Try again for a fluffy Dream Cake

Weird. Apparently an old recipe in one of those electric company booklets falls totally flat now. Reddy’s recipe worked back in the 1950s, but doesn’t work now.

What a difference 50 years makes. In this case, the difference between a Dream Cake and a pancake. This sorry story began here a few weeks ago, with a recipe for a Dream Cake from Hawaiian Electric Co. Now, HECO’s recipes are generally quite reliable, tested by the company’s home economists, and this particular one, from the 1950s, was marked with handwritten notes indicating it had been tried out a few times, and distributed (remember the Reddy Kilowatt recipe booklets?), with nary a problem. It didn’t seem to call for retesting in the new millennium. But then came the complaints — three at once. Three cakes that all baked up flat as pancakes. OK, so I tried the recipe, twice, using up a carton of eggs, and got — pancakes. I have no explanation for why the recipe worked then and doesn’t now. But on behalf of HECO and myself, to anyone who wasted eggs and cocoa powder trying this out, we are really sorry.