Retro Cakes.

I have a short and simple story for you today. My most popular posts, I believe, are those about baking. So, for those of you who have a thriving inner baker, or wish you had, here are three cake recipes from old Australian newspapers.

Red Devil Cake.

Method: Custard, 1 cup grated chocolate, ½ cup sweet milk, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. Stir well together over the fire and cook slowly. Put away to cool.

Cake: 1 cup brown sugar, ½ cup butter, 2 cups plain flour, ½ cup milk, 2 eggs. Cream the butter, sugar, and egg yolks. Add milk, sifted flour, and whipped egg whites. Beat all well together, and stir in the custard. Lastly, add 1 teaspoon of soda dissolved in warm water.

In an electric over raise the temperature to 40o degrees, then switch the top off and turn the bottom [elements] to low. Cook for 30 or 40 minutes. Bake for three-quarters of an hour in a fuel stove.

The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) of 16 August, 1949.

Blair Athol Cake.

1 lb. butter, worked to a cream; 1 lb. loaf sugar, pounded and sifted; 1 lb. flour, well dried; 8 eggs, well-beaten; ¼ lb. candied orange; ½ lb. blanched almonds; 2 oz.citron. When well mixed put it in a tin lined with buttered paper, and bake it. to know when it is done, run a wooden skewer into it; if it comes out quite dry it is sufficiently baked.

The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.) 16 July 1881

Turtle Run Cake.

Line an oblong pan with pastry and then spread thickly with preserved fruit. Sprinkle three-quarters cup of finely chopped nuts over the fruit, then cover in lattice fashion with inch-wide strips of pastry. Brush the top pastry with beaten egg and milk and bake in slow oven for 35 minutes. Cover the top of the baked pastry wit thin water icing and then cut in oblongs.

Recipe by Mrs.M. A. Wilson, former Chief Cuisiniere in the Royal Household

of the late Queen Victoria.

Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW) 11 March 1923