Cork Cake and another New Year

Greetings from Southern California!  

This is the beginning of a new year and it has my fervent hope that it is much, much better than last year.  Not in the cooking realm -- I had fun with the recipes I tried in 2020 -- but in terms of health, peace, compassion, hope, family, and friends.  

It is also the start of my tenth year of this blog.  I have 218 posts and over 93,000 page views from all over the world.  I have to say it is a worthwhile adventure!  Having the freedom to explore any culture and any time period, then choosing what I want to try is just, well, wonderful.

One of my online cooking friends, JH, found a digital copy of the oldest cookbook published in the United States by a black woman.  Mrs. Malinda Russell was a free black woman who was married and had a son.  Her husband died and her son was disabled, and so she found herself in need of making a living.  At times she ran a laundry, kept a boarding house, and then a pastry shop.  

I have made Cooking my employment for the last twenty years, for the first families of Tennessee, (my native place,) Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky.  I know my Receipts to be good, as they have always given satisfaction.  I have been advised to have my Receipts published, as they are valuable, and every family has use for them. ... I have put out this book with the intention of benefiting the public as well as myself.

Mrs. Russell published her book in 1866, in Paw Paw, Michigan.   The title is A Domestic Cook Book:  Containing A Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen.  Click here to find the document.

I enjoyed reading the entire book.  Mostly there are recipes for cakes, icings, pies, muffins, cookies, custards, trifles, biscuits, and puddings, which is not surprising from a woman who ran a pastry shop.  She also includes recipes for cordials, jellies, jams, pickles, some meat dishes, soups, medicinal treatments, and preserves.

There are several recipes I'd like to try.  What I chose for this post was a simple cake recipe, as I needed a dessert for a special dinner.  The challenge was that she gives the ingredients but no other instructions.  (Aha!  Another Great British Baking Show technical challenge!)

Cork Cake (page 7)

Ingredients

3 cups sugar

1 cup butter

1 cup sour cream

5 cups flour

5 eggs

1 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon cream tartar

flavor with lemon

My Redaction

I chose to flavor it with finely shredded peel from one small lemon.  It measured about 2 teaspoons.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F.  

First I creamed the softened butter and sugar.

Then I beat in the sour cream.

Next came the eggs and the lemon peel.

In a separate bowl, I mixed the flour, baking soda, and cream tartar. 

Then I added the dry mixture to the wet mixture and stirred it by hand until just blended. 

The batter was stiffer than I expected; I almost added another egg but decided to stick with Mrs. Russell's recipe.  Modern eggs are typically larger than the eggs she had available and I expected the batter to be very moist from five large eggs.  This is why I was surprised.

It took four 8-inch cake tins to use up all the batter.  I had to spread the batter all the way to the edges of each pan.  Two had a little more batter that the other two.  I tasted the batter and liked the fresh lemon flavor of it.

They all went into the oven at the same time.  I notice the batter spread a little more while it was baking.  The thinner layers came out at 20 minutes, the thicker at 25 minutes.  They were ready when the edges where lightly browned, the top center looked set, and a pick inserted into the middle came out clean or nearly so.

After they cooled completely, I took the two thinner layers and spread homemade lemon curd between them.  Then I mixed an icing of cream cheese, the juice from the lemon that donated its peel, and some powdered sugar.  I like to dissolve the sugar completely, so I mixed it into the juice and then lightly heated it in the microwave.  Then I put it into the cream cheese and mixed it until it was very soft and spreadable.  The flavor was lemon and creamy and only the tiniest bit sweet (just enough to take the bite off the juice). 

 I decided it needed a decoration on top, so a few dried cranberries and small sprig of mint did the job.

The Verdict

The cake was completed several hours before the meal, so I put it into the refrigerator due to the cream cheese and the lemon curd.  It came out of the fridge at the beginning of the meal, so the cake had not come to room temperature by the time we were ready to eat it.  

It was tasty -- lots of good lemon flavor in the cake, the curd, and the icing -- but I was disappointed because the cake seemed so firm and a bit dry.  My guest taster thought it was just fine.  I loved the curd and icing and the overall look.

But later (because leftovers!), I tried it again but this time I warmed it up in the microwave.  Just 15 seconds for one piece.  Boy, did that do the trick!

The cake was tender, soft, moist, tasty.  The lemon flavor really came through!  It was sweet but not too much so.  The icing was enticingly gooey and the curd just added a citrusy blast in every bite.

Now I know to warm it up before eating.  I never doubted Mrs. Russell, only my own skill in interpreting her receipt.  But I did a good job and I call it a success.