Pages

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Cécile's Grated Chocolate Cake

It might not look like it, but this cake definitely delivers on chocolate flavor!

We're wrapping up the month of March with another historic cake: Eliza Leslie's chocolate cake. Why have I called it a grated chocolate cake, and why does the cake itself look so blonde? Because this is actually the ancestor to what we know of as chocolate cake! 

We've talked a lot about chocolate in the history of this blog because I'm a bit of a dessert fiend, but I was very excited to try my hand at this recipe because it's pretty far removed from chocolate cakes I've made in the past, as well as what we think of as chocolate cakes today. It's also yet another historical cake recipe that relies on eggs to give it its rise, something I'm always fascinated about and eager to try to perfect. 

Read on to see how this one turned out!



I was introduced to this recipe on A Taste of History with Joyce White, another blog that focuses on testing out historic recipes and providing suggestions for the modern cook to recreate them. Joyce White is a food historian from Maryland who has collaborated and worked for a lot of really neat historic sites, and she's extremely brave with what recipes she'll try out and feature on her blog. There are quite a few I'd like to try my hand at sometime... and one more I'm hoping to make later next month! 

This recipe is adapted from Eliza Leslie's The Lady’s Receipt Book, which was published in 1847. Leslie was a popular author of cookbooks and other self help publications from the 1830's until her death in 1858. Between 1836 through 1845, Leslie was the editor of The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present, a publication that saw the first printing of classics like Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," as well as works by Longfellow and Emerson. She also wrote for Godey’s Lady’s Book, Graham’s Magazine, Saturday Gazette, and Saturday Evening Post. Funnily enough, one of her early works was called the American Girl's Book, published in 1831. That would be a fun accessory for an 1830's character! 

Mrs. Rey could have owned copies of several of her books, and could have used them or something similar to help teach Cécile how to be a proper young lady. It's absolutely possible that this cake was something she'd suggest their cook prepare for a special occasion, or instruct Cécile on how to plan a menu featuring it when she entertained as an adult. 

Joyce White explains that the reason this recipe can be made with grated chocolate rather than cocoa powder is because cocoa powder was still a relatively new product in 1847, having just been invented in 1828. 

To begin, you'll want to chop or grate three ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate. I just chopped mine finely, as my baking chocolate bar was very thin and probably would have melted before I actually finished grating it had I tried to handle it in my hands. Technically you could also use three ounces of cocoa powder, but as said above, it's not necessarily the way Cécile's family would have enjoyed the recipe due to the scarcity of cocoa powder. Plus, the effect will be pretty much the same as a chocolate cake you'd make today, so that's just not as much fun. This gets added to fourteen ounces of flour, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and 1/2 of a teaspoon of nutmeg. Set these aside while you prep your wet ingredients.


This recipe calls for a whopping ten eggs. Today, that's not a huge financial expense for most people, but in 1847, that would definitely be something you'd save for a special occasion. Even a wealthy family like the Reys probably would have thought twice about using ten eggs on a single dessert just for the sake of it. That, plus the large amounts of chocolate, butter and sugar definitely make this something that wouldn't have been an accessible treat to everyone of the period. 

Separate your eggs into whites and yolks. (For the first time ever, I almost had a disaster nine eggs into doing this - one of my yolks broke and it nearly fell into the whites!) Beat the yolks, then the whites until they're foamy but not stiff, then combine them all together. Set these aside too.


Finally, cream three sticks of salted butter with a whopping pound of powdered sugar. I recommend doing this by hand even though it might take a while - adding a mixer in, or doing it in a stand mixer tends to send powdered sugar flying everywhere. Not that I'm speaking from experience... 

Combine the eggs and flour alternately into the sugar and butter mixture until the batter comes together, then pour the batter into a greased tube pan. This goes into a 375 degree oven for 45 to 60 minutes. Since our oven is on the cooler side, I left it in for the full hour. 

The historical recipe asks the baker to cook it for at least four hours! That's a long time for a cake, and another reason why this cake probably wouldn't be something you'd bake casually. Giving it the oven space and needing to babysit it a little for four hours sounds like an enormous pain.


I wound up needing to cook it for about 90 minutes total, as when I took it out initially, the knife I stuck into the cake came out very, very gooey. My cake also rose very unevenly in the pan - you can't really see it in the pictures I got, but one half of it had a very large hump protruding from the pan, while the other half just poked up a little. This made it very uneven when I flipped it out of the pan to cool, and required some serious trimming to get it to look nice on a plate. 

It also got a little dark in the oven. This is something I find very frustrating about cooking in bundt or tube pans. They often don't cook fully in the middle, and even covering the top of the cake in aluminum foil doesn't always prevent the sides or top from browning while you're trying to cook the middle all the way through. 

Fortunately, this turned out to be mostly a cosmetic issue and nothing else, because the cake definitely wasn't burned. I was also really excited to see what it looked like sliced!


Pretty nice, right?


For a very light colored cake, this definitely still delivered in chocolate flavor, maybe even more so than some modern chocolate cakes I've eaten in my time. The spices are pretty subtle, but definitely enhance the flavor of the cake just enough to make this really yummy to eat. If I blind folded you and fed you a piece, you definitely wouldn't mistake it for a spice cake or a white cake, so that was pretty cool and definitely made the recipe worth the investment. 

Excitingly, although this is also a pretty dense cake (as most historical cakes are before baking powder or soda was available), it wasn't dry or rubbery. I was relieved it was still soft and moist after needing to be in the oven for so long, and very pleased that it rose perfectly well even though it seemed like the eggs would have lost most of the air beaten into them during the mixing process. 

Overall, this was a pretty successful historical adventure, and one I'd happily undertake again. Not that it probably comes as a surprise to hear me say that - I think my readers know well enough by now that I love chocolate cake! But if you're interested in food history and something that's pretty unique, but still flavors you know and love, I'd definitely recommend giving this one a shot. It's a cool look at what people like Cécile and her family would have considered a decadent treat to enjoy, as well as something you'll be happy to serve to friends and family.

Or not, if you're a particularly ambitious cake eater!

2 comments:

  1. That looks interesting AND delicious. Do you think the batter would hold up in mini muffin tins (so everyone gets yummy "crust")?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Possibly! The challenge with this one is the batter is so thick, you want to make sure the middle is cooked without burning the sides. I think as long as you were careful with baking times and temperature of the oven, you'd be okay. Might take some experimenting though!

      Delete