Baking: 1-2-3-4 Cake

So I baked this cake on Sunday, and had plans to frost it and bring it in so my friends in my program could enjoy it, but I cannot for the life of me find the energy within me to find and execute a decent frosting recipe. The ones I've made before have felt really work intensive and by the time I'm home and have anywhere approaching enough time to work on it, I just feel like I'd rather take a nap instead. I'd also rather not use frosting out of a can for sharing with others. However, I wanted to discuss the cake anyway, since the recipe came from an interesting place. Maybe I'll still bring it in, maybe I'll just keep it to practice decorating techniques on (and to eat, of course).

One of the cooler things about going to an old school is that you can find some neat old books in the library just wandering through the stacks. (Also, old magazines, but that's another story entirely.) One day I came across The Ebony Cookbook from 1962:

In case you had any doubts that this came from the sixties, here's the endpaper:

And the photo accompanying the "Desserts" chapter:

I liked the idea of baking something from the cookbook as a sort of Black History Month celebration. It's a sort of artifact of the intra-United States Black diaspora; Ebony readers sent in recipes to construct a compendium of African-American foods. There's a chapter specifically devoted to "Creole Dishes," which culminates in a recipe for Stewed Turtle. Where does one even find turtle meat these days?

So I decided to make the "Old-Fashioned 1-2-3-4 Cake." I used my new turn-crank handled sifter for the first time! It's a pretty basic yellow cake; the name comes from the ingredients:

One cup of butter

Two cups of sugar

Three cups of flour (I used cake flour, which is superfine. Sifting it can end up leaving a fine layer of powder all over the kitchen, which makes me feel like I'm in Debi Mazar's apartment in Goodfellas.)

Four eggs

I love the concept of the name corresponding with the recipe; for me, it conjures an image of passage from one generation to the next as a means of teaching kids to remember the recipe easily. Here's the finished product on Sunday:

And still unfrosted today:

If I end up doing something fancy decoration-wise, I'll post that too. Otherwise, I'll just move on to Valentine's Day stuff (I got a heart-shaped cake pan! I'm excited!)