Directions for Making Cake

Ingredients

• one cares
• two classes -- • cakes

Directions

1. The baking of cakes is more affected by the high altitude than anything else we cook. Our sea level receipts can be used in high altitudes by adding one more egg, not changing the receipt in any other way, in this way making a rich, moist cake.

2. Baking Cake. — The oven should be slow, and enough fire to last until the cake is done. Grease the pans with lard, as butter burns very quickly, making the cake black.

3. Preparing the Materials for the Cake. — The but- ter and sugar should be creamed together very lightly, making a creamy, soft mixture. A great deal depends upon creaming the butter and sugar properly. The eggs should be beaten light and foamy. When the whites are to be beaten alone, put them in a flat dish — a plate or platter — and beat with the Daisy beater ; they beat up much quicker beaten in this way, al- though if one cares to, they can beat the whites in a bowl with the Dover beater before beating the yolks, thus having the beater to wash but once. Sift salt and baking powder with the flour. When fruit is used, roll it in flour and add it last. When a cake cracks open in baking, too much flour has been used. It is hard to give the exact amount of flour a cake will take, as some flour will take more moisture than others. Layer cakes require a hotter oven than thick cakes.

4. CAKES. 305

5. When a cake browns before it has raised, the oven is too hot. Any loaf cake can be baked as a layer cake. All cakes should be baked as soon as they are made. Mix cake in an earthen bowl and beat with a wooden spoon. Do not use a cheap quality of butter or stale eggs. For cake making use a very fine granulated sugar ; the coarse sugar makes cake heavy and coarse- grained. Have everything ready before beginning to make the cake. Cakes are divided into two classes — • cakes with butter, and cakes without butter.