Old community and church cookbooks almost never contain pictures of foods made using the recipes (or pages printed in color), so when I was looking through a 1926 cookbook from Cherokee, Iowa I was surprised to see a beautiful color drawing of an Orange Layer Cake.

The picture was on a page containing an advertisement for Swans Down Cake Flour. The cookbook also contained the recipe for the cake. Apparently, Swans Down was an advertising sponsor for the cookbook. And, the company must have paid a lot, because this was the only color page in the book. Here’s the picture and the original recipe:

The cake looked delicious, and each time I flipped through the cookbook, it seemed to almost automatically open to the page with the Swans Down advertisement. After about the tenth time I looked at the picture, I decided to make the recipe. Could I replicate this beautiful cake?

The cake pictured in the old cookbook was a 3-layer cake; but, the recipe was for a 2-layer cake. The directions say, “Bake in 2 layers or double recipe for 3 large layers.” I decided to double the recipe so that my cake would look like the image in the cookbook.

The cake I made looked beautiful and I was pleased with how it turned out, but it was a huge cake, so when I updated the recipe, I did what the old cookbook author did. I provided directions for a two-layer cake with a note that it can be doubled to make a three-layer cake.

The cake in the old drawing has an orangish tint, and the filling is a bright orange. The actual filling I made was not very orange, and had more of a beige hue. Similarly, the cake was yellow, rather than orange. I considered using food coloring to make the filling and the cake orange, but decided against it.  Even without the artificial dyes in food coloring, the cake looked lovely.

The old recipe called for a teaspoon of “flavoring.” I used orange extract.

I did not use a double boiler when making the Orange Filling. I just stirred it constantly, and it worked fine. I did not have any issues with the bottom of the filling burning.

The cake recipe says to ice the cake with boiled icing, but did not include a recipe for it, so I found a Boiled Frosting recipe in another 1926 cookbook:

I decided to go with the option that called for using two egg whites.

The Boiled Frosting, which is sometimes called Seven Minute Frosting, had a glossy finish and was light and airy. It brought back memories of the tasty frosting on cakes that great aunts made for family reunions years ago.

The bottom line is that this is a very tasty, beautiful cake. The cake layers had lovely texture, the Orange Filling had a bright and sunny citrus taste, and the Boiled Frosting was delectable. It takes time to make and assemble this cake, but it was well worth the effort.

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:

Layer cakes with a filling between the layers were very popular a hundred years ago. Modern cookbooks often have a few frosting recipes and maybe one or two cake filling recipes at the end of the Cake chapter, but some old cookbooks have so many filling and frosting recipes that they have a separate chapter for them. For example, a 1925 cookbook, the Rumford Complete Cookbook, has a chapter titled Cake Fillings, Frostings, and Icings. There are eleven cake filling recipes including Fig Filling, Maple Filling, Orange and Walnut Filling, Orange and Coconut Filling, Mocha Filling, Marshmallow Filling, Prune Almond Filling, and Caramel Nut Filling.

All the fillings looked either intriguing or tasty, but I only wanted to make one cake, so I had to pick one. Some of the fruit fillings tempted me, but in the end I decided to make Caramel Nut Filling. I thought that a white cake would work well with this filling, so I flipped back to the Cake chapter and found a recipe for White Layer Cake.

After I assembled the cake with the filling in the middle, I iced it with a Buttercream Frosting. There were no Buttercream Frosting recipes in the Rumford Complete Cookbook. I guess that the author assumed that cooks knew how to make it without a recipe.

The cake was excellent. The cake itself was moist, light, and tender with a delicate vanilla flavor. The filling was a lovely fusion of a rich caramel and crunchy nuts. (I used walnuts.)

Here’s the original cake recipe:

The recipe does not specify which type of “flavoring extract” should be used. I used vanilla. The old recipe says to bake the cake for about twenty minutes. I baked the cake at 350° F. and it actually took about 25-30 minutes until a wooden pick inserted in the center came out clean.

Here’s the original Caramel Nut Filling recipe:

When I read the Caramel Nut Filling recipe, I was not sure what it meant when it said to cook the cream and sugar “till they begin to thicken.” I interpreted it to mean to cook it until it reached the soft ball stage (235° F.). This worked fine, and the filling turned out well.

Here are the recipes updated for modern cooks:

I love Spice Cakes, so when I saw a recipe for Clove Cake in a hundred-year-old cookbook I was intrigued. Was it similar to Spice Cake or quite different? I decided to give it a try and see what it was like.

The verdict– The recipe makes a small loaf cake. I have mixed feelings about this cake. It was tasty, but not very aesthetically pleasing.  The cake had an old-fashioned goodness with the warm, sweet, spiciness of cloves. The flavor is more intense than the typical spice cake, but it was good. My husband said that the worst thing about the cake was that there was not enough of it. The texture of the cake was nice, however, the cake fell when I took it out of the oven, so it did not look that great. The recipe called for a really high ratio of sugar to flour, and I think that this might be the issue.

Here’s the original recipe:

I am unclear why the recipe calls for adding the raisins before adding the baking soda and some of the flour. It’s difficult to get a well-mixed batter when there are chunky raisins in the mixing bowl, so I updated the recipe to add the raisins last.

When I made this recipe, the chopped raisins sank to the bottom. In hindsight I realized that I probably should have tossed them in flour prior to stirring them into the batter. This probably would have helped keep them dispersed throughout the cake. When I updated the recipe, I indicated that the raisins should be floured.

Sweet milk is just regular milk. In the days before pasteurized milk, some cake recipes called for sour milk. I’m not sure why the recipe author felt the need to clarify that milk that had not soured should be used.

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:

Bakers have been making spooky Halloween Cakes for at least a hundred years. The October, 1924 issue of American Cookery magazine had a recipe for Witches’ Cake. The recipe intrigued me. It called for making a chocolate layer cake, and decorating it by putting the two parts of the cake together with a red frosting, then icing it with chocolate frosting, and decorating with small red candies that are arranged to make an outline of a witch.

This was a fun recipe to make. The cake was a rich and fudgy cake with an almost brownie-like texture.

Here’s the original recipe:

The old recipe called for tinting some of the frosting red with cochineal. I wasn’t familiar with cochineal so I did an online search. According to an article in Smithsonian Magazine, cochineal is a crimson dye made from an insect.

An average trip to the grocery store can yield a cartful of colorful foods. Bright among the rainbow are the reds, lending hues to products such as raspberry jam, canned cherries, strawberry licorice and red velvet cake. Often, their source is a certain small insect.

Cochineal bugs — oval-shaped scale insects around 0.2 inches long — are harvested and turned into the natural dyes cochineal extract, carmine and the pure pigment carminic acid. They have been used to color food, textiles and cosmetics for centuries.

Smithsonian Magazine (March 29, 2022)

I had no idea where I could buy cochineal, so I used dark red food coloring to tint the icing for the filling.

I didn’t find any small red wintergreen candies at the store where I shop, so I bought small red “sugar pearls” in the cake and cookie decorating section.

Squares of unsweetened baking chocolate have gotten smaller over the last hundred years. Back then a square was an ounce in size; today a square of a popular baking chocolate is 1/2 ounce.

This recipe doesn’t call for any baking powder or baking soda. The beaten egg whites provided the leavening.

I used 2/3 cup of milk, and I substituted all-purpose flour for the pastry flour.

I found recipes for Plain Frosting and Chocolate Frosting in a hundred-year-old cookbook:

I quadrupled the Plain Frosting recipe so that I’d have enough frosting to ice the cake. I did not use any water when making the Chocolate Frosting. I just used milk to get it to the right consistency. I used less chocolate than called for in the old recipe, since a square of chocolate was 1-ounce a hundred-years ago and the squares are smaller today- but it still was very chocolatey.

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks: