Ethel Rider’s Hot Milk Sponge Cake
Jacob Swann got this recipe from, of all people, my grandmother, an even better cook than he.
Ingredients, cake:
2 eggs
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Ingredients, icing:
5 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons heavy cream
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Beat eggs until thick and lemon-colored, four minutes. Don’t cheat; beat.
3. Add sugar and vanilla. Continue beating for another four minutes. Don’t forget the part about not cheating.
4. Sift together flour and baking powder, salt. Add to sugar-butter-egg mixture slowly, beat on low mixer.
5. Scald the milk and add butter. Cool to the point where it’s touchable.
6. Mix together milk-butter and flour-egg.
7. Pour in greased and floured 9-inch pan.
8. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes clean, so to speak, about 25 minutes.
9. Heat icing ingredients over low to medium heat until thick. Spread on warm cake. Place cake under broiler until bubbling, watching like a cliché’d hawk, to make sure it doesn’t burn.
