Ice Cream Cakes
2 cups sugar, 1 cup butter, 1 cup milk, 1 cup corn starch, 2 cups flour, whites of 8 eggs, 1 teaspoon soda, 2 teaspoons cream tartar. Flavor with vanilla.
(You can find the original recipe in the facsimile copy reproduced in Tom Kelchner’s new book The Story of the 1881 Cumberland Valley Cook and General Recipe Book)
What a strange recipe. Is it meant to taste like ice cream? Be served with ice cream? What is that amount of corn starch going to do to a cake? I guess I should whip the egg whites? Why is cakes plural? I have too many questions! Let’s see what I can find online. After a slew of recipes using literal ice cream, I struck gold here: https://www.homemade-dessert-recipes.com/old-fashioned-cream-cake-recipe.html
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Traditional cream cakes are known for their thin, light layers of sponge thickly spread with creamy white icing, though there were variations. They contained NO ice cream despite being called ice cream cakes by some chefs.
To make them, simply follow the old fashioned cream cake recipe and quickly bake the thin layers in jelly roll pans or in regular cake pans that are only partially filled with about 1 inch of batter.
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Not only that but this site gives a recipe for the filling as well, from the White House cookbook of 1913.
Three cups of sugar, one of water; boil to a thick, clear syrup, or until it begins to be brittle; pour this, boiling hot, over the well-beaten whites of three eggs; stir the mixture very briskly, and pour the sugar in slowly; beat it, when all in, until cool. Flavor with lemon or vanilla extract.
That is very helpful, though it doesn’t explain the “ice cream” nomenclature. We shall proceed and report our theories.
The cake turns out great. I used a jelly roll pan and baked it for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. It had a buttery, very mild vanilla flavor. I added 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla to the recipe, you could add more if you wanted.
I have never made a boiled icing, but that’s what they want so I’ll give it a try. I reviewed a couple modern recipes online to prepare but have nothing specific enough to report here. It took a long time for the syrup to thicken up – I tested it every few minutes by dropping some in cold water til I got a soft ball to form, as recommended by the modern recipes.
This may not have been enough boiling of the sugar. I don’t have many pictures because we were losing structural integrity fast. This icing turned out more like marshmallow fluff.
Well, I guess I solved the reason it is called ice cream cake – you serve it in a bowl!
Reviews – “Tastes like breakfast danish– would be good with coffee?” “Good for what it is” “I’m not trying that”
Rating 2/5 stars. The cake was nice, but nothing spectacular. I still don’t know what the corn starch did for it. The icing was a disaster, which I think is mainly user error so that’s on me. I am not holding it against the cake, but you could get a similar effect much easier by buying a box of white cake mix and a jar of marshmallow fluff.
– Rachael Zuch of Zuch Design