Recently, I made Busy Day Cake from Handwritten Recipes, and I was so taken with it, I decided to search out the original cookbook. The recipe’s name was easy enough to search out, but another important clue was in the ingredient list: Swan’s Down Cake Flour.

After little bit of searching on eBay, I discovered that Swan’s Down Cake Flour, made by Ingleheart Brothers, Inc.,  had produced several recipe booklets that included the Busy Day Cake Recipe. I purchased a lot from a seller that included two different Ingleheart Cake Secrets booklets: One from 1925 and one from 1931. Busy Day Cake was in the 1931 version, New Cake Secrets.

The booklets arrived and are completely adorable. Each recipe includes a note under the title about how many eggs it uses: Apparently in 1931, this was critical, sub-title-worthy information. After some discussion with The Child, we decided we should make another cake, and we chose Favorite Two-Egg Cake. It was somebody’s favorite, so obviously, that was the place to start.

It didn’t seem quite right, though, because the other recipes are fancier – but I don’t have the energy for fancier. I want a cake to lift my spirits without requiring too much extra exertion on my part.

Basically, what I want is funfetti. Funfetti makes me happy.

It’s easy enough to make any cake a funfetti cake – just toss in some sprinkles, right? All I have is some leftover Christmas sprinkles, and although it’s not quite how I visualize things, I tossed them in. Christmas also makes me happy.

Christmas + Funfetti = The Happiest Cake On Earth.

When the cake was baked, a funny thing happened: The red sprinkles because sort of pink-ish, and the emerald green lightened into a kelly green color. I started with dreams of Christmas Funfetti and ended up with a preppy polka-dot cake.

It was awesome, and totally brightened my day.

As cake recipes go, I preferred the Busy Day Cake for it’s spongy, almost angel-food texture. This cake was a bit simpler, oddly a bit more dry, and cried out for frosting. The child loved it, though, and it was easy to make.

Favorite Two-Egg Cake

2 1/3 cups sifted Swans Down Flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together three times. Cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add eggs and mix well. Add flour alternately with milk, a small amount at a time. Beat after each addition until smooth. Add flavoring. Bake in two greased 9-inch layer pans in moderate over (375°F), for 25 minutes.

The recipe suggests using Orange Filling between the layers and White Mountain Cream frosting. We went with a simple lemon frosting, and I think in this case, a moist fruit filling would work really well, as the recipe suggests. The cake is a bit dry without it.

This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other simple pleasures await?

On our Idaho trip, our souvenirs included a ziploc bag full of hand-panned garnets, a 1914 toaster in need of a plug, and a hand-crank eggbeater, because The Child always wanted one. I already have plenty of antique kitchen utensils that I inherited from my grandmother, some of which are in daily use, and some of which I simply gaze at fondly from time to time. Our souvenirs fit right in to my collection.

Among the items in my collection is my grandma’s flour sifter, which I’ve never seen the point of but which I believe she used nearly daily for fifty or more years. My father swore it was the best flour sifter ever made when he used it for his dedicated* and extensive bread-baking on his last visit. He, too, sifted his flour endlessly.

I still didn’t see the point of it. Flour is pre-sifted. Why bother?

So when I ran across the recipe for Busy Day Cake on the fun Handwritten Recipes blog, I noted that it called not only for a specific type of cake flour, but also that the flour and dry ingredients be repeatedly sifted, and given the recipe is a bit, well, vague, I figured I’d best follow what few instructions there were as precisely as I could.

The recipe’s call for specific brands – Swans Down cake flour and Calumet baking powder – led me to believe that it originally came from either the back of a box or a company-produced cookbook. A search around the internet reveals a number of similar recipes, as well as the fact that several company cookbooks were produced over the years. I used the handwritten version on the blog, which I’ve reproduced below with some edits and corrections.

Busy Day Cake

• 3 cups Swans Down cake flour
• 4 teaspoons Calumet baking powder
• 1/4 t. salt
• 2 cups sugar

Sift dry ingredients together three times.

• 10 tbsp melted butter, slightly cooled
• 4 eggs, fill cup with milk, then add 1 cup more milk (see notes below)
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Put all together and beat three minutes. Bake in 3 greased 9-inch pans, 25 minutes at 350° F.

A couple of notes: On the blog, the quantity of butter is given as teaspoons; I used tablespoons as the handwritten version uses a capital “T”.

The instruction about the eggs is rather baffling, but I followed it this way: crack the four eggs into a measuring cup, then add milk up to the one cup mark. Add this to the dry ingredients, followed by a full cup of milk. Basically, you want two full cups by volume. I used about 1 ¼ cups of milk.

The cakes baked up beautifully in exactly 25 minutes. I used my grandma’s pans and, obviously, her sifter.

The cakes are light and spongy, a bit like angel food cake but more moist. I’m reasonably confident that all the sifting involved contributes to the cake’s airiness.

The cake was  great spread with a bit of nutella, and I expect would take well to any simple glaze or just a bit of fruit on the side. Various versions I found included “broiled coconut topping,” “peanut butter frosting,” and an assortment of other things that, to me, seem like overkill. It’s a simple cake that is marvelous with a  simple dusting of powdered sugar and some sliced strawberries.

I enjoyed these cakes so much that I am now on a hunt to find the original cookbook and see what other vintage recipe treasures lie within.

One final note: they disappear quickly.

This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Please stop by and see what other culinary treasure await!

* You say “obsessed,” I say “dedicated.”