Marble Cake from 1898

 

Cake! Yum.  I found a copy of The Galt Cookbook, published in 1898 by Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught from the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. It is a Canadian cookery book. Many if not all of the recipes are from what was the Galt area of Ontario, now Cambridge, and surrounding communities.

I found this simple recipe for marble cake, using actual chocolate. Most earlier recipes for marble cake that I've found use some other colourant, like cochineal for the secondary colours, not necessarily other flavours.  I'd been checking books as I went through them, to find a marble cake which used chocolate or another flavour, rather than colours.   Finding chocolate marbled cake was definitely a bonus.

I mixed the try ingredients in one bowl, and the wet in another.  I used a pretty standard method for making the batter.  I added the flour, cream of tarter, soda, salt in one bowl and stirred it with a wisk to mix it well.   I creamed the butter and sugar, added the egg and beat it until light coloured.   I then added the milk and vanilla.   I added the dry ingredients in several portions, mixing well between additions.

I separated out approximately half of the batter into another bowl.  I found a box of bakers chocolate, did a quick search to find the size of chocolate blocks in 1898, and ended up using two, although in hindsight, it was unnecessary.   It would have been tasty and fine with a single modern block of baking chocolate.   I stirred the melted chocolate into one half of the batter.  

I had buttered and floured two 8 inch cake tins.  I only used one.   I think that my batter was a little thick and it blobbed rather than delicately spooned into the tin.  In the end, I realized that not only would I not be able to spread this gloppy goop into two pans, but they would be very thin layers if I did
so.  I scraped the batter into the pan, best I could, first using a spoon, then a spoon and spatula and finally, just the spatula.   I had to run a knife through to try to get the two batters to settle, and then I dropped the pan lightly on the counter several times to try to eliminate any possible remaining air bubbles.

It took about 30 minutes to bake in a 350 F oven 

The finished cake is a lovely cake.   While I was worried it would be dense, it has a lovely texture.  It has a soft crumb and a flavour which shows off the butter, vanilla and chocolate perfectly.   It didn't need an icing to help it along.   It is perfect as is, although for a birthday, I'd definitely ice it

I am putting this recipe into my repeat file because it is worthy of being baked again.

Next time I would sift the flour first.  I think that would help keep the cups of flour be less compacted, helping with the too thick batter.  Or I'd add another 1/4 c of milk.

The cake is likely pretty accurate though.   I have no idea what the cost was because I had all the ingredients on hand.  Not horribly expensive though as it's a single layer cake without any large amounts of ingredients