by Sandra Merville Hart

It’s always nice to find an easy recipe for those days when there’s a desire to bake something but not a lot of time. This breakfast cake recipe from 1877 is one of those recipes.

Miss Emily L. Burnham of South Norwalk, Connecticut, is the 1870s cook who wrote this recipe…or should I say, this list of ingredients. These old recipes tend to be extremely brief. In fact, these first 2 paragraphs are longer than her entire recipe!

Miss Emily’s instructions were to bake this in a quick oven. This usually means about 400 or 425 degrees for the modern baker. Other recipes for similar breakfast cakes baked them at 350, so I preheated my oven to 350 and then turned it up to 375 during the bake. Lesson learned: preheat oven to 375.

Sift together 4 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon baking soda. Stir in 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar, 2 tablespoons sugar and two tablespoons softened butter.

In a separate bowl, beat 2 eggs. Add the beaten eggs to the dry ingredients. Stir in 1 cup of milk.

The dough is thick, like bread. Knead it together like you would a pie crust, until it binds together.

Lightly spray a loaf pan with cooking spray. Bake the cake 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned. This makes 6 – 8 servings.

The texture of the inside is between that of a cake and a muffin. This cake is not sweet at all. I dusted it with powdered sugar. This not only improved the appearance, it also gave the cake just the right amount of sweetness for me.

A quick, easy recipe that is made from items already in the pantry always makes me happy.

The family cook in my latest release, Boulevard of Confusion, Book 2 in my “Spies of the Civil War” series, was also a talented baker. She bakes pies, cakes, and cobblers that no one turns down. Writing these scenes gave me a longing for baking!

Sources

Compiled from Original Recipes. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, Applewood Books, 1877.