Oldies But Goodies: Cocoa Cream Cake

My recent trip back to Seattle found me, late one night, sleeping on a futon in my family's office/library/guest room, browsing their collection of cookbooks and ocean books (my dad's an oceanographer). Amidst the Pillsbury BakeOff cookbooks, I spotted a small brown cookbook that looked pretty darn old. Here is what I found:


My great-grandmother's Watkins cook book, published in 1925. The J.R. Watkins Company, it turns out, were purveyors of baking products, as well as medicine and household supplies. This little book is chock full of super simple recipes, some (English Monkey) which sound better than others (Jellied Veal Loaf). My mission is to make as many of the sweet things in here as possible.

My first project, once again attempted because I had all the ingredients in the house, was the "Cocoa Cream Cake". Here's a photo of the recipe, complete with an adorable illustration:





And here's what it looked like when I baked it:



Yeah, not quite the same. The "frosting" wasn't quite frosting, it was more like...fluffy glaze. That never glazed. This was probably because I beat the egg white by hand [note to self: when next employed, purchase hand mixer]. But it peaked! I beat it until it peaked! And still -- it was runny and kind of gross. Bean was nice enough to say that the frosting/glaze/spittle was a good pair because it didn't overpower the flavor of the cake, like a thicker frosting would have done. I appreciate that. It was true: the cake was really fluffy, which I'd like to attribute to my half-assed "sifting" from bag o' flour to cup to bowl to mixture (basically I tried to get as much air in there as possible since I also do not own a sifter). It wasn't overpoweringly chocolate, a very light and fluffy and not super sweet cake. What I'd imagine in my poorly-informed image of what cakes were like in the "olden days".

But yes, this sorry cake was my offering to my lovely roommates for Valentine's Day/Anti-Valentine's Day/Singles Awareness Day/February 14th. Following this, we proceeded to go out and bar hop and give Snoopy valentines and Hershey's kisses to bartenders and bouncers. Which was an excellent way to spend the evening, I highly recommend it.

All in all, a good day. Despite the failed frosting.