General Directions for Making Cake

Tie up your hair so that none can fall, put on a long-sleeved apron,
have the kitchen put in order, and then arrange all the articles and
utensils you will have occasion to use.

If you are a systematic and thrifty housekeeper, you will have your
sugar pounded, all your spices ready prepared in boxes, or bottles,
your saleratus sifted, your currants washed and dried, your ginger
sifted, and your weights, measures, and utensils all in their place and
in order.

Butter your tins before beginning to make the cake, so as not to stop
for the purpose. It saves much trouble to have your receipt book so
arranged that you can _measure_ instead of weighing. This can be done
by weighing the first time, and then have a small measure cup, and fill
it with each ingredient you have weighed. Then note it down in your
receipt book, and ever after use the same measure cup.

_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 water 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. Then
butter your tins. Next, stir the butter to a cream, and then add the
sugar, and work till white. Next, beat the yolks of the eggs, strain
them, and put them to the sugar and butter. Meantime another person
should beat the whites to a stiff froth, and put them in. Then add the
spices and flour, and last of all the fruit, as directed below.

Do not use the hand to make cake, but a wood spoon or spad. Earthen is
best to make cake in.

In receipts where milk is used, never _mix_ sweet and sour milk, as it
makes cake heavy, even when either alone would not do it.

Butter in the least degree strong, spoils cake.

Try whether cake is done by piercing it with a broom splinter, and if
nothing adheres it is done.

An oven, to bake cake well, must have a good heat at bottom, and not be
too hot on the top, or the cake will be heavy. As these receipts have
all been proved, if they fail to make good cake, the fault is probably
in the baking.

Cake that is to be frosted, should be baked in pans with perpendicular
instead of slanting sides. Line them with buttered paper, the salt
soaked out of the butter. If the oven proves too hot, cover the top
with paper before it hardens, or the cake will be heavy.

The best way to put in fruit is to sprinkle flour over it, then put
in a layer of cake at the bottom, half an inch thick, then a layer of
fruit, taking care that it does not touch the sides of the pan, and
thus dry up; then a little more cake, then another layer of fruit, and
thus till the cake is three inches thick (not more), and let the top
layer be cake.

Always dissolve saleratus, or sal volatile, in hot water, as milk does
not perfectly dissolve it, and thus there will be yellow specks made.

Make your eggs cold, and whisk till they will stand in a heap.

Volatile alkali the size of a hickory-nut, and a bit of alum of equal
size, powdered and dissolved in cold water, will _ensure_ light bread
or cake.

A quick oven is so hot that you can count moderately only twenty; and a
slow one allows you to count thirty, while you hold your hand in it.

All cake without yeast should have the flour put in quickly, just as it
goes into the oven.

Keep cake in a tin box, or in a stone jar wrapped in clean linen.