Snow Cake

I was flipping through my book trying to find a recipe that would work well to take to my Grandma's house for Easter. I, mostly randomly, chose snow cake. I liked that there were multiple component's, cake and icing, and that I could choose my own flavor. Something I think we've lost in the world of boxed cake (and I love a boxed cake) is customizing cakes and desserts to seasonal ingredients. So for this post I am going to go through the cake making process, including my adventures in whipping egg whites by hand, and then in two days I'll post the icing and filling portion of the recipe. The separation is in part to keep the post length reasonable and in part because the icing recipe needs to be made the day it is eaten.

Let's break this down into ingredients 

• 1 1/2 cups Sugar
• 2/3 cup Butter
• 1 cup Milk (split)
• Flavor (aka 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract)
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
• Pinch of Salt
• 5 Egg Whites
• 1/8 tsp Cream of Tartar per egg

Here's how I'm going to tackle this

Creaming together butter and sugar is the way I start a good percentage of the cakes I make on a regular basis. It's nice to have a familiar instruction. I'm going to add the vanilla at this time, as well. I was really leaning toward lemon but I wimped out on grating that much lemon rind. Remember that the butter should be room temperature. I'm normally not patient enough to wait for this but it was so much better than cold butter. I usually do this until it looks like there is some air in there and the butter has fluffed up. Fluffing didn't happen with by hand beating, but after giving it a spoon stir does look creamy so still a victory

Pre spoon stir

Next incorporate half the total milk, or 1/2 cup, and 1 cup of flour. I'm going to sift in the flour to keep it from having clumps. I think people don't use sifters anymore because electric beaters are pretty good at beating out lumps but I'm stirring by hand and sifting is fun. Then add the other 1/2 cup of milk and an additional two cups of flour. This is going to start getting thick so I'm going to add the flour a half cup at a time from the sifter.

Action Shot! The handle on this bowl was very helpful

After another cup it was about as thick as a pound cake. By the end of cup 2 it was like a cookie dough. No clue how I'm going to incorporate eggs without flattening them. Arm very tired. Starting to question if I should start a weight lifting regimen on only my stirring arm.

Add 2 teaspoons of baking powder and a pinch of salt. This got added in to the last sifter of flour.

We're about to start on eggs, and I want to start with some quick historical context. I thought eggs from back in the day would be significantly different in size to now. I spent awhile googling and found a farmer's bulletin from 1894 which describes their eggs in great detail. Basically, eggs weighed on average 2 ounce in the shell and were 2 inches long. I found that "medium" eggs found at the grocery store fit this bill.

Here is an eggcerpt from the article

The first step here is to separate eggs from yolks. I use the, toss back and forth between the pieces of shell method. If that gets tedious I break it into my hand letting the whites fall and holding the yolks. It's important not to have any yolk in the whites so I usually use two bowls for this. One small bowl to crack and separate, once this is done successfully, transfer it to the big bowl. That keeps one slip from ruining the three eggs you've already cracked.

PSA: Remember to set aside your egg yolks for use in another recipe like custard or ice cream. They will keep in the fridge for a few days in an airtight container.

Once all eggs are cracked, stretch your beating arm and give a few practice whisks because this is about to get real. I'm not planning to use my stand mixer during this process. That is partially for authenticity and partially in pursuit of Michelle Obama arms.

Cold Bowl, Cold Beater, Room Temperature Eggs, Eye of the Tiger playing

Whisking enough air into 5 eggs to make stiff peaks may be more than my (currently) puny arms can handle so I'm working in my stand mixer bowl just in case I need to surrender at some point.  Winners always plan ahead for inevitable failure. I got a rotary egg beater after some facebook advice I received (Thanks Facebook friends!). The sides of my stand mixer bowl were too tall to use with the rotary beater so I transferred to a shorter bowl. Failure no longer an option. I timed myself as I did this to see how long it took. Results below

3 Minutes of Beating

After three minutes I had a lot of foam but no real peak. I did feel like the process was working though.

6 Minutes of Beating

After six minutes I was getting soft peaks. Right hand started to get tired from turning the crank so I switched to left. I remain surprised after years of anecdotal evidence that my left hand is useless and uncoordinated. Switched back to right hand almost immediately.

9 Minutes of Beating

Check out those peaks! This process was easier and more effective than I would have guessed. The peaks weren't quite as stiff as they would have been with an electric mixer but all in all this was definitely successful. I'd like to think my in depth egg research paid off, but who knows.

Once I have stiff peaks I am going to take a spoonful of egg and drop it into my flour mixture and stir it in well. This seems clutch because this mixture is so thick that I don't know how I'm going to fold these in without deflating them. 

Little bit of egg whites added

I'm then going to gently fold in the rest of the mixture to try to keep the air. I spent maybe ten minutes doing this very slowly in the hopes that I retain some fluffiness. I would call it a middling success.

That's it, end of instructions, you now have cake. Congratulations!

Ah yes, that is in fact, not cake. You guys I'm so funny. I don't get any instruction on what kind of tin to bake this in, if it needs to be in layers, or what temperature or length of time it cooks for. This seems like a pretty traditional cake mixture so I'm going to bake it in 2 nine inch round pans. I also think a bunt pan would have worked and it just would have baked longer. The icing for this cake also seems like an icing that would go on a layer cake. I'm going to cook it at 350 degrees for probably 15-18 minutes or so but we'll see. 18 minutes on the nose. It looks like cake! Which I'm taking as a positive sign.

Cake! Also my oven has a hot spot

Verdict

This cake smells like a pancake when removed from the oven. This is neither good nor bad, just a fact. It did not rise, which is not surprising considering how thick the batter was. I don't know the purpose of the baking powder in this recipe. Normally baking powder is used in conjunction with buttermilk to create air bubbles and rise, but there wasn't an activating ingredient in this cake that I know of. Unless the acid is in the egg whites, maybe? Research needed to confirm The cake is mildly crumbly and I would not describe it as light. Before starting this recipe I assumed because of the whipped egg whites that it would be a light cake. The flavor is good but definitely improved upon the use of a jam or custard along with the icing. I made a mini version of this along with the "Easter" version to take to a friend's. Their verdict on this is that the cake is tasty, but that the icing really makes the recipe.

Want to read about the icing for this cake? Check back Monday for final cake photos and the [amazing] boiled icing recipe!

Take Aways

• Mechanical egg beaters work really well. All things considered a very worthwhile kitchen tool if you live somewhere with no electricity.
• Consider using parchment paper rather than greasing and flouring your baking tins. The thick mixture spread the flour around and was hard to get even.
• Creaming butter and sugar is pretty easy if the butter is room temperature.

There are fun facts in the back of the book. Here is a more dubious one...

Strong tea [drank] daily will, after time, give the skin the color and appearance of leather. I wonder if this was anti-British advice...