Eliza Leslie's two Jelly Cakes

The first "Jelly Cake" using cake in an English language cookbook was in the third edition, of Philadelphian Eliza Leslie’s Seventy-five Receipts, 1830, in the Appendix. Almost thirty years later, Miss Leslie (1787-1858) updated her Jelly Cake recipe.

Jelly Cake 1830
Stir together till very light, a pound of fresh butter and a pound of powdered white sugar. Beat twelve eggs very light, and stir them into the butter and sugar, alternately with a pound of sifted flour. Add a beaten nutmeg, and half a wine-glass of rose-water. Have ready a flat circular plate of tin, which must be laid on your griddle, or in the oven of your stove, and well greased with butter. Pour on it a large ladle-full of the batter, and bake it as you would a buck-wheat cake, taking care to have it of a good shape. It will not require turning. Bake as many of these cakes as you want, laying each on a separate plate. Then spread jelly or marmalade all over the top of each cake, and lay another upon it. Spread that also with jelly, and so on till you have a pile of five or six, looking like one large thick cake. Trim the edge nicely with a penknife, and cover the top with powdered sugar. Or you may ice it; putting on the nonpareils or sugar-sand in such a manner as to mark out the cake in triangular divisions. When it is to be eaten, cut it in three-cornered slices as you would a pie.
Leslie, Eliza. Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats. 3d ed Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1830

Jelly Cake 1857
For baking jelly cake you must have large flat tin pans rather larger than a dinner plate. But a very clean soap-stone griddle may be substituted, though more troublesome. Make a rich batter as for pound cake, and bake it in single cakes, (in the manner of buckwheat, or thicker) taking care to grease the tin or soap-stone with excellent fresh butter. Have ready, enough of fruit jelly or marmalade, to spread a thick layer all over each cake when it cools. Pile one on another very evenly, till you have four, five, or half a dozen; and ice the surface of the whole. Cut it down in triangular pieces like a pie. Jelly cake is no longer made of sponge cake, which is going out of use for all purposes, as being too often dry, tough, and insipid, and frequently not so good as plain bread.
Leslie, Eliza. Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book. Phila: T.B. Peterson, 1857


Kentucky Jam Cake. In the 1980s we lived in Kentucky for a few years and a southern friend would make this layer cake. Tennesee was also known for jam cakes.

Blog posts on Cakes HERE. Gateau de Mille Feuilles cake with cream, marmalade, jelly... between layers of puff paste. July 2024 post HERE

Image of Bordeaux Cake in Frederick Bishop's The Illustrated London Cookery Book. London: J. Haddon printer, 1852. "Pound cake, with alternate layers of preserves, with jam on the top."


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