I have a weakness
for vintage cookbooks. They’re just fun. SO fun. For this blog
post, I decided to give a recipe from a vintage cookbook a whirl. The
recipe, for an old-fashioned spice cake, was inspired by Green Mountain Kitchen
Recipes (Elizabeth McWhorter,
1948). I found this spiral bound collection of recipes in a community
thrift shop in Vermont last winter. It has sweet illustrations and several
wonderful recipes – and it cost a $1.
Some vintage recipes
take a matter-of-fact-no-hand-holding approach with the reader. For example,
Ms. McWhorter’s instructions for this cake: “Mixed and baked by the
conventional method, the cake calls for the following ingredients…” The
ingredients are then listed and the baker is expected – expected! – to know in
what order to mix the ingredients and how to bake the cake. Yikes!
Sure,
sure, you and I both know to cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs,
add the molasses and then alternate adding the dry and wet ingredients. Of course
we do! But a jumble of ingredients with no instructions may as well be a
description of my pantry. So, I’ve made sense of the original recipe,
tweaked it here and there [Hello, touch of nutmeg! Hello, orange zest!], and I
hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
Sweet &
Simple Spice Cake*
Makes one
lovely bundt cake
Preheat
oven to 350°
Prepare a
10” bundt or tube pan (butter and lightly flour the pan, shaking off the excess
flour). Alternately, you may coat the pan with a no-stick vegetable oil cooking
spray (I won’t tell).
Have all
ingredients at room temperature.
1 cup (225
g) light brown sugar
1/2 cup
(112 g) unsalted butter
5 large
eggs
1/2 cup
(170 g) molasses
1 cup (250
ml) buttermilk
2 tsp
orange zest
2 tsp
vanilla
2 1/2 cups
(338g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp
baking powder
1 tsp
baking soda
1-1/2 tsp
cinnamon
1/2 tsp
cloves
1/2 tsp
allspice
1/4 tsp
nutmeg (freshly grated is best)
1/4 tsp
salt
Sift dry ingredients together and set aside.
Combine
buttermilk, vanilla and orange zest and set aside.
In the
mixing bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle, combine butter and sugar
and beat well (the mixture will look like a grainy paste). Add eggs, one at a
time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down bowl twice. With the mixer
on low speed, add the molasses in a slow, steady stream. Scrape down bowl again. Beat until well
combined. The mixture will look a little soupy at this point.
Alternate
adding the dry ingredients and buttermilk/vanilla/orange zest, beginning and
ending with the dry ingredients.
Mix until
just combined.
Pour the
batter into the prepared bundt pan.
Bake for
40-45 minutes, or until cake bounces back when pressed lightly, and/or a cake
tester comes out with a few moist crumbs attached.
Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then unmold and finish cooling the cake on a wire rack.
To finish
the cake, when cool dust lightly with powdered sugar. Serve slices with a
dollop of freshly whipped cream. Garnish with an edible flower or a pretty,
slim slice of orange or both!
*Note: my Sweet & Simple Spice Cake recipe originally appeared as a guest post for The Fat Expat - a fun blog with interesting peeps and clever writing.
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