Skip to main content
Dessert

Mooha Cream Cake

A cake of flour, eggs, powdered sugar, baking powder, lemon juice, coffee extract, and heavy cream, topped with coffee icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Mooha Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix powdered sugar, egg yolks, flour, baking powder, lemon juice, coffee extract, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

Bake and split

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

  2. Once cool, split the cake in half.

Fill and ice

  1. For the cream, beat the heavy cream until thick, sweeten to taste, and add coffee extract.

  2. Spread the cream between the cake layers.

  3. For the icing, boil coffee extract, granulated sugar, and water until it sets, then pour over the cake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, giving the cake its light, risen structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the cake's crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise in the oven.
Heavy cream
Whipped into a thick filling that adds moisture and richness between the layers.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cream and icing and helps the icing set firm.
Coffee extract
Adds the coffee flavor throughout the cake, filling, and icing.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks hold air that makes the cake light. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, coffee, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, coffee, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipes