Originally published on: February 6, 1920
Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup sweet milk
- 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1/8 tsp. salt
Ingredients for the icing::
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cake of bakers’ chocolate</li>
- 1 Tbsp. butter
- 3/4 cup milk
- 2 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup milk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
Directions:
- Cream butter and sugar. Add well beaten yolks of eggs.
- Mix and sift flour, baking powder and salt. Add alternately with milk and vanilla.
- Folding whites beaten till stiff and dry.
- Bake in layers in a hot oven.
- To make Icing: Grate chocolate. Boil sugar, 3/4 cup milk, chocolate and butter for 5 minutes. Dissolve cornstarch in milk and add to boiling mixture and boil 3 minutes longer. Beat until cool and add vanilla. Put between the layers and on top of the cake.
Hi. I don’t see any type of chocolate listed in the ingredient list for the CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE. :) What type and how much?
We went back to our archives and checked the recipe to see if we had mistakenly omitted something, but the original recipe from the 1920s does not have any chocolate in the cake portion, but the icing does include it. You could try adding one-third to one-half cup cocoa powder to the dry ingredients, but that’s not tested. Gotta love these old recipes! If you try it, we’d love to hear how it turned out!
Thank you for looking into it. Seems funny a chocolate layer cake wouldn’t have cocoa or unsweetened baker’s chocolate in it. Maybe because they were placing the chocolate icing on each layer, it qualified it to be called a Chocolate Layer Cake. ??
I love the old recipes, too, and am so happy the 1920’s were featured today. Cannot wait for the other decades.
Thanks again. If I make this cake, I will add cocoa and let you know how it turned out!
I see you’ve changed the picture to a cake with chocolate frosting. Good idea! :)
How much, and what type of chocolate is used in the frosting? The ingredient has “1/4 of [illegible],” but the recipe says to “grate the chocolate.”