This recipe is adapted from an old McCall’s cake booklet, and in it the reciep calls to cream butter with "well-scrubbed hands…this chore will take you about 15 minutes," with black and white pictures of pretty hands doing so. It also makes use of hand rotary beaters to whip the whites to peaks. Luckily, modern-day appliances make better use of our hands, but it still is interesting to see how pastries were made before modern technology.

Perfect White Cake

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups cake flour, sifted before measuring
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup butter or margarine
• 1 1/2 cups sugar, divided
• 4 egg whites, room temperature
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon almond extract

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour 3 8" cake pans.
2. Sift cake flour, then measure. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Sift this mixture 3 times together.
3. Cream butter until very light. Add in 1 cup sugar in parts, and continue mixing until the sugar granules are dissolved into the butter.
4. In separate bowl, beat whites until they peaked then add in 1/2 cup sugar spoonfuls at a time, beating well to incorporate the sugar before adding more, until the meringue has shiny, stiff satin peaks.
5. Mix the milk with the extracts.
6. Add flour and milk mixture alternately to the creamed mixture, starting and ending with flour. Fold meringue into batter very gently, without any patches of egg whites in batter.
7. Divide batter between prepared pans. Bang pans once sharply on counter top to remove any air bubbles and prevent tunnels from forming. Bake cakes for 25 minutes. Let sit in pans for 5 minutes before turning out onto cooling rack.

Notes

 

Content by Renee Shelton. Recipe adapted from McCall’s Basic Cake Book booklet, 1953. This recipe was first published on PastrySampler.com on January 10, 2007. It was updated on October 13, 2020.