Remarks on Making and Baking Cake
The materials for making cake should be of the best quality, as your
success very much depends on it. Flour should be dried and sifted, sugar
rolled fine, spices pounded and sifted. Where brown sugar is used, it
should be spread on a dish and dried before rolling it. I have known
very good pound cake made with brown sugar; also jumbles, &c.
Persons that make their own butter sometimes use it fresh from the churn, which
prevents the necessity of washing the salt out of it for cake, and it
mixes more readily than hard butter. Currants should be picked over,
washed and dried; raisins should be stemmed and stoned.
When these preparations are made the day before, it is a great assistance. Eggs
should be fresh, or they will not beat light: in beating the whites,
take a broad flat dish, and beat them until you can hold the dish upside
down,--this is a test of their lightness. A large bowl is best for
mixing and beating cake.
You must use your hand for mixing the sugar and
butter, and as you add the other ingredients, you may take a large
wooden spoon; beat it some time after all is mixed. The oven should be
ready to bake immediately, as standing makes cake heavy.
A brick oven is the most certain,--and over your pans of cake, you should spread
several layers of newspaper, to prevent its browning too suddenly.
Cake requires more time than bread: a large cake should stay in the oven from
an hour and a half to two hours, turning and looking at it from time to
time; when you think it is sufficiently baked, stick a broad bright
knife in the centre; if it is dry and free from dough when drawn out,
the cake is likely to be done, though sometimes this is not a certain
test, and you will have to draw a little from the centre of the cake
with the knife.
A broom straw will sometimes answer in a small cake
instead of a knife. A large stone pan, with a cover, is the best for
keeping cake, or a large covered bowl.
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