England.
Using just eggs, sugar and flour they are a very inexpensive cake to make, in the past they often had less sugar than the ones today because the price of sugar was higher than it is now and today our baking powder is very inexpensive also. Today the Angel Food Cake is the most well known of this type and will be covered later in this chapter.
Butter Cakes are called butter cakes because they have butter in the mix for two reasons, as both leavening and as shortening. Creaming the butter with the sugar adds air to the mix to help leaven it; also the butter makes a softer moister cake than a simple sponge cake. Like the sponge cake, recipes from after the 1840’s often also have baking powder added to them. Butter cakes can and often are white, using just the egg whites, yellow in which the egg yolks are also used or the most popular, chocolate which most often is simply a yellow cake with cocoa powder added.
One famous and very early butter cake is the pound cake, at first leavened with just the eggs and butter, now often with baking powder added. The cake gets it’s name from in it’s original form it used a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, a pound of flour and a pound sugar. This recipe dates at least into the middle 18th century.
Pound Cake Original Form
1 pound of flour
1 pound of sugar
1 pound of eggs
1 pound of sugar
1 pound of eggs
Cream the butter well, adding the sugar till well mixed. Add one egg at a time and bear well before adding the next egg, when done it will look like yellow cream.
Sift and stir in the flour. Bake in a moderate oven for 30-40 minutes.
More modern version of the recipe:
4 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
9-10 eggs
1 pound butter (4 sticks or 2 cups)
Cream the butter well, adding the sugar till well mixed. Add one egg at a time and bear well before adding the next egg, when done it will look like yellow cream. Bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes.
The pound cake made in its original form is both a bit bland and a bit heavy. The blandness is not a big problem; the old recipes are just a guide, flavoring such as vanilla extract can be added as well as dried fruit and it was common to make the cake that way, old recipes as we’ve talked about before are expected to be basic guides.
As to it being a bit heavy, that is because the butter creamed with the sugar and the beaten eggs are the only leavening, later recipes by around the time of The Civil War either use self-rising flour or add baking powder to the recipe. A ratio if 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour will make for a much lighter cake than the original.
Another easy to remember cake and a bit smaller is this one.
One-Two-Three-Four Cake
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
4 eggs
Cream the butter, adding and beating in the sugar, beat eggs in one at a time. Beat in the flour and milk a little at a time. Bake 30-40 minutes in a moderate oven.
This will fit two 10 inch shallow dutch ovens, a 14 inch shallow dutch oven or three 8 inch cake pans best.
Another basic easy to make cake is the one a good friend of mine Matt Moore uses, it’s really no different that many other basic cakes you will find in cook books, like the other two butter cakes, one can add what is desired to change it, or as Matt says, ‘you can have a different cake every day of the week.
Matt’s Basic Cake
¼ cup butter (1/2 stick)
1 cup sugar (brown or white)
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups milk (One 12 ounce can is great in camp)
3-4 cups flour
Cream the butter and beat the sugar into it, beat in the eggs, stir in the milk and vanilla. Add ½ the flour, all the baking powder and salt plus any spices, fruit or nuts. Stir in, beat well, add the rest of the flour and beat well. This should be slightly think but easy to pour. Put in two 9” round cake pans or a 12” shallow dutch oven, make at moderate heat 30-40 minutes, till a fork inserted in the center comes out clean.
Another butter cake that is easy to make is actually 4 different cakes, depending on the exact ingredients used. If you use whole eggs it is a yellow cake, if you use egg whites only it is a white cake and adding cocoa powder makes it a chocolate cake. Adding half chocolate and half white batter in the pan and not mixing them gives a two toned cake often called marble cake. Most modern cake mixes tell how to vary the ingredients to make either of these from the same mix.
Basic yellow cake
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup butter softened. (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs (A yellower cake can be made using six egg yolks instead of the 3 whole eggs.)
2 teaspoons vanilla
¾ cup of milk
Combine flour, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl; cream the butter beat in the sugar add the vanilla and mix in till combined well. Slowly beat in the flour and milk, a little at a time till smooth. Add to pans or dutch oven and bake in a moderate oven 30-40 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes and invert to turn out on a cooling rack.
White Cake
Use 6 egg whites in place of the 3 eggs in the above recipe.
Chocolate Cake
Add 2/3 to ¾ cup of cocoa powder to the yellow cake recipe.
Marble cake
Make half the batter as white cake and the other half as chocolate cake by spooning in the two types of batter and not mixing.
Shortcake can also be considered a butter cake in its original form, (Today the short cake sold in stores pre-made is most times nothing but a sponge cake.) The short means it has a lot of butter (shortening) in the mix to make it soft. Also short cake recipes can vary a lot on the amount of sugar in them; they range from some older recipes not using any sugar to up to having the same amount of sugar in it as flour. Also they can either be made as a cut type, drop batter or a pourable batter.
Short cake is most often served with fruit over top of it, Strawberry Short Cake being the most popular, although any fruit can be used.
Short Cake
2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar (See above)
¼ cup butter (½ stick)
¾ cup milk (use 1 cup to make a pourable batter)
4 teaspoons baking powder
Mix the dry ingredients together, cut in butter and add the milk gradually till of the desired constancy to pat out and cut, drop or pour into 9 inch cake pan or a 10 inch shallow dutch oven.
Bake in a hot oven 10-20 minutes.
These are then cut out if needed and cut and split, the fruit being spooned over top.
Looking through old recipes I found something of interest, it’s hard at this time to say this old time better cake evolved into what we call Angel Food Cake, a type of sponge cake, but to me it sure looks like it could have based on when the different cakes that appear to evolve seem to have been popular.
The first cake is one that a type of cake seldom seen today but had some popularity in the 19th century, from the late 1840’s to around 1900 when a better but similar cake evolved from it, it is called a Cornstarch Cake because depending on the recipe, ¼ to ½ of the flour is replaced with cornstarch. This is a slight rework of an 1860’s recipe. These cakes could have not been made till the middle 1840’s when cornstarch came on the market. The cornstarch mixed with the regular flour will make it a very light product compared to regular flour.
Corn Starch Cake
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup of cornstarch
½ teaspoon of salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
8 egg whites
2 teaspoons of almond extract (Can substitute vanilla)
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add, flavor with the almond extract.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
It’s hard to really tell, but from recipes in cook books this cake may have evolved a bit as time went on, , like all recipes, they change as others make them, but mostly it lost the cornstarch, although some recipes add a little, around two tablespoons for each cup of flour or slightly less than a cup of flour. (Most will know that is the standard recipe for making a substitute for cake flour, cake flour having not been introduced at the time of the first of these recipes.)
This next cake was called a Silver Cake and it had a companion called a Gold Cake that was baked on the same day, or the Silver Cake is sometimes referred to as a Snowdrift Cake and the Gold Cake as a Sunshine Cake. This cake seems to have appeared in the 1870’s.
Silver Cake
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
¾ cup milk
10 egg whites (save yolks)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add, flavor with the almond extract.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
To keep from wasting the egg yolks, this cake was often made at the same time; this will be a heavier cake than the Silver.
Gold Cake
4 cups flour
4 cups sugar
1 cup milk
½ pound butter (2 stick or 1 cup)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Grated peel and juice of 1 lemon or orange
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix, beat in the juice and the grated peel.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
The next step seems to have come about in the 1880’s, The Cornstarch Cake and the Silver Cake are a butter cake, really not much different than the Pound Cake or the 1-2-3-4 Cake, except they use beaten egg whites instead of beaten whole egg. The next step we lose all the fat in the cake, we have already lost some when we got rid of the egg yolks, now we get rid of the butter and the milk. When beating egg whites the bowl must be free of any oils or fats, these keep the egg whites from making the stiff froth needed to leaven the cake, and cleaning the bowl with a salt/vinegar mix and rinsing well will help. Also the bowl should be perfectly dry before starting.
Another factor that helped in the various attempts to make a mechanical egg beater evolved into the familiar one we call a Dover egg beater and uses the blade type beaters still seen on most electric beaters today.
This cake is very close to the true Angel Food cake, recipes for it, like the first two and the true Angel Food cake will vary some, but the big difference now is this is still baked in a regular pan, adding cream of tarter in the eggs help them retain more air for a lighter cake.
Angel Cake
9 egg whites
1 ¼ sugar
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cream of tarter
¼ teaspoon salt
Add the salt to the egg whites and beat till they start to get foamy, add the cream of tarter and beat till very stiff, fold in the sugar, then the flour, flavor and pour into two 9 inch round cake pans, that are ungreased. (This one will not bake well right in the dutch oven because of the oils in the seasoning of the oven.) Bake in a slow oven 40 to 50 minutes. Invert with the pans raised and clear of the table to help the cake cool and turn out.
The next step in our evolution of the Angel Food Cake is to switch pans to a tube pan, some recipes also change ingredients to powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar, and the cream of tarter in this helps stiffen the egg whites. The tube pan has more surface area to cling to and also heats the cake from more sides as it bakes, giving the cake more loft.
Angel Food Cake
12 egg whites
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cake flour
1 ½ teaspoons of cream of tarter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract.
¼ teaspoon salt
Beat the egg whites slightly and add the cream of tarter and the salt until mixture is foamy, beat in the granulated sugar a little at a time adding the almond and vanilla extract with the last of the sugar, continue beating till stiff and glossy.
Mix the powder sugar and the cake flour a little at a time till it has mixed in very well. Spoon the batter into a tube pan a little at a time and spread it even, cutting into the batter to remove any air pockets.
Bake in a moderate oven 30-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when touched. Hang the cake pan upside down on a bottle and let cool 2 hours or so. When thoroughly cool run a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen and remove.
Fruit Cake
Fruit cake is not an item most will make in camp, but since we are talking about cake we probably should mention it, it’s not that one could not make one, but most people want a fruit cake to age before it is eaten, one could make one at home and bring it to an event.
What we know as a fruit cake (as opposed to a cake with fruit in it) is a fairly heavy cake, the fruit in it is candied/ dried and often has a lot of nuts in it. These cakes have a lot of sugar in them and a lot of times after the cake is baked it has rum or brandy infused into the cake. With the alcohol infusion and wrapping tight, a fruit cake can last for years. Account of people on the overland trail often talk about unwrapping a cake for a celebration such as the 4th of July or a trail wedding, in most if not all cases these were most a fruit cake of some sort.
What we call today, fruitcakes had their true beginnings in late Medieval Europe, although there are several other claims, involving dried fruits baked in dough of some sort. At this time the two items that make these cakes truly what we know today came into Europe, one was sugar and the second was the distillation of alcohol. These true fruit cakes as we know them were an item only the well to do could afford, it would take cheap sugar and cheap rum from the American Colonies to make fruit cake popular with the masses.
Today they are a Christmas tradition, compete with since the time of WWI, mass produced mail order fruit cakes that vary in quality from very good to the kind that jokes are made around. (“There is only one fruit cake in the world and it keeps getting passed around.” This is credited to Johnny Carson.)
In the past, they were also popular at wedding; they could be shipped distance making them popular gifts for Civil War soldier in that box from home, many traveled the overland trails waiting for that special event.
Although there are hundreds of fruit cake recipes, most are very similar and most have not changed much over the years. Like many recipes, if you take a look at several recipes you can break it down to a basic recipe that you can adjust to suit your needs.
This basic recipe will make 3 loaf pans of fruit cake, some use bunt pans, some spring form, but a good basic rectangle fruit cake will serve out needs well if we decide to make some to take on a trip.
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 sticks of softened butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
¼ cup molasses, cane syrup or sorghum syrup
7 lightly beaten eggs
1 tablespoon citrus extract (lemon or orange)
½ to 1 ½ teaspoons of ground cinnamon, clove and or allspice
4 cups of dried/candied fruit of choice
4 cups of nut halves, English walnut and or pecan is popular
½ cup additional flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Garnishes: additional candied cherries and pecan halves
3 tablespoons brandy or rum (optional)
Additional brandy or rum (optional)
Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar, beating well add the molasses and the citrus extract , combine the flour and the ground spices and add the flour and the eggs and beat well till well mixed and smooth.
Combine the fruit and nuts in a bowl and sprinkle and sprinkle with flour from the extra ½ cup and mix, coating well, stir fruit into the batter.
Spoon batter into 3 greased and floured loaf pans and bake in a slow oven for 2-3 hours, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool. Brush the tops with 1 tablespoon of the brandy or rum if desired.
When cooled fully store in an air tight container for 3 weeks to age, wrapping in cheesecloth that has been soaked in additional brandy or rum, this will give the fruit cake a shelf life of over a year if desired.
In the distant past, the terms cake and bread pretty much meant the same thing, today cake is most often a lighter, more sweetened and often flavored bread most commonly eaten for dessert. Today most cakes are leavened with baking powder, beaten egg whites or a combination of the two, yeast leaven cakes are seldom seen although they were common in the past.
Today most cakes in this country are done with a pre-made mix; not only people at home but a majority of commercial bakers use pre-made mixes also. These prepackaged mixes date to sometime in the 1920’s, the exact date really not being that important to us. What did change cake baking was the introduction in the 1890’s of cake flour. (See flour and meal.)
When making a cake, the results will be better if you let the ingredients warm up to room temperature first if possible. Dry ingredients should mixed together before adding to the liquid part, unless specified, a wire whisk is best for this task. Also unless specified, the pans or the dutch ovens need greased and then dusted with flour to prevent sticking, invert the cake and pan when done to facilitate faster cooling and hydroscopic action in humid weather, the moisture can suck back into a cake pretty fast and ruin it if it is extremely humid. Always let it cool thoroughly before frosting to prevent tearing.
The baking times in these recipes will vary because for one it will take longer to bake a larger cake in a dutch oven only and less time to bake it in separate, smaller pans, although for most cakes it will take two cake pans and two dutch ovens over the cake baked directly in the dutch oven. The standard way to be sure is to insert a fork or knife to test it, if it comes out clean with no batter clinging to it, then it is done. May older recipes say to use a broom straw.
Most modern recipes call for using two 9 inch cake pans, these will have 63 square inches of surface are so two will have 126 square inches of surface area, a 12 inch shallow dutch oven will have 113 square inches of surface area and with the taller height, this size is the one to use for most cake recipes that are baked right in the oven.
Sponge cakes are a cake that is made with out any extra oils or fats; they are leavened with eggs although sometimes baking powder is also added, the original ones only used the beaten eggs as a leaving, but by the time of the Civil War, most recipes call for either baking powder or the cream of tarter,/baking soda mix. (See Leavening) They have the look of a sea sponge, hence the name. This type of cake goes back to at least the early 17th Century in England.
Using just eggs, sugar and flour they are a very inexpensive cake to make, in the past they often had less sugar than the ones today because the price of sugar was higher than it is now and today our baking powder is very inexpensive also. Today the Angel Food Cake is the most well known of this type and will be covered later in this chapter.
Butter Cakes are called butter cakes because they have butter in the mix for two reasons, as both leavening and as shortening. Creaming the butter with the sugar adds air to the mix to help leaven it; also the butter makes a softer moister cake than a simple sponge cake. Like the sponge cake, recipes from after the 1840’s often also have baking powder added to them. Butter cakes can and often are white, using just the egg whites, yellow in which the egg yolks are also used or the most popular, chocolate which most often is simply a yellow cake with cocoa powder added.
One famous and very early butter cake is the pound cake, at first leavened with just the eggs and butter, now often with baking powder added. The cake gets it’s name from in it’s original form it used a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, a pound of flour and a pound sugar. This recipe dates at least into the middle 18th century.
Pound Cake Original Form
1 pound of flour
1 pound of sugar
1 pound of eggs
1 pound of sugar
1 pound of eggs
Cream the butter well, adding the sugar till well mixed. Add one egg at a time and bear well before adding the next egg, when done it will look like yellow cream.
Sift and stir in the flour. Bake in a moderate oven for 30-40 minutes.
More modern version of the recipe:
4 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
9-10 eggs
1 pound butter (4 sticks or 2 cups)
Cream the butter well, adding the sugar till well mixed. Add one egg at a time and bear well before adding the next egg, when done it will look like yellow cream. Bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes.
The pound cake made in its original form is both a bit bland and a bit heavy. The blandness is not a big problem; the old recipes are just a guide, flavoring such as vanilla extract can be added as well as dried fruit and it was common to make the cake that way, old recipes as we’ve talked about before are expected to be basic guides.
As to it being a bit heavy, that is because the butter creamed with the sugar and the beaten eggs are the only leavening, later recipes by around the time of The Civil War either use self-rising flour or add baking powder to the recipe. A ratio if 1 to 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour will make for a much lighter cake than the original.
Another easy to remember cake and a bit smaller is this one.
One-Two-Three-Four Cake
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
4 eggs
Cream the butter, adding and beating in the sugar, beat eggs in one at a time. Beat in the flour and milk a little at a time. Bake 30-40 minutes in a moderate oven.
This will fit two 10 inch shallow dutch ovens, a 14 inch shallow dutch oven or three 8 inch cake pans best.
Another basic easy to make cake is the one a good friend of mine Matt Moore uses, it’s really no different that many other basic cakes you will find in cook books, like the other two butter cakes, one can add what is desired to change it, or as Matt says, ‘you can have a different cake every day of the week.
Matt’s Basic Cake
¼ cup butter (1/2 stick)
1 cup sugar (brown or white)
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups milk (One 12 ounce can is great in camp)
3-4 cups flour
Cream the butter and beat the sugar into it, beat in the eggs, stir in the milk and vanilla. Add ½ the flour, all the baking powder and salt plus any spices, fruit or nuts. Stir in, beat well, add the rest of the flour and beat well. This should be slightly think but easy to pour. Put in two 9” round cake pans or a 12” shallow dutch oven, make at moderate heat 30-40 minutes, till a fork inserted in the center comes out clean.
Another butter cake that is easy to make is actually 4 different cakes, depending on the exact ingredients used. If you use whole eggs it is a yellow cake, if you use egg whites only it is a white cake and adding cocoa powder makes it a chocolate cake. Adding half chocolate and half white batter in the pan and not mixing them gives a two toned cake often called marble cake. Most modern cake mixes tell how to vary the ingredients to make either of these from the same mix.
Basic yellow cake
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup butter softened. (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
3 eggs (A yellower cake can be made using six egg yolks instead of the 3 whole eggs.)
2 teaspoons vanilla
¾ cup of milk
Combine flour, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl; cream the butter beat in the sugar add the vanilla and mix in till combined well. Slowly beat in the flour and milk, a little at a time till smooth. Add to pans or dutch oven and bake in a moderate oven 30-40 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes and invert to turn out on a cooling rack.
White Cake
Use 6 egg whites in place of the 3 eggs in the above recipe.
Chocolate Cake
Add 2/3 to ¾ cup of cocoa powder to the yellow cake recipe.
Marble cake
Make half the batter as white cake and the other half as chocolate cake by spooning in the two types of batter and not mixing.
Shortcake can also be considered a butter cake in its original form, (Today the short cake sold in stores pre-made is most times nothing but a sponge cake.) The short means it has a lot of butter (shortening) in the mix to make it soft. Also short cake recipes can vary a lot on the amount of sugar in them; they range from some older recipes not using any sugar to up to having the same amount of sugar in it as flour. Also they can either be made as a cut type, drop batter or a pourable batter.
Short cake is most often served with fruit over top of it, Strawberry Short Cake being the most popular, although any fruit can be used.
Short Cake
2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar (See above)
¼ cup butter (½ stick)
¾ cup milk (use 1 cup to make a pourable batter)
4 teaspoons baking powder
Mix the dry ingredients together, cut in butter and add the milk gradually till of the desired constancy to pat out and cut, drop or pour into 9 inch cake pan or a 10 inch shallow dutch oven.
Bake in a hot oven 10-20 minutes.
These are then cut out if needed and cut and split, the fruit being spooned over top.
Looking through old recipes I found something of interest, it’s hard at this time to say this old time better cake evolved into what we call Angel Food Cake, a type of sponge cake, but to me it sure looks like it could have based on when the different cakes that appear to evolve seem to have been popular.
The first cake is one that a type of cake seldom seen today but had some popularity in the 19th century, from the late 1840’s to around 1900 when a better but similar cake evolved from it, it is called a Cornstarch Cake because depending on the recipe, ¼ to ½ of the flour is replaced with cornstarch. This is a slight rework of an 1860’s recipe. These cakes could have not been made till the middle 1840’s when cornstarch came on the market. The cornstarch mixed with the regular flour will make it a very light product compared to regular flour.
Corn Starch Cake
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup of cornstarch
½ teaspoon of salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
8 egg whites
2 teaspoons of almond extract (Can substitute vanilla)
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add, flavor with the almond extract.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
It’s hard to really tell, but from recipes in cook books this cake may have evolved a bit as time went on, , like all recipes, they change as others make them, but mostly it lost the cornstarch, although some recipes add a little, around two tablespoons for each cup of flour or slightly less than a cup of flour. (Most will know that is the standard recipe for making a substitute for cake flour, cake flour having not been introduced at the time of the first of these recipes.)
This next cake was called a Silver Cake and it had a companion called a Gold Cake that was baked on the same day, or the Silver Cake is sometimes referred to as a Snowdrift Cake and the Gold Cake as a Sunshine Cake. This cake seems to have appeared in the 1870’s.
Silver Cake
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
¾ cup milk
10 egg whites (save yolks)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and add, flavor with the almond extract.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
To keep from wasting the egg yolks, this cake was often made at the same time; this will be a heavier cake than the Silver.
Gold Cake
4 cups flour
4 cups sugar
1 cup milk
½ pound butter (2 stick or 1 cup)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Grated peel and juice of 1 lemon or orange
Cream the butter and beat in the sugar, beat in the milk, mix the baking powder in well with the flour and beat into the mix, beat in the juice and the grated peel.
Put in 2 loaf pans, two 9 inch round cake pans or a 12” dutch oven and bake in a slow oven 40-50 minutes.
The next step seems to have come about in the 1880’s, The Cornstarch Cake and the Silver Cake are a butter cake, really not much different than the Pound Cake or the 1-2-3-4 Cake, except they use beaten egg whites instead of beaten whole egg. The next step we lose all the fat in the cake, we have already lost some when we got rid of the egg yolks, now we get rid of the butter and the milk. When beating egg whites the bowl must be free of any oils or fats, these keep the egg whites from making the stiff froth needed to leaven the cake, and cleaning the bowl with a salt/vinegar mix and rinsing well will help. Also the bowl should be perfectly dry before starting.
Another factor that helped in the various attempts to make a mechanical egg beater evolved into the familiar one we call a Dover egg beater and uses the blade type beaters still seen on most electric beaters today.
This cake is very close to the true Angel Food cake, recipes for it, like the first two and the true Angel Food cake will vary some, but the big difference now is this is still baked in a regular pan, adding cream of tarter in the eggs help them retain more air for a lighter cake.
Angel Cake
9 egg whites
1 ¼ sugar
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract
½ teaspoon cream of tarter
¼ teaspoon salt
Add the salt to the egg whites and beat till they start to get foamy, add the cream of tarter and beat till very stiff, fold in the sugar, then the flour, flavor and pour into two 9 inch round cake pans, that are ungreased. (This one will not bake well right in the dutch oven because of the oils in the seasoning of the oven.) Bake in a slow oven 40 to 50 minutes. Invert with the pans raised and clear of the table to help the cake cool and turn out.
The next step in our evolution of the Angel Food Cake is to switch pans to a tube pan, some recipes also change ingredients to powdered sugar instead of granulated sugar, and the cream of tarter in this helps stiffen the egg whites. The tube pan has more surface area to cling to and also heats the cake from more sides as it bakes, giving the cake more loft.
Angel Food Cake
12 egg whites
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cake flour
1 ½ teaspoons of cream of tarter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract.
¼ teaspoon salt
Beat the egg whites slightly and add the cream of tarter and the salt until mixture is foamy, beat in the granulated sugar a little at a time adding the almond and vanilla extract with the last of the sugar, continue beating till stiff and glossy.
Mix the powder sugar and the cake flour a little at a time till it has mixed in very well. Spoon the batter into a tube pan a little at a time and spread it even, cutting into the batter to remove any air pockets.
Bake in a moderate oven 30-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when touched. Hang the cake pan upside down on a bottle and let cool 2 hours or so. When thoroughly cool run a knife around the edges of the pan to loosen and remove.
Fruit Cake
Fruit cake is not an item most will make in camp, but since we are talking about cake we probably should mention it, it’s not that one could not make one, but most people want a fruit cake to age before it is eaten, one could make one at home and bring it to an event.
What we know as a fruit cake (as opposed to a cake with fruit in it) is a fairly heavy cake, the fruit in it is candied/ dried and often has a lot of nuts in it. These cakes have a lot of sugar in them and a lot of times after the cake is baked it has rum or brandy infused into the cake. With the alcohol infusion and wrapping tight, a fruit cake can last for years. Account of people on the overland trail often talk about unwrapping a cake for a celebration such as the 4th of July or a trail wedding, in most if not all cases these were most a fruit cake of some sort.
What we call today, fruitcakes had their true beginnings in late Medieval Europe, although there are several other claims, involving dried fruits baked in dough of some sort. At this time the two items that make these cakes truly what we know today came into Europe, one was sugar and the second was the distillation of alcohol. These true fruit cakes as we know them were an item only the well to do could afford, it would take cheap sugar and cheap rum from the American Colonies to make fruit cake popular with the masses.
Today they are a Christmas tradition, compete with since the time of WWI, mass produced mail order fruit cakes that vary in quality from very good to the kind that jokes are made around. (“There is only one fruit cake in the world and it keeps getting passed around.” This is credited to Johnny Carson.)
In the past, they were also popular at wedding; they could be shipped distance making them popular gifts for Civil War soldier in that box from home, many traveled the overland trails waiting for that special event.
Although there are hundreds of fruit cake recipes, most are very similar and most have not changed much over the years. Like many recipes, if you take a look at several recipes you can break it down to a basic recipe that you can adjust to suit your needs.
This basic recipe will make 3 loaf pans of fruit cake, some use bunt pans, some spring form, but a good basic rectangle fruit cake will serve out needs well if we decide to make some to take on a trip.
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 sticks of softened butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
¼ cup molasses, cane syrup or sorghum syrup
7 lightly beaten eggs
1 tablespoon citrus extract (lemon or orange)
½ to 1 ½ teaspoons of ground cinnamon, clove and or allspice
4 cups of dried/candied fruit of choice
4 cups of nut halves, English walnut and or pecan is popular
½ cup additional flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Garnishes: additional candied cherries and pecan halves
3 tablespoons brandy or rum (optional)
Additional brandy or rum (optional)
Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar, beating well add the molasses and the citrus extract , combine the flour and the ground spices and add the flour and the eggs and beat well till well mixed and smooth.
Combine the fruit and nuts in a bowl and sprinkle and sprinkle with flour from the extra ½ cup and mix, coating well, stir fruit into the batter.
Spoon batter into 3 greased and floured loaf pans and bake in a slow oven for 2-3 hours, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool. Brush the tops with 1 tablespoon of the brandy or rum if desired.
When cooled fully store in an air tight container for 3 weeks to age, wrapping in cheesecloth that has been soaked in additional brandy or rum, this will give the fruit cake a shelf life of over a year if desired.