Irish Wedding Cake

PTrish Nixon's Wedding Cake

1 pound sugar (2-3/4cups)
1 pound butter, room temperature
8 ounces cake flour (2 cups plus 1 tbs.)
grated rind of two lemons
1 pinch salt
11 egg whites, unbeaten
1 pound cake flour (4 cups plus 2 tbs.)
1/8 ounce baking powder (2-1/2 teaspoons)
7 egg whites
7 ounces sugar (1 cup)
Royal Icing:
3 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
sifted confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 325ºF. Use a 12 x 2 round brown paper lined cake pan with a 3-inch collar. Cream
together sugar and sugar. Add flour, lemon rind and salt. Cream thoroughly. To creamed mixture,
slowly add egg whites. Sift together one pound cake flour and baking powder. After sifting, slowly
add to the creamed mixture until batter is smooth Beat remaining egg whites. Add the one cup sugar
lowly to egg whites before whites are completely stiff. Fold egg white/sugar mixture into the creamed
mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for about 1 hour to 1 hour 10
minutes.

ROYAL ICING

Put egg white in large bowl. Ad 2 tbs. of the sugar and beat for 3 minutes using a perforated wooden spoon. Repeat until 1 ½ cups of the sugar are used. Then gradually add cream of tarter as mixture thickens. Continue adding sugar by spoonfuls, beating until frosting is stiff enough to spread. Spread thinly with icing: when this has hardened, put on a thicker layer, having mixture somewhat stiffer than the first coating.

NOTES : I was going through some of my old newspaper recipes and ran across this article on
Tricia Nixon's famous Wedding Cake that was a pound cake. Those attending Trish Nixon's
wedding "oohed and ahhed" over the wedding cake. The recipe was distributed and all across
America people were trying this wonderful cake. It was disastrous, either lumpy, soupy or rock hard. Still the White House chef insisted the recipe worked. Sounds like this had more problems than our famous Icing in Cake.