Cider Cake

Yes, another Cider Cake.  For some reason I have been hung up on cakes, and since I still had some cider in the house I thought I would go ahead and try the Cider Cake a different way. This go round I tried The Kentucky Housewife's, 1839 version.  The recipe is a bit different, as it call for eggs.

Using a nice large bowl add a stick and a half of butter to 1 cup of sugar, cream together. Add the six eggs well beaten to the creamed mixture, then 2 cups of apple cider (the recipe denotes "sweet" cider as apposed to the popular alcoholic cider of the 19th Century). The recipe calls for 2 grated nutmegs, I added a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, I did not want the flavor to be too overpowering. Then add the flour gradually as you go to make a thick batter. I added the flour one cup at a time, mixing well as I went, I ended up using about 4 1/2 cups of flour to make what I thought was a thick batter, about the consistency of modern cake batter. I did not add raisins to this cake, I was out.

I added the mix to a 10" buttered bunt cake pan and placed it in a moderate (350) oven. This recipe does not specify how long the cake will take to bake, I started checking at 20 minutes. I took the cake out of the oven after about 40 minutes of baking it seemed to be done.

This cake is the opposite of the last Cider Cake. The last cake was crumbly, this one is the opposite. This cake was thick and very dense. The flavor was sweeter than the last one, at least to me.

Cider Cake

The holiday season brings with it a slew of sweet cakes, cookies, and other goodies. In that festive way I decided to try a new cake. This recipe comes from The Frugal Housewife, 1833.  I have seen many other recipes for Cider Cake, but this was the book I had in my kitchen and didn't have to look up another recipe!

Modern measurements for this recipe are 6 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1 stick of butter, 1 cup of apple cider and 1 tsp of baking soda.

Mixing all the ingredients in a bowl the batter seemed very stiff, almost like a bread, and less like a cake. I did add more cider as I went to moisten the batter and make it more manageable.  "Spice to your taste," well that can mean anything right? Well, almost. Looking at other recipes from the period, most of the Cider Cakes call for raisins, and of coarse some nutmeg. I added about a handful of raisins, and maybe less than a teaspoon of nutmeg ( I did not want to over-power the Cider).
Since I do not have any small loaf pans I decided to bake this cake in a small bunt cake pan that i have that has space for 6 cakes.  I did have enough batter to fill a small 8" round pan as well.  The batter was very thick, think cookie dough almost. In the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes, depending on your cake pan and oven. Start checking your cake about 20 minutes in to see if it is done.   Mine took about 30 minutes to cook, so Mrs. Child was right on with my oven!

The cake had a very good taste, but again, very dense and heavy.  I think next time I will try the Kentucky Housewife version which call for eggs, that may change the consistency a bit and make more of a "cake" that we are used to.