Chocolate Layer Cake Recipe

• Beat ½ a cupful of butter to a cream, and gradually beat into it one cupful of sugar.
• When this is light, beat in ½ a cupful of milk, a little at a time, and one teaspoonful of vanilla.
• Beat the whites of six eggs to a stiff froth.
• Mix ½ a teaspoonful of baking powder with two scant cupfuls of sifted flour.
• Stir the flour and whites of eggs alternately into the mixture.
• Have three deep tin plates well buttered, and spread two-thirds of the batter in two of them.
• Into the remaining batter stir one ounce of chocolate, melted, and spread this batter in the third plate.
• Bake the cakes in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes.
• Put a layer of white cake on a large plate, and spread with white icing.
• Put the dark cake on this, and also spread with white icing. On this put the third cake.
• Spread with chocolate icing.
• Making the icing.
  
• Put into a granite-ware saucepan two gills of sugar and one of water, and boil gently until bubbles begin to come from the bottom, say, about five minutes.
• Take from the fire instantly.
• Do not stir or shake the sugar while it is cooking.
• Pour the hot syrup in a thin stream into the whites of two eggs that have been beaten to a stiff froth, beating the mixture all the time.
• Continue to beat until the icing is thick.
• Flavor with one teaspoonful of vanilla.
• Use two-thirds of this as a white icing, and to the remaining third add one ounce of melted chocolate.
• To melt the chocolate, shave it fine and put in a cup, which is then to be placed in a pan of boiling water.