Between the Devil’s Food Cake and the Deep Blue Sea

The holiday excitement never ends! If you didn’t get enough cake with the Victoria Sponge – and if you aren’t celebrating Victoria Day like we are in Canada, you may not have had any cake yet! – here you go: it’s also National Devil’s Food Cake Day.

According to John Mariani”s The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (1983), the first printed devil’s food cake recipe appeared in 1905. The name seems to come from the dark fudgy decadence of the cake, as opposed to light and airy angel’s food cake. That’s cute, I suppose. To a point. And putting red food coloring in the former, to create Red Devil’s Food Cake? Not so cute. Really, just skip the food coloring. It’s not necessary, not when you have dark chocolate in a starring role.

I know there are a lot of recipes out there – you know, out there – for devil’s food cake, so I thought I’d try and give you a slightly different sort of recipe. The difference here is how much cake you are going to end up with. This is from the Sexton Cook Book (1950), which solicited recipes from the institutional cooks and dieticians that Sexton supplied big cans of beans and pudding and other things to.

So this makes a LOT of cake. But say you were going to have an entire zip code for dinner. Or the gang down at the salt mines. They’d be hungry for sure.

This recipe is attributed to Ruth Custer. She was the Cafeteria manager at West View High School in Pittsburgh in 1950. She notes that it makes 300 servings. I worked that into the title, as you see. I think it’s important.

DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE FOR 300

11 lbs sugar
4 oz. salt
4 3/4 lbs shortening
4 3/4 lbs eggs
2 3/4 lbs cocoa
6 7/8 lbs sifted flour
3 1/2 oz. soda
1 1/4 gallons hot water
4 oz. vanilla

Cream sugar, salt and shortening. Blend in eggs. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with water and vanilla. Bake in a moiderate oven, 350 degrees, 20 minutes.

Note: This is a moist and delicious cake, ideal for school lunch program or hospitals. 4 sheet pans (17″ x 25″) will yield 240 servings. 9″ cake pans will yield 320 servings.

Note: I don’t understand how 240 servings or 320 servings equals 300 servings, which is what Ms. Custer claims it makes. Well, whatever. It’s not like you or I will be blending in almost 5 pounds of eggs into anything. It makes a whole lot of cake, in any case.

Just watch out for the ceramic parrot-quail who is guarding the dessert table – he’s going to make sure you don’t take too much. No matter how many pounds of cake you made.

Let’s Make-Up For Beauty

Oh, let’s. And when we do, let’s use Rawleigh’s. The W. T. Rawleigh Co. of Montreal and Winnipeg sent its salesmen out with a dizzying range of products (or I guess just some samples, it would have been a lot to carry) – everything from cement mix to pudding mix, spices to shampoos, vitamins, medicines, tonics for the cattle and sheep – and, of course, makeup. Well, why not makeup – they made everything else. This ad is from the 1959 Rawleigh’s Almanac, a veritable treasure trove of full-color ads, recipes, and little hints.

And of course there are some “Hints for Beauty.” You may want to know about these things. Like the fact that “night lights” drain you of color, so use blue-red lipstick and lighter face powder than you normally use when you’re out dosing up the farm animals with their Mineral Mixture and Stock Tonic.

And did you know that changing your tinted base makeup means you can “change your basic complexion tone…[so that] you will be able to wear many more colors becomingly.” Break out the orange polka dots! I’ve got Rawleigh’s tinted base on my side. Or at least on my face.

However, I am a little uneasy about the Rawleigh people calling them “Make-Up Preparations” – that really sounds kind of medicinal. The four lipstick colors (not stated but probably Red, Pink, Slightly Darker Red and Slightly Darker Pink) will go with “different costumes and occasions.” How many costumes do they think their rural customers have? Never mind occasions.

The cream is all purpose, which also worries me in the context of the other products. Can I use it for pie filling? To oil the sewing machine? As spot remover or horse tonic?

Oh well, never mind. The model there looks happy enough. Must be one of those semi-formal barn suppers.

Victoria (Pudding) Day

So it’s Victoria Day here in Canada, not that we really celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday or anything. It falls on the Monday before May 24 (Victoria’s real birthday, in 1819) and is supposed to honor the present monarch’s birthday as well. I must tell you that we celebrated by sleeping a little bit later than usual, which I understand is the traditional thing to do.

One could make some sort of Victoria-themed food, I suppose. (One is not going to, chez nous, but talk is not only cheap, it’s way less work! It’s a holiday after all!) Victoria Sponge (the cake, not a kitchen clean-up thing) would be nice – two sponge cake layers with jam in between, basically. And dear old Mrs. Beeton, the great English kitchen authority, has instructions for a Victoria Pudding, as follows:

VICTORIA PUDDING

INGREDIENTS. -4 oz. finely chopped beef suet
2 oz breadcrumbs
1 1/2 oz. flour
1 oz finey shredded mixed peel
2 oz. apples
2 oz. apricot jam
1 1/2 oz dried cherries cut in quarters
1 1/2 oz. sugar
1 large egg
1/2 wineglassful of brandy (optional)
1/4 gill cream or milk

METHOD. – Peel, core and chop the apples finely, and mix with them the suet, breadcrumbs, flour, peel, cherries and sugar. Beat the eggs well, add the jam, cream (or milk), and brandy (if used); when well mixed, stir them into the dry ingredients, and beat well. Pour into a well-greased mold, cover with a greased paper, and steam from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Serve with a suitable sauce.

TIME. – Altogether from 2 to 2 1/2 hours. SUFFICIENT for 5 persons.

I really think we should have a Mrs. Beeton Day – and I think I will make one up, down the proverbial road. She was quite as much a monarch in the Victorian era as – well, Victoria. The Beetonian Era doesn’t have quite the same ring, though, does it? Isabella Mary Beeton (1836-1865) was the author of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), one of the most famous cookery/household books ever written.

There have been cookbooks printed under her name at least into the 1970s (I have one of these); the Victoria Pudding recipe comes from my 1920s Mrs. Beeotn’s Cookery, which does not have much in the way of household hints, but tells you everything that you need to know about – well, cookery. Proper English cookery, that is. And Mrs. B. is never uncertain. She knows about these things, and she is going to tell you all about them.

Leaving Mrs. Beeton (for the present) I would also like to tell you that it is a holiday in the US as well! Not Memorial Day, I know that is next week. It is National Devil’s Food Cake Day. I will be talking about this important holiday later on in the day. And maybe some other things too, depending on whether I celebrate Victoria Day with a little pudding-making or not. (If I do, you know I will not use beef suet, right?)

Or perhaps I will put on my crown and order people around. That could be fun. Or I could just give out a few disdainful looks and say “We are not amused.”