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White Cake Recipe From Scratch

Vintage Recipes For Homemade White Cake

Enjoy the best white cake recipe from Grandma's day. Recipes for white cake are easy to make and give delicious results. These dessert cakes are perfect for serving on any occasion. Your guests will love them.

Improvements in refining methods meant that white flour and white sugar had become commonly available by the 1850s, making it possible to have cakes with the lightest color and texture. However, the extra cost of the refined ingredients meant that white cakes were mostly made for special occasions by those that could afford them.

For instance, here's an old fashioned white wedding cake recipe that could be adapted easily for other special occasions.

beating batter for a white cake

The whiteness of these dessert cakes came to symbolize purity, which accounts for their popularity at weddings, and their costlier ingredients reflected the prosperity of those serving them.

These fine cakes were considered truly special and were even immortalized in a popular children's rhyme.

Over The Water

Over the water, and over the sea,
And over the water to Charley,
I'll have none of your nasty beef,
Nor I'll have none of your barley;
But I'll have some of your very best flour
To make a white cake for my Charley.

Simple White Cake Recipes From Scratch

These old fashioned Pennsylvania Dutch recipes were taken from the book "Mary At The Farm And Book Of Recipes Compiled During Her Visit Among The 'Pennsylvania Germans'" by Edith M. Thomas, printed by John Hartenstine, Norristown, Pennsylvania, in 1915.

Traditional Recipe For White Cake
Sift together, three times, the following:

1 cup of flour
1 cup of sugar (granulated)
3 even teaspoonfuls of baking powder

Scald one cup of milk and pour hot over the above mixture. Beat well.

Fold into the mixture, carefully, the stiffly beaten whites of 2 eggs. Flavor with a few drops of almond extract. Bake in a moderate oven, exactly as you would bake an angel cake.

This is a delicious, light, flaky cake, if directions are closely followed, but sometimes a little difficult to get just right.

A Good And Cheap White Cake
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter and lard, mixed
1 cup milk
Add a few drops of almond flavoring
3 cups flour
2 teaspoonfuls baking powder
Whites of five eggs

Cream together the butter and sugar, add flour sifted with baking powder alternately with the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. The five yolks of eggs left from baking white cake may be used when making other recipes.

Dr. Chase's Moist White Cake Recipe

This simple recipe for white cake is taken from the book “Dr. Chase’s Third, Last and Complete Receipt Book, Memorial Edition” by Dr. Alvin Wood Chase, M.D., published by F. B. Dickerson Company, Detroit and Windsor, in 1891.

How to make a white cake:

Two cups of sugar, 1/2 cup of butter; beat the butter and sugar till like cream; stir in 1 cup of sweet milk; add 3 cups of flour and 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder; beat the whites of 5 eggs and stir in with the flour. Do NOT bake too fast. Contributed by Laughing Ora, Morris, Ill.

Enjoy experimenting with an old fashioned white cake recipe from scratch from Grandma's recipe collection. Be sure to take a peek at the other vintage cake recipes featured on this website.

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My name is Don and I've dedicated my site to bringing you the best in vintage dessert recipes.

Grandma's historical recipes are given exactly as they were first published and sometimes lack exact temperatures and cooking times. If you ever need any help...

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