250 Classic Cake Recipes

In addition to going home with the marachino cake recipe featured last week, our family friend lent us a booklet titled 250 Classic Cake Recipes. Published in 1954 by the Culinary Arts Institute, and edited by Ruth Berolzheimer (then director of the Institute), the booklet features "Successful Cakes", spongecakes, budget cakes, chocolate cakes, white cakes, party cake, angel food cakes, "cakes with fruit", "cakes in general", upside-down cakes, fruit cakes, and fillings and frostings.

I scanned a few pages for my archives, and again look forward to sharing those pages with you.

First, advice and general information from the booklet:

I scanned these pages for the Lady Baltimore cake. Look at the fantastic photograph on the right!

And I made sure to get the rolled cakes. Our friend seems to have referenced these pages often, so I think this was probably a good decision.

The reason we borrower 250 Classic Cake Recipes was so my mom could have a copy of the burnt sugar cake. My grandmother made a great burnt sugar cake (she had to burn the sugar twice before she could make the cake), and we thought this recipe might be similar. (If it sounds like we don't have any of my grandmother's recipes, that's not the case! We do.)

I thought it might be a good idea to snag the caramel icing recipe.

Same thought for the divinity icing recipe. I don't like seven minute icing (too tacky) but my family likes it.

 The book provides very little commentary, so I think the caption above (These funny little figures will be welcome at any party) is fairly pleasant.

Marachino Cherry Cake

My mom's tenth birthday cake was a maraschino cherry cake. She made the cake for my birthday one year, in a time where everyone saved his or her files on floppy disks. The recipe has been lost, and there has been much to-do and hand ringing as a result.

We visited a family friend in late August. Mom asked if she remembered the cake from her tenth birthday, and our friend stood up, walked to her kitchen, and procured the recipe above. We made the cake, and my mom thinks this is the recipe. We used Crisco instead of Spry, and my mom thinks she'll use butter next time. (There's a difference between butter and vegetable shortening, but my mom thinks her mother used butter.)




Spry, by the way, was a vegetable shortening introduced in the mid-1930s and phased out by the 1960s. (Wikipedia says 1950s, but that would make this recipe ineligible for my mom's birthday, and she's certain Spry was used.) I stray from recipes requiring shortening (or lard and sometimes even vegetable oil), so I'm not sure what to do here.

Alternatively, I could buy Spry from Cyprus, where it is available. (Manufactured for Unilever!) Surely the Internet could come through for that.