My culinary heritage: Whipped Cream Cake

As part of my culinary goals, I am revisiting my culinary heritage by re-creating and re-imagining my family recipes. This post is about one of those delicious creations!

I decided to bake a cake for my birthday and wanted to use a recipe from the family cookbooks. I also wanted to challenge myself, so I chose Grandma Cook’s “Whipped Cream Cake” recipe. Much like the “No Name Cake” from my Grandma Eberle’s recipe collection, all I had to go by for this was a list of ingredients. The list was simple enough, and there were a couple of little hints at how I might mix everything. But I consulted Google to see if anyone had a similar recipe I could use for guidance.

My search suggested that this is a recipe from the 1930s – and that other people who’ve come across it also had nothing more than a list of ingredients to go by. Thankfully, those other people are more experienced bakers* than I am, so they provided some good insights for putting this together.

I began by whipping the cream, which I’ve done several times, so it was easy to start with. Next, I needed to whip the egg whites. And that’s where I made a silly blunder: I took the hand mixer from the cream bowl to the egg bowl without cleaning in between. The cream on the beaters ruined the eggs and they didn’t whip after more than 5 minutes. So, down the drain with those eggs** and I started over again with clean tools. And wouldn’t you know it? They whipped up immediately. (Note to self: Next time, whip eggs then the cream and you won’t have to clean up in between.)

My other two errors were (1) forgetting to add the salt to the flour mixture and (2) not levelling out the batter in the pans, leading to one of the cakes being lopsided and therefore half being too thin and over-cooked. My solution was to cut both cakes in half and create a three-layer “half-cake”. I think this made for a better cake, as it was taller this way.

The cake was denser than I expected, which could be because my baking powder is rather old, or it could be the way I mixed it. But the texture was lovely, and the flavour was amazing! I could have just eaten the cake plain. (I fed the over-cooked portion to the crows; they seemed to really love it, too.)

I opted for a simple, store-bought cream cheese frosting because I didn’t want to experiment with homemade frosting on my first attempt with the cake. I think that I might do a lighter frosting next time, maybe adding some fresh strawberries to the layers or a touch of lemon to the frosting – just to give a little extra flavour.

I enjoyed a slice on my birthday and shared leftovers with my neighbour and a friend who’d come by the next day to help cut down a couple of trees at Castle Ryan. The feedback from all was very positive, so I will certainly try this recipe again.

If you want to try it, the recipe is below. The ingredients list is as my grandmother wrote it; the method is how I put it together. If you try it, I would love to know how you get on and what changes (if any) you make.

Whipped Cream Cake

Ingredients

1 cup cream
3 egg whites, whipped until stiff
add 1½ cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt after sifting together three times

Method

• Heat oven to 350°F (175°C, Gas Mark 3). Grease and flour pans and set aside.
• Separate three eggs and whip the whites until stiff.
• Whip the cream (I used whipping cream) until it more than doubles and is “fluffy”.
• Fold whipped eggs and cream together; mix in sugar.
• Sift flour and baking powder together three times; add a pinch of salt.
• Mix wet and dry ingredients until fully combined.
• Pour batter into prepared pans and bake on the centre rack of a preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. (Mine took 24 minutes.)
• Cool layers on a wire rack for 15 minutes then remove from pans to cool completely.
• Frost, serve, enjoy!

Note: On my next attempt, I will sift the sugar with the rest of the dry ingredients. I will report back with the results.

* Baking and cooking are two different crafts. I am an excellent cook, but only an adequate baker.
** This probably sounds like pure luxury to the Americans, given the current scarcity and cost of eggs!