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2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, the yolks of 5 eggs, the whites of 3, 1 orange, 1/2 cup of cold water, 3 teaspoons baking powder, grate the rind and squeeze the juice.

Dressing – The white of 2 eggs beaten to a stiff froth, rind and juice of an orange, make still with icing sugar, and spread as for jelly cake.

(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 is jelly cake? Like a jelly roll? I see photos online of what looks like a layer cake with just jelly instead of icing. I can’t say I really like the look of those. This recipe looks like it makes too much for a jelly roll, but the proportions are close… since it’s up to me I’m going to halve the recipe and see if it rolls.

I figure two of these guys makes about half an orange.

I cooked the cake mix in a jelly roll pan lined with parchment paper. 10 minutes at 350 degrees and the tester fork came out clean. I sprinkled some powdered sugar on it and used the paper to roll it up, then set it in the fridge to cool down a bit. I mixed the icing ingredients together in a stand mixer, which took about 3 cups of powdered (icing) sugar.

Reviews:

I give this 1/5 stars. The cake part definitely had orange flavor and it rolled up pretty well whether it was meant to or not. However, the icing was just gross – overly sweet and also tasteless at the same time. The finished product reminded me of breakfast cereal somehow? I could see the idea being much tastier as some kind of orange dreamsicle roll-up, perhaps with a cream cheese based filling, a la pumpkin roll.

– Rachael Zuch of Zuch Design