Cream Cake With Raisin or Fig Filling

This recipe is from an extremely old handwritten cookbook. It calls for a "piece of butter like a hickory nut" which I am calling 1 Tablespoon. And 'sweet milk' my research shows was fresh whole milk before it was turned into buttermilk. Therefore 'sweet cream stirred thick' should be fresh cream or the opposite of sour cream. Most of this lady's cake recipes just say "flavor" or "flavor to taste" which is not acceptable here. So I put in 1 teaspoon vanilla as a placeholder. Feel free to use any flavoring you like.

• Ready In: 1 hr 28 mins
• Serves: 16

Ingredients

• Cake

• 1  cup sugar
• 2  eggs
• 1  tablespoon butter
• 1⁄2 cup  whole milk
• 1 1⁄2 cups flour
• 2  teaspoons baking powder

• Fillings

• 1⁄2 cup heavy cream
• 1⁄2 cup sugar
• 1  teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2⁄3 cup sugar
•  water
• 1  cup raisins or 1⁄2 lb fig, chopped

Directions

1. There are no directions on this page but from another recipe in this book for "Cheap Cream Cake" I derive the following:.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (this is a guess).
3. Cream sugar and butter.
4. Add eggs; beat well.
5. Sift together flour and baking powder.
6. Add milk and flour mixture to egg mixture and beat well.
7. Bake in three layers until cake tests done. (This could mean 'cake leaves sides of pan', 'toothpick comes out clean', or the fingerprint test.) (The baking time below is from the back of a cake mix.).
8. For the Fillings there are no instructions, just the above ingredients enclosed in brackets to show what gets mixed together.
9. The original recipe calls for "sweet cream stirred thick" so let's say "whip heavy cream to soft peaks". Add sugar and any flavor your heart desires.
10. For the raisin filling it says "To 2/3 cup sugar add enough water to boil up well".
11. Stir in raisins.
12. For the fig filling it says "stewed with 2/3 cup sugar and very little water".
13. I think this means just enough water to dissolve that much sugar.
14. I would cool the fruit syrup mixture before I added it to the cream mixture.
15. Spread filling between layers of cake.