Hoe cake

“ If you have sour milk, or butter-milk, it is well to make it into short cakes for tea. Rub in a very small bit of shortening, or three table-spoonfuls of cream, with the flour; put in a tea-spoonful of strong dissolved pearlash, into your sour milk, and mix your cake pretty stiff, to bake in the spider, on a few embers.
When people have to buy butter and lard, short cakes are not economical food. A half pint of flour will make a cake large enough to cover a common plate. Rub in thoroughly a bit of shortening as big as a hen's egg ”

“ Butter and sugar should be stirred till it looks like thick cream, and till it stands up in the pan.
It should be kept cool. If too warm, it will make the cakes heavy.
Large cakes should be baked in tin or earthen pans with straight sides, that are as nearly perpendicular as possible. They cut into handsomer slices, and if they are to be iced, it will be found very inconvenient to put on the icing, if the cake slopes in towards the bottom.
Before you ice a cake dredge it all over with flour, and then wipe the flour off. This will enable you to spread on the icing more evenly. ”

“ They kindle a fire, and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal, which is toasted at the embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the company. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal, until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of the cake into a bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who holds the bonnet, is entitled to the last bit. ”

“ A tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon and mace, mixed.
Beat the eggs as light as possible. Eggs for sponge or almond cakes require more beating than for any other purpose. Beat the sugar, by degrees, into the eggs. Beat very hard, and continue to beat some time after the sugar is all in.
No sort of sugar but loaf will make light sponge-cake. Stir in, gradually, the spice and essence of lemon. Then, by degrees, put in the flour, a little at a time, stirring round the mixture very slowly with a knife. If the flour is stirred in too hard, the cake will be tough. ”

“ If anything is desired, a simple sugar icing is used or the surface of the cake is moistened with the white of egg and then sprinkled with sugar. Butter cakes, especially when baked in layers, although they are often much richer than sponge cakes, are usually iced. When they are baked in the form of loaf cakes, they may or may not be iced, as desired. Very rich cakes made in loaf-cake form are usually served without icing, unless they are served whole and it is desired to make them attractive for a special occasion. ”

“ Successful cake making means constant care. In recipes in which milk is used as one ingredient, either sweet or buttermilk may be used but not a mixture of both. Buttermilk makes a light, spongy cake, and sweet milk makes a cake which cuts like pound cake. In creaming shortening and sugar, when the shortening is too hard to blend easily warm the bowl slightly, but do not heat the shortening, as this will change both the flavor and texture of the cake. For small cakes have a quick oven, so that they set right through, and the inside is baked by the time the outside is browned. ”

“ Method.—Weigh the castor sugar and ground almonds into a clean basin, and mix them well together; make a hole in the centre, break in the 2 eggs, add a little rosewater, and wet up into a firm paste, using another egg if necessary. Turn the mixture out of the pan on to the board, dusting it over with sugar to prevent it from sticking, then roll it out with a rolling pin to the size of the cake, place it on top and press smooth with the hand. This quantity of icing would be sufficient for a cake weighing from 2 to 3 lbs. ”

“ Sixthly—Do not be disheartened if your first attempt to make a new cake is a failure. We too often forget that success is frequently the outcome of many failures.
Before giving any recipes for fancy cakes, let me advise you to give the following recipes for “Sally Lunns” and “Tea Cakes made with yeast,” a trial.
For the former, mix half a teaspoonful of salt in a pound of flour, and add three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Melt half an ounce of butter in half a pint of new milk, and when milk-warm pour it over half an ounce of German yeast. Add a well-beaten egg and a little grated nutmeg. ”

“ Cream together one pound of sugar and one pound of butter very light. Beat the yolks of six eggs, sift one and one-half pound of flour into the eggs, butter, and sugar; one teaspoonful of mixed spices, one-half glassful of rose water. Stir the whole well, and roll it on the board till it is half an inch thick; cut in cakes and bake quickly. When cold, spread the surface of each cake with marmalade. Beat the whites of four eggs light, and add enough powdered sugar to make them as thick as icing. Flavor it with lemon, and put it on top of each cake. ”

“ Add a few drops of cochineal and a few drops of vanilla flavouring, and spread the icing evenly over the top of the cake{586} with a paper knife or dessert knife; a steel one must not be used. Take off any drops that may run over the sides of the cake and divide it in two pieces while the icing is wet, then dry at the mouth of the oven.
For Orange Cake take the weight of three eggs in butter, sugar and flour, the grated rind and strained juice of an orange, or two, if small, and a teaspoonful of baking-powder. ”

“ One mix or dough from which can be derived a large benefit and satisfaction is the ordinary wine cake or layer cake mix, from which you can make layers for layer cakes, ten and five cent wine cakes, loaf cakes; adding chopped nuts and nut flavor to part of the mix, you can make nut cakes. By adding melted chocolate to a certain part of the mix, you can make devil’s food cakes, lemon cakes, Boston squares, chocolate and maple squares, raspberry and chocolate drops, cup and currant cakes, and other cakes like nut and cocoanut slices, penny golden-rod squares, etc., can also be made. ”

“ After bringing to the table, when ready to begin, the sugar can, the butter jar, the egg dish, the milk, the vanilla and the baking powder, so that everything will be convenient, and having well greased a pan for the gold cake (which will be baked in a loaf) and the two jelly tins for the white cake, she can then separate three eggs, and to the three yolks add one whole egg. On account of the baking it is best to make the white cake first, and then it can be iced and the dishes cleaned away while the loaf cake bakes. ”

“ She must get that fruit dug out and on the ice at once.
She turned her attention to cake next, and when it was in the oven went at the mayonnaise dressing. She had made a chocolate layer cake, rich and dark, with a transparent chocolate filling and thick, white icing, and was just taking a sponge cake, light as a feather, out of the oven when the mistress arrived, fine and cool in a light [178] crêpe de chine, her hair marcelled and her face powdered to the last degree, leaving a perfume of luxury in her wake as she moved. ”

“ Always sift your flour, for neither bread nor cake should be made with unsifted flour, not merely because there may be dirt in it, but because packing injures its lightness, and sifting restores it, and makes bread and cake lighter.
The day before you wish to make cake, stone your raisins, and blanch your almonds, by pouring hot water131 on them, to take off the skins, and then throwing them into cold water to whiten them. When ready to make your cake, grate your lemon or orange peel. Next weigh your butter and cut it in pieces, and put it where it will soften, but not melt. ”

“ Add 3 cups flour (good measure) , sifted with three scant teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Add a half cup of raisins, seeded and cut in several pieces, if liked, but the cakes are very good without. Spread in two pans and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top and press about five small dabs of butter on top of each cake. Put in oven and bake at once. These are a very good substitute for "raised Dutch cakes," and are much more quickly and easily-made and, as no eggs are used, are quite cheap and very good.
A RELIABLE LAYER CAKE
11⁄4 cups granulated sugar. ”

“ A very speedy and effective decoration is to sprinkle white grated cocoanut on your pink cakes, and a mixture of pink (coloured with cochineal) and pale green (coloured with spinach juice) on white icing, using a mixture of all three colours on the chocolate. The study of the cakes in some high-class confectioner’s will help you here. When the cake is baked lift it by the paper on to a clean pastry-board, remove the paper, divide each slab of cake across, and then split it open. ”

“ It will often be much easier to make a successful cake or light pastry if the butter and lard are reduced to a cream before being added to the other ingredients. Put your proportion of butter and lard (half of each) into your pastry basin. Stir with the hand, one way only, till it has become the consistency of a thick cream. Mix the rest of the ingredients for your cake into it and moisten either with milk or water. Cakes mixed by hand are much more satisfactory than those mixed with a spoon. One is also much more sure of success if the mixture is kept very stiff. ”

“ It can't help it," he cried confidently. "Why even now I can see particles of gold in the air. To‐morrow, next day, the day afterward, we shall have our cake. Will you eat it with me, Marcia, if it's a nice, brown, plum‐y cake?"
"You make too many conditions," she said demurely. "I don't care for very rich cake [Pg 172] myself. Suppose the cake should not turn out particularly well in the baking? Wouldn't you offer me a piece anyway—Bobby?"
Again he looked up the path and down the path; people still hastening to and fro. Arcady was infested with toilers hurrying home to supper. ”

“ Another time, if you make this cake, you may put rose-water or peach-water instead of the wine, and chopped candied lemon-peel instead of the grated peel. You see the batter is much thicker than for the cup cake you made, but if at any time you use flour that absorbs more moisture, you must add another egg; this is, as it should be, as thick as pound-cake batter,—which means, as thick as can be stirred. It is more a paste than a batter. Will you remember that, when you have a recipe which says ‘thick as pound-cake batter’? Any cake with baking-powder made as thick as this would be spoiled. ”

“ Five full-sized eggs, the weight of four in sugar, and of nearly three in flour, will make an exceedingly good cake: it may be flavoured, like the preceding one, with lemon-rind, or with bitter almonds, vanilla, or confected orange-blossoms reduced to powder. An hour will bake it thoroughly. All the ingredients for sponge cakes should be of good quality, and the sugar and flour should be dry; they should also be passed through a fine sieve kept expressly for such purposes. ”

“ Put some of the mixture into each case, but do not fill them to the top. Grate loaf-sugar over the top of each, and bake them quickly.
These cakes are much better when baked in paper cases; tins being generally too thick for them. No cake requires greater care in baking. If the oven is not hot enough, both at top and bottom, they will fall and be heavy, and lose their shape.
CROQUETTES.
Take a pound of powdered sugar, a pound of butter, half a pound of wheat-flour, and half a pound of Indian meal; mix all together, and add the juice and grated peel of a large lemon, with spice to your taste. ”

“ Make a white cake mixture. Bake it in shallow layer-cake pans, in a moderate, not slow, oven. Join them with a caramel filling, and frost the top with the same, or use White Mountain frosting instead of the caramel, flavored with rose-water, and left either white, or colored a delicate shell pink with carmine.
CAKE FILLING AND FROSTING WHITE MOUNTAIN FROSTING
Boil together, without stirring, one cup of granulated sugar with one third of a cup of boiling water, for eight or ten minutes. When the sugar has been boiling five minutes, beat the white of one egg until it is very light. ”

“ The girls had proved apt pupils, for they had a housewifely knack, and Maria was really a superior teacher. They had learned the art of pound cake, the trick of sponge cake and had even penetrated the mysteries of fruit cake. They had learned to make raisin cake without having all the raisins sink to a thick mat at the bottom; they had learned ginger-bread in all its forms, from the puffy golden sort to the most dark spicy variety. ”

“ But even the young or inexperienced housekeeper will find that with Royal Baking Powder a perfect short cake is an easy and agreeable task. The baking powder only needs to be thoroughly sifted with the flour, so that it may evenly lighten the cake. Use sweet milk always. For the old-fashioned short cake no eggs are needed, the dough being put together in the same way as for baking powder biscuit. ”