Suggestions For Making And Baking Cake

1st. Get all materials needed together.

2d. Attend to fire, making sure, if it is a coal fire, that there is sufficient coal to last through the baking.

3d. Measure all ingredients with same cup, dry ones first.

4th. Mix and sift all dry ingredients except sugar; if soda is used, sift through a very fine sieve before sifting with other ingredients.

Mixing Butter Cakes

Cream Butter

Cream butter, that is, beat it with a spoon until it is of a creamy consistency; then add sugar very gradually; when well blended, add yolks of eggs which have been beaten with a Dover egg beater until lemon-colored and thick.

When the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated, add sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk. When all milk and flour have been used, beat well; then cut and fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Pour into buttered and papered pan, having mixture a little higher on the sides than in the middle.

Cutting And Folding

Cut through and through the mixture with a knife or side of a wooden spoon, fold by turning the spoon completely over, there by blending the materials without breaking the air bubbles. Never stir or beat after cutting and folding.

Mixing Sponge Cake

Beat yolks of eggs until lemon-colored and thick; add sugar and continue beating; add flour; when well blended, cut and fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Pour into buttered and papered pan; bake in a round pan with a tube in the center.

Baking Cake

For baking both sponge and butter cakes divide the time into quarters. The first quarter, the cake should rise; the second quarter, form a crust and begin to brown; third quarter, continue browning; and fourth quarter, finish browning and shrink from the pan. When baked, this may be determined by pressing crust with the finger; if a depression is left the cake is not done; if the cake springs back and leaves no depression, it is done. Take from oven, invert on a cake cooler, remove paper, turn right-side up and cool. When cold, frost.

Time For Baking Cake

Thin cakes and individual cakes require from twelve to fifteen minutes to bake; loaf cakes from thirty to sixty minutes according to size.

If the cake rises unevenly, the mixture is too thick or the oven is too hot.

If the oven seems too hot, when the cake is ready for the oven, put the cake in the oven, but do not close the oven door for the first five or ten minutes of baking.

How To Grease Tins

Warm pans slightly; brush with melted lard, suet, or clarified butter; cover bottom of pan only with tissue paper, then grease the paper.

Lard or suet is less apt to brown than butter, but many object to their use; if so, clarify the butter, by melting butter, letting stand until salt has settled to the bottom, then pouring off the liquid butter.