Devils Food Cake

by Mrs Marvel

I keep meaning to make Devils Food Cake, but since I don’t bake a lot of cakes I haven’t gotten around to it…yet. One day it will happen!

In this particular recipe there is the notation for “scant” amounts. This means just slightly less than the full measure. And since it isn’t quantified, you really can’t guess exactly how much the recipe really wants. For instance, the 1/2 cup butter scant could mean to cut the butter off the width of a knife, or just below the line, or as my grandmother did, use the measuring cup with a dent in it. Next, the recipe ingredients list sour milk, but the method mentions butter milk. Make sour milk by adding lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk. I think it was just an error that she wrote butter milk.

Devils Food Cake

3 T cocoa

3 T water

1 1/4 c sugar

1/2 c butter (scant)

1 cup sour milk

1 t soda

yolk of 1 egg

2 scant c flour

1 egg white beaten stiff

Heat & melt cocoa, water & sugar. When dissolved add butter.

Set aside to cool. Mix butter milk soda & beaten yolk, add the melted choc. mixture. Then the flour and egg white beaten stiff.

Bake in moderate oven (350) in layer tins.

Frosted Loaf Cake

by Mrs Marvel

You had me at cake. This is a fairly straight forward cake that is made in what we think of today as a bread pan (or meatloaf pan). In the days of home bread making, kitchens had numerous types and shapes of pans. Long skinny ones, jelly roll pans, spring pans, bundt pans, multiple loaf pans, shaped pans… A woman needed these various shapes and sizes for each of the types of bread she planned to make. A loaf pan would have been common right along side the jelly roll pans – today we think of jelly roll pans as cookie sheets. They used to be used to make a thin sponge cake that was spread with jelly and icing, then tightly rolled in a spiral. Sounds lovely. This particular cake, baked in a loaf pan, would come out looking like a pound cake I suspect.

Frosted Loaf Cake

1/2 cup butter

1 cu sugar

2 eggs – yolks beaten lightly

1/2 cup milk

2 cups flour

3 level tsp B.P.

1 egg – white beaten light

Cream butter, beat in sugar gradually, add yolks & alternatingly milk, and the flour sifted with the baking powder, lastly, beat in the egg white. Bake in a loaf about 45 min. Cover with chocolate frosting.

 

Stollen

by Mrs Marvel

Let’s put this one in the “holiday food” category, because stollen is made similarly to fruitcake and has some similar ingredients. However, that’s about all the similarities between stollen and fruitcake unless you consider “traditional” and “long history” to be similarities. Stollen is a yeast risen cake, and if you have watched even one season of GBBS, you will know this is not a typical type of cake, and definitely not in America.

Stollen has a long history – and depending on who you ask, it originated in the 14th century or the 16th century. Before Germany as we know it was formed, there were smaller regions and kingdoms, including Bavaria and Saxony. In these regions, Christmas was celebrated during Advent, which was the 12 days of Christmas and included fasting. In regions that were Catholic, the Pope prohibited the use of butter during Advent, and so Catholic stollen was made with turnip oil, flour, oats, and blah. Everyone agrees it didn’t taste very good. Sometime in the mid 1400s, the Saxon rulers wrote to the Pope in Rome and asked for special permission to use butter. How scandalous! The Pope in power at the time of their letter declined their request and it wasn’t until 1490 and five Popes later that their request was granted – but with conditions, of course. Only the royal family could use butter.

In the mid 1500s in Dresden, the bakers there offered the Saxon rulers a giant stollen (36 pounds!) and this was not the first stollen baked by the bakers guild. So, sometime between 1490 and 1560, the public was given permission to use butter and therefore stollen improved for the better. There has been a stollen festival in Dresden ever since, and there are some obnoxiously large stollen in recent history, including one that was 237 feet long, and a giant 5 foot stollen knife used to cut these super-stollen. Take a look at the links below the recipe for more stollen history and information.

Stollen

1 qt milk

1 lb butter

1/4 lb citron

1/2 lb almonds

1/2 lb raisins

3 ¢ yeast

1 lb sugar

4 eggs

flour to make stiff

 

Additional Reading

Who Invented Stollen? via Speigel Online

A Brief History of Stollen via Dresden Stollen Bakers

A History of the Christ Stollen via BackereiGnauck

Stollen via Wikipedia

Peanut Squares

by Mrs Marvel

Smashed in between two other recipes on the page, I originally thought this was part of one of the others. But no, this is a recipe for Peanut Squares that includes powdered sugar and lemon flower. I’m not sure how that would taste, honestly. I couldn’t find any kind of lemon flour, so I’m guessing it is an actual lemon flower. Also, this recipe calls for 1/2 a bottle of milk. This calls to mind the glass bottles that the milkman used to deliver to the doorstep, and those bottles were usually a quart. So how much is a quart, you ask? A quart (a quarter of a gallon) is two pints, so this recipe calls for one pint, which is two cups liquid.

Next, there are a lot of notations for butter here, and I don’t think they are all correct. Maybe. I don’t know. 1 tsp butter, 1/4 butter, and hot butter. Any ideas, friends? There is also no discernible method, as per usual, but a notation for time, so I imagine the time is how long to bake them.

Peanut Squares

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 bottle milk (2 cups)

Hot butter

1 tsp butter

1/4 butter

1 lb powdered sugar

Lemon flower

Chopped peanuts

20-26 minutes