Oilcake

“ Lightly butter a frying-pan, then place it on the hot range; and when the pan is hot, drop into it half a gill of the preparation; cook for two minutes, turn it over with a cake-turner, and cook the other side for two minutes. Take the cake from off the pan, and dip each side into melted butter, and then dip again in four ounces of powdered sugar mixed with a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon; gently roll it into a French-pancake shape, lay it on a hot dessert-dish with a folded napkin over it ”

“ Method.—Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; wash, pick and dry the currants, whisk the eggs, blanch and chop the almonds, and cut the peel into neat slices. When all these are ready, mix the dry ingredients together, then add the butter, milk and eggs, and beat the mixture well for a few minutes. Put the cake into a buttered mould or tin lined with paper, and bake it for rather more than 11⁄2 hours in a moderate oven. The currants and candied peel may be omitted, and a little lemon or almond flavouring substituted for them; made in this manner, the cake will be found very good. ”

“ Pancakes should be made of half a pint of milk, three great spoonfuls of sugar, one or two eggs, a tea-spoonful of dissolved pearlash, spiced with cinnamon, or cloves, a little salt, rose-water, or lemon-brandy, just as you happen to have it. Flour should be stirred in till the spoon moves round with difficulty. If they are thin, they are apt to soak fat. Have the fat in your skillet boiling hot, and drop them in with a spoon. Let them cook till thoroughly brown. The fat which is left is good to shorten other cakes. The more fat they are cooked in, the less they soak. ”

“ One cup grated cocoanut, one and one-half cups sugar, three-fourths cup butter, one-half cup milk, two eggs, one large teaspoonful baking powder, one-half teaspoonful extract of vanilla and flour enough to roll out.
DOUGHNUTS OR FRIED CAKES.
Success in making good fried cakes depends as much on the cooking as the mixing. In the first place, there should be boiling lard enough to free them from the bottom of the kettle, so that they swim on the top, and the lard should never be so hot as to smoke or so cool as not to be at the boiling point; if it is, they soak grease and are spoiled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ignorant cooks generally spoil several batches by persisting in putting in baking powder or soda, as they can not believe that the puffs will rise without.
SHORT-CAKE.
One quart of flour; one teaspoonful of salt and two of baking powder sifted with the flour; one cup of butter, or half lard and half butter; one large cup of hot milk. Rub the butter into the flour. Add the milk, and roll out the dough, cutting in small square cakes and baking to a light brown.
For a strawberry or peach short-cake have three tin pie-plates buttered; roll the dough to fit them, and bake quickly. ”

“ What is commonly known by the name of oil-cake, is broken up and used in the same manner as the vegetable earth, and is also scattered broadcast over the land. The oil-cake is the remains or refuse of the seeds of several different plants, such as the tallow tree, various kinds of beans, and the cabbage formerly mentioned. There is a great demand for this manure in all parts of the country, and it forms a very considerable branch of trade both by sea and land. Bones, shells, old lime, soot, ashes, and all kinds of rubbish, are also eagerly bought up by the farmer for the purpose of manure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Transfer it directly to a butter tin pan; set it immediately into a brisk oven; and bake it an hour and a half or more, according to its thickness. Ice it when cool; flavouring the icing-with lemon or rose. This cake will be best the day it is baked.
In every sort of sponge-cake, Naples-biscuit, lady-fingers, and in all cakes made without butter, it is important to know that though the egg and sugar is to be beaten very hard, the flour, which must always go in at the last, must be stirred in very slowly and lightly, holding the whisk or stirring-rods perpendicularly or upright in your hand ”

“ Professional pancake bakers have their griddle over a slow fire all night.
When oil is used in the batter, less or none is required on the griddle.
Have the griddle hot before putting the cakes on, brown them delicately, then turn once only. A second turning makes them heavy. Cakes ought to be eaten as soon as baked, but should not be covered when required to stand for a short time.
Plain Griddle Cakes 1 cup milk 2 tablespns. oil 2 eggs 11⁄4–11⁄2 cup bread flour 1⁄4–1⁄3 teaspn. salt
Rest 2 hrs. or longer. May spread with jelly, or with butter and sugar and roll. ”

“ Put butter in bowl, and cream by working with a wooden spoon until soft and of a creamy consistency; then add sugar gradually, and continue beating. Add yolks of eggs or whole eggs beaten until light, liquid, and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder; or liquid and flour may be added alternately. When yolks and whites of eggs are beaten separately, whites are usually added at the last, as is the case when whites of eggs alone are used. A cake can be made fine-grained only by long beating, although light and delicate with a small amount of beating. ”

“ Soften butter or dripping if very hard, add sugar and beat to a cream. Slightly warm the milk, and beat it in by degrees. Stir in lightly the flour previously sifted with the Egg powder, ground ginger, and half a saltspoon of salt, drop in spoonfuls on a cold baking tray, sprinkle a little sugar over, and bake in hot oven for about ten minutes. The mixture for these and all eggless cakes must be fairly firm, and the spoonfuls piled high on the baking tray. ”

“ When the herbage is poor, oil-cake, say 1⁄4 lb. daily, or some other nutritious food, should be used to supplement it. During the summer and part of the autumn the young stock, as a rule, subsist upon grass; but many flock-masters give them other kinds of food in addition. As winter approaches, the young sheep on tillage farms receive soft turnips, and sometimes a little hay or straw. The allowance of oil-cake may be increased to 1⁄2 lb., or if corn be cheap, it may be substituted for the oil-cake. After Christmas Swedish turnips are used. ”

“ The oil is limpid, has a slight tinge of the yellow color of the corn, and is inoffensive to the taste and smell. It is not a drying oil, and therefore cannot be used for paint, but burns freely in lamps and is useful for oiling machinery.
Among the various seeds used in the manufacture of oil-cake, flour of linseed is the most important. Rape seed is also employed, but is considered heating. In Lubeck, a marc, called dodder cake, is made from the Camelina sativa. Inferior oil-cake is made from the poppy in India. ”

“ Or, having lined a basin or mould, or small tin cups with any convenient cake, such as lady fingers, sliced savoy cake, or yellow lady cake, fill them with mock cream, blanc-mange or custard, made from the yolks of eggs; let them become cold, then turn them out and serve.
ANOTHER WAY
Break an ounce of isinglass small, and pour on it a teacup of hot milk or water; let it dissolve, then strain it through muslin, on half a pound of fine white sugar. When nearly cold add to it a quart of rich cream, already beaten to a froth; continue to beat it for a few minutes, holding the pan on ice. ”

“ Do not cut more at a [301] time than you are likely to use, as it is not good when dry. Jelly-cakes are best set away upon plates, cloths wrapped closely about them, and a box enclosing all.
Cream your sugar and butter, measure milk, spices, etc., before beginning work. For fruit-cake it is best to prepare the materials the day before. Let your icing dry thoroughly before wrapping up the cake.
Sift your flour before measuring, as all the following receipts are for sifted flour.
Icing. ✠ Whites of 4 eggs. 1 pound powdered white sugar. Lemon, vanilla, or other seasoning. ”

“ For beating eggs, you should have hickory rods or a wire whip, and broad shallow earthen pans. Neither the eggs, nor the butter and sugar should be beaten in tin, as the coldness of the metal will prevent them from becoming light.
For baking large cakes, the pans (whether of block tin or earthen) should have straight sides; if the sides slope inward, there will be much difficulty in icing the cake. Pans with a hollow tube going up from the centre, are supposed to diffuse the heat more equally through the middle of the cake. ”

“ Put the dripping in a saucepan, on the fire, and when boiling pour it into a bowl, into which you have previously put half a pint of cold water. When cold, with a knife cut around the edge and remove the cake of dripping. Scrape off all the sediment adhering to the bottom of the cake, which wipe dry with a clean cloth.
Many persons prefer lard rather than dripping for frying.
Butter is clarified in the following manner: Put some butter in a saucepan on the fire, and when boiling remove the scum from the top, and pour the clear butter gently into the pan which is required for use. ”