Time Travel Kitchen

A Cake for Springtime

Sometimes the name of a dessert is so appealing that it makes me want to try it before I’ve read the ingredients.

This is how I fell for Daffodil Cake. Yellow and white, fresh and cheerful—it’s springtime in a cake pan. I’d made one years ago and thought of it again since it appears in the cookbooks I’ve started collecting from the 1920’s and ‘30’s.

Daffodil Cake is a combination of angel food cake and yellow sponge cake. The batter is alternated in the pan, giving it its signature two-tone look. It’s a fun cake to make and it’s also delicious. Add whatever you like on the side: ice cream, whipped cream, fruit, lemon curd—or just by itself with a dusting of confectioners sugar.

I’ve been trying to track down its origins and so far the earliest recipes I’ve found have been from the 1930’s. I’ve also found references for Irish Daffodil cake with the same basic ingredients, served as a traditional Easter dessert.

In The Language of Flowers , the name of several different Victorian flower dictionaries, the name ‘Daffodil’ is thought to come from the Old English word ‘Affodyle’ meaning ‘one who arrives early’ as the flower does in Spring, but that’s just one theory. In the English countryside of that era, the flower carried the charming name ‘Butter and Eggs’ because of its color.

I hope you’ll try this recipe from the All About Home Baking cookbook, published in 1933 by General Foods Corporation. This original recipe is used with permission from Reily Foods Company, the owner of Swans Down©️Cake Flour and I thank them for the use of it.

The cake may be made in a tube pan or bundt pan. It is such an airy, light cake, so pretty and so good. The Daffodil Cake I made, pictured above, sits on my Grandmother’s footed cake pedestal from her kitchen during the Depression years. The slice of cake is on a plate from a set my Mother gave me for my birthday decades ago. I’ve already had two slices.

Some notes about baking this cake:

• Do all the sifting called for —it makes a difference.

• Eggs should be room temperature.

• The recipe calls for alternating spoons of batter. I chose to layer, but do whatever you like!

• I used a 10” bundt pan.

• My oven runs hot/fast, check the cake with a skewer 10-15 minutes before the full bake time. Also, rotate the pan, gently, twice during the bake.

• I didn’t have orange extract, oops. So I zested a clementine — ratio 1 tsp. zest to 1/2 tsp extract, the orange flavor came through nicely.

• Here’s my version of a ‘Public Service Announcement’: Lovely though they are, Daffodils are toxic flowers—they are a definite ‘NO-NO’ for use in cake decorating. Yikes! Moving on:

• Get all of your ingredients together first, so you can move quickly but gently as you fold the flour into your beaten egg whites.

• Enjoy! Let me know how it goes.

The weather is warming up and I want ice cream. Next week I’ll be sharing the stories of some of the most popular ice cream flavors in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Prohibition is intertwined with this story in a big way, so stay tuned.

Have a great weekend and pass this newsletter on to anyone you think may enjoy it!

All the best,

Jolene

Photos 📸: Jolene

Sources:

All About Home Baking, copyright 1933, General Foods Corporation.
The Language of Flowers, Penhaligon’s Scented Treasury of Verse and Prose, Editor Sheila Pickles, Harmony Books,1989.
The Language of Flowers Companion, A Victorian Flower Dictionary, Mandy Kirby, Ballantine Books, 2011.
My Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, 1930
Wikipedia
Tasting History: Daffodil Cake, 1930 BeautyAndBlooms.com