welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
in the old cookbook show
today i'm going to do a recipe out of
this australian cookbook published in
1919.
i picked up a bunch of australian
cookbooks when we were doing the anzac
biscuit episode check that out i'll try
to remember to link to it
and when i was researching that i also
tried to get some new zealand cookbooks
from this time period i couldn't lay my
hands on any
i'm still looking i still want to get
some i'd still love to see them but i've
had a great time going through these
ones from australia
they're very comfortable to me which is
no
real surprise i mean canada and
australia both born out of the british
empire
a lot of similarities but i can also see
a lot of recipes
in these books that are completely
different than what you would see in
canada in this time period
and there's a lot of recipes in canada
in this time period that you just would
not see
in australia and you know part of that
has to do with our french heritage here
in canada
and also different patterns of
immigration at the beginning of the
1900s
the recipe we're going to do today
is just called dark cake
now i have the 1919 version of this
cookbook i also have the 1923
version it's in both books the recipe is
exactly the same it didn't change any
and this is a community cookbook so
there are recipes sent in
by housewives from all over australia
now this starts out like so many cakes
we need to cream together
butter and sugar so i'm going to put the
butter in first and start that
creaming now i'm making this cake
because it sounds really good to me
it's got all kinds of components that i
really
like in a cake and i think it's going to
be fairly comforting and something that
i will really enjoy eating
i also wanted to make it because it uses
black treacle
and black treacle is not um
is not something that's common in canada
you don't find it on every grocery store
shelf
you're more likely to find molasses here
and i struggle with the difference
between molasses
and treacle i know that there is a
difference and i've had it explained to
me
dozens and dozens of times treacle is
removed
earlier in the refining process so it is
slightly sweeter than molasses
and it can also have refiners sugar
which is an invert sugar added to it to
make it even
sweeter
i don't know i don't know if
if it's really going to change the
flavor all that much but i do know that
i really
love this dark roasty flavor
okay now the butter looks good so i'm
going to add
the white sugar in and we'll cream that
together
okay that's looking pretty good so four
eggs one at a time
and you put the egg in you wait for it
to be beaten in thoroughly before you
put in the next one
this really is helpful if you put all
the eggs in all at once
they just don't mix in as well and it
takes longer to get them to mix in
as well so just take the time let one go
in
before you put in the next and it really
doesn't take too long for them to get
beaten in
okay last egg get that
in
and while that's beating together we'll
mix up the flour so i've got flour here
and it asks for
baking powder quite a lot of baking
powder
and i have to wonder if that's because a
baking powder company was sponsor of the
cookbook
because baking soda would completely
work in this recipe there's enough
acid in the treacle to to make it rise
also asks for cloves cinnamon
and some nutmeg so
let's grape that in fresh
i think that's enough so just give this
a bit of a stir
i come to a point in the recipe where i
have some questions
as i always do about the ambiguity of
some of the language
and maybe i'm just overthinking it the
recipe
says beat butter and sugar to a cream
add eggs flour milk and then other
ingredients
the treacle the treacle is a sugar to me
and i'm kind of
on that fence at first i thought oh no
it maybe it's another ingredient because
they don't call it out
specifically as treacle i think i should
put the treacle in before i put the
flour in
that's my thinking at this point because
if i add it in at the end it might not
mix in as well
so executive decision
in goes the treatment and what would you
do would you put the treacle in now
would you put it in
later would you have already put it in
oh look at that so sticky
yeah i know i could put kitchen spray or
oil in my measuring cup and it would
come out easier
i just don't like doing that we're
looking good and don't forget to scrape
down the sides of the bowl
of the mixer as you're making it a lot
of stuff gets trapped at the bottom and
i even have one of those mixer beater
things
that has a scraper on it kind of
effective
not terribly effective i'm just going to
spoon the
flour in a little bit at a time try not
to
spray it everywhere which is going to
happen
anyway maybe i should turn it down
wait for it to get mixed in and then put
in the next amount
a couple spoonfuls at a time
early on it mixes in really quickly i'm
about halfway through
putting the flour in and this recipe
tells me to put the flour in and then
add the milk
based on every cake recipe that i've
ever read
you alternate um
now i'm going to do it as it's written
follow the recipe keep putting in the
flour
okay now the milk
the last little bit of milk
asks for currants and raisins
which always kind of makes me laugh
because currants are a type of raisin
they have a slightly different flavor
they do have a slightly different flavor
but you know
two different kinds of the same thing it
says a few drops of vanilla which
doesn't seem like enough to me but we'll
put in a few drops
it also says to add candied peel
it doesn't say how much candy peel to
add
so use that at your own discretion
now as is the norm there are very few
baking directions
it doesn't tell me what size pan to use
so i've chosen this one because i think
for this amount of batter it should be
about right
nor does it give me a temperature it
just says bake two hours
i've chosen 350 and i'm second guessing
that choice now because
this is kind of like a lot of
those dense rich christmas christmas
cake type recipes
where you probably should bake it at a
lower
temperature because it's going to bake a
lot longer 325 is probably a better
choice
so i'm going to pop this in the oven
even though it's preheated to 350
i'll probably drop the temperature down
as soon as i put it in
to 325 and we'll
see what happens in a couple hours but
it's going to be amazing i'm really
going to like this cake
hi friends i have arrived just in time
okay so we have
dark cake apparently with trico
with treacle it's just called dark cake
oh really yeah
that's the well it's dark now let me
tell you
no baking instructions right no
temperature but it told me to go for two
hours
i put it in at 320 well i put it in at
350 immediately turned it down to 325
within about 45 minutes cooked almost
overcooked
so um i don't know what temperature they
were cooking at
very low it's nice and moist though
oh look i like the raisins
i'm not oh my goodness glenn likes the
raisins and something
that's kind of a special moment on that
okay totally two different things
but you know when you bite into a
a bran muffin and you get those raisins
in the
we every brand muffins not very often no
i can't remember the last time i had a
brand muffin but it's stuck in my brain
it's got it's got a really nice texture
and flavor
now if you i'm gonna just gonna throw
this out there people are gonna be upset
if you live in a country where black
treacle
isn't easily obtainable or it costs too
much
then you probably live in a country
where molasses is used
yeah like canada or the united states or
you could probably use
uh cane sugar that cane sugar syrup the
cane syrup meal de canna meow
meow de canyo it'll be fine
try it out what's the worst thing that
happens if you've never had treacle you
don't know what you're missing
and and it may be a better cake yeah i
don't know
this is pretty good this is this is
pretty good so
don't bake it quite so long probably
still bake it at 3 25
45 minutes you'll be done pretty good
cake
needs a cup of tea thanks for stopping
by see you again soon
we're getting there they're probably
cooking it in the ideal fireless cooker
oh this is something that i've seen a
couple of times
um there's a little yeah there's um
there's a cookbook from new york that we
have
where they give plans for fireless
cookers and i was going to build one but
the plan in the new york cookbook
calls for a sheet of um
asbestos and then asbestos fabric and i
thought that's probably not a great idea
not a good idea
not a great idea but here it is again in
an australian cookbook so
in the early 1900s apparently the
fireless cooker was the thing
anyway check that out
how did it work you you heated something
else and then stuck it in
and it was just a slow cooker
so it's kind of like when you do like a
a chicken in a garbage can and you just
kind of throw some coals in and you
throw the chicken in and you
put the lid on except you don't put it
in a metal garbage can yeah and you
don't put any coals in this one you just
put like a
a heated you take something out of your
fire so you've already got the fire
going
oh it's like it's like cooking in a
cooler an insulated box
okay got it huh interesting
you