You Have 6 Hours To Eat This Cake... 1925 Lightening Cake Recipe - Old Cookbook Show

Welcome Friends welcome back to the kitchen welcome back to Sunday morning in the old cookbook show now if you've been watching the last couple of weeks I went down a bit of a rabbit hole uh looking at chocolate mayonnaise cakes most of my research for the chocolate mayonnaise cake happened in newspaper databases because uh prior to the end of World War II I couldn't really find it in any of the other resources that I have all of the cookbook collection doesn't show up in the community cookbooks prior to the end of World War II so I researched a lot of cakes on old newspaper databases going back into the 1800s and while I was researching that one cake that came up over and over and over again was a cake called the lightning cake um and the first reference to this lightning cake that I found was in 1916 called blitzkuchen I'll throw it up on the screen so that you can take a look at it Blitz kuchen is German for lightning cake and this lightning cake I would see it over and over and over again uh down through time and for the most part it was always the same ish recipe um a one bowl cake lightning cake reference the fact that it was an easy method easy ingredients usually a lemon flavored cake you could mix it really quickly you could bake it really quickly and you could get it on the table quickly if you know people showed up and you weren't expecting them and you needed a cake for coffee time so in this bowl I have uh butter and sugar and I'm creaming that together here I've got some flour I'm adding baking powder and salt the lightning cake that I'm making today um I only found two instances of it uh in the newspaper databases this one that I'm doing today is from 1923 February 3rd 1923 from a newspaper in Des Moines Iowa and then I see it again in 1934 in Saint Cloud this is an outlier um and when I when I gave those dates I didn't do a deep dive on this one I certainly didn't find every instance of this cake there's probably more of them out there if your family still makes this cake let me know Down Below in the comments if you still make Blitz kitchen or lightning cake and so we're making the batter and we're going to put that in the baking pan and then we're at the same time we're making a meringue and that meringue gets baked on top of the cake batter at the same time so effectively what you have is a cake and a frosting that bake at the same time and the you know the frosting is of course a meringue but I think the meringue would be kind of cool on the top of the cake so I've got three egg yolks in there mixing together creaming together with the butter and the sugar I've got the dry ingredients ready to go it gets lemon flavoring whites are in the copper bowl so that we can make the meringue so I'm going to add the lemon flavoring and then I'm going to scoop in a little bit of the flour [Music] and a little bit of the milk and then back with a little bit of flour and on an upcoming edition of the Sunday morning old cookbook show we will be doing the hundred dollar cake and the mythology around the hundred dollar cake and how that carried on to the Mrs Fields cookie um the Neiman Marcus cookie and it even spawned myths in other parts of the world in South Africa Woolworths pretty much exactly the same story as the Neiman Marcus cookie it's pretty funny so we're gonna do that we're gonna do that cake shortly as well so just about got the cake mixed together got the flour in put in the last of the milk okay that cake batter is done and so in the copper bowl here we'll just whip up the egg whites and this is just a really simple meringue egg whites and uh and some sugar with some nut meats and again they um as is the norm in these older recipes they just say nutmegs and you can use whatever nuts you want whatever nuts you like so I'm gonna use pecans okay and we'll just sprinkle in a little bit of sugar at a time a lot of the lightning cake recipes the farther back you go and the farther back you go in the place of regular granulated sugar they use a superfine sugar or fruit sugar super fine grind sugar or powdered sugar and that really finely ground Sugar means that the cake comes together faster and I would usually use that if I'm making a meringue because it dissolves quicker so next in the nut Meats like I said I'm using pecans and that just needs a really quick spin that's it I've got a 9x9 so we'll get the cake batter in you don't want to take too long beating up your egg whites you don't want the cake batter hanging around before you get it in the oven now we'll spread that out the one recipe mentioned that it should be spread fairly thin it is just a thin layer of cake in the bottom so get that into all the corners and then we'll get the meringue topping on there now one of the things that I always find interesting when I look at you know hundreds of variations or hundreds of the same recipe and you look at the variations and you look at the way it evolves over time you can kind of see how you know the recipes will Branch off into multiple different directions still be called the same thing but have different different ideas attached to them um a lot of the Blitz cushion or you know the German lightning cakes you were whipping the eggs making a meringue and then folding them into the cake batter um egg whites and Trigger loving weights and sugar in order to make the cake light and then you were putting cinnamon sugar on top and maybe some nuts in sort of you know like a crumble topping and I wonder if this cake where the whites got separated out are separated out and layered on top in a meringue if that is just a variation someone along the line made a mistake and they really liked it and and they just sort of you know went with it and it turned into a different cake yet with the same name I mean that is highly a possibility of how this could have evolved so I'm sprinkling cinnamon sugar on top the oven is preheated to 350 degrees just as a medium oven I didn't use all of the sugar and cinnamon that the recipe called for I think that's enough for me so into the oven we go okay so let me tell you okay hey Sam's gonna tell me how are you Glenn hey friends what are you telling me while this cake was baking and when I pulled it out of the oven I was so excited it looks like it had a big dome on it and it's kind of settled the meringue was really tall it was oh that was on the top so yeah in the newspaper article the clock is ticking in the newspaper article the person who wrote this recipe said serve and eat within six hours six hours time is running out okay we the whole thing the whole thing I don't know I could if I had to get in there so there's meringue on the top it's meringue interesting so it's called lightning cake is it super fast to make like what's with the it's lemony it's lovely and Lemony and fluffy and okay so the cake itself is really light Airy isn't it like it's I'm curious about the meringue you wouldn't know from the cake that there were no egg whites in the batter for the cake because usually in order to kick that light in the area it's on the uh right yeah you need to put the whites you need to whip the whites and put them in all the whites are in their meringue are there what else is in the meringue though pecans okay and then a little bit of cinnamon sugar sprinkles a little bit of cinnamon sugar okay so let me look at my notes I found this cake recipe in a newspaper February 3rd 1923 in Des Moines Iowa um and then again in 1934 in Saint Cloud okay and then every reference so this is called the lightning kit because it's fast to make every other reference that I found to a lightning cake since 1934 has been not this okay but another cake that was really quick to mix up okay but this idea of putting the meringue on top I can't seem to find it I'm hoping out there we can use everybody you know in the in the mass research to find other instances of this cake because I've never seen it before and I don't know why it died out no it's pretty good you're missing it it's a good cake you're missing out why why are we not making this why is this not in every cookbook and put everything in everything I know okay so um make this cake make this cake and tell everybody about this cake it is absolutely amazing thanks for stopping by see you again soon

Channel: Glen And Friends Cooking

Views: 72,304

Keywords: Glen And Friends Cooking, historical cooking, community cookbook recipe, culinary history, glen cook, one bowl cake, blitzkuchen recipe, 100 year old recipes, old recipe show, old cookbook recipes, church cookbook recipes, heirloom recipe, lemon cake, lightning cake, old cookbook show, old cookbooks, glen and friends old cookbook show, old cook book show, food history, vintage recipes, how to make lemon cake, community cookbook recipes, lemon cake recipe

Id: VRB6jTtMF7c

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 27 2022