Unless you are provided with proper and convenient utensils and
materials, the difficulty of preparing cakes will be great, and in
most instances a failure; involving disappointment, waste of time,
and useless expense. Accuracy in proportioning the ingredients is
indispensable; and therefore scales and weights, and a set of tin
measures (at least from a quart down to a jill) are of the utmost
importance. A large sieve for flour is also necessary; and smaller ones
for sugar and spice. There should be a marble mortar, or one of lignum
vitæ, (the hardest of all wood;) those of iron (however well tinned)
are apt to discolour the articles pounded in them. Spice may be ground
in a mill kept exclusively for that purpose. Every kitchen should be
provided with spice-boxes. You should have a large grater for lemon,
cocoa-nut, &c., and a small one for nutmeg. Butter and sugar cannot be
stirred together conveniently without a spaddle or spattle, which is
a round stick flattened at one end; and a deep earthen pan with sides
nearly straight. 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. Buns and some other cakes should be baked in
square shallow pans of block tin or iron. Little tins for queen cakes,
&c. are most convenient when of a round or oval shape. All baking pans,
whether large or small, should be well greased with fresh butter before
the mixture is put into them, and should be filled but little more than
half. You should have at least two dozen little tins, that a second
supply may be ready for the oven the moment the first is taken out. You
will also want tin cutters for cakes that are rolled out in dough.
All the utensils should be cleaned and put away as soon as they are
done with. They should be all kept together, and, if possible, not used
for any other purposes.[H]
As it is always desirable that cake-making should be commenced at an
early hour, it is well on the day previous to ascertain if all the
materials are in the house; that there may be no unnecessary delay
from sending or waiting for them in the morning. Wastefulness is to be
avoided in every thing; but it is utterly impossible that cakes can be
good (or indeed any thing else) without a liberal allowance of good
materials. Cakes are frequently rendered hard, heavy, and uneatable by
a misplaced economy in eggs and butter; or tasteless and insipid for
want of their due seasoning of spice, lemon, &c.
Use no flour but the best superfine; if the flour is of inferior
quality, the cakes will be heavy, ill-coloured, and unfit to eat.
Even the best flour should always be sifted. No butter that is not
fresh and good, should ever be put into cakes; for it will give
them a disagreeable taste which can never be disguised by the other
ingredients. Even when of excellent quality, the butter will be
improved by washing it in cold water, and squeezing and pressing it.
Except for gingerbread, use only white sugar, (for the finest cakes
the best loaf,) and have it pulverized by pounding it in a mortar, or
crushing it on the pasteboard with the rolling-pin. It should then be
sifted. In mixing butter and sugar, sift the sugar into a deep pan, cut
up the butter in it, set it in a warm place to soften, and then stir
it very hard with the spaddle, till it becomes quite light, and of the
consistence of cream. In preparing eggs, break them one at a time, into
a saucer, that, in case there should be a bad one among them, it may
not spoil the others. Put them into a broad shallow pan, and beat them
with rods or with a wire whisk, not merely till they froth, but long
afterwards, till the froth subsides, and they become thick and smooth
like boiled custard. White of egg by itself may be beaten with small
rods, or with a three-pronged fork, or a broad knife. It is a very easy
process, and should be continued till the liquid is all converted into
a stiff froth so firm that it will not drop from the rods when held up.
In damp weather it is sometimes difficult to get the froth stiff.
The first thing to be done in making cake, is to weigh or measure all
the ingredients. Next sift the flour, powder the sugar, pound or grind
the spice, and prepare the fruit; afterwards mix and stir the butter
and sugar, and lastly beat the eggs; as, if allowed to stand any time,
they will fall and become heavy. When all the ingredients are mixed
together, they should be stirred very hard at the last; and (unless
there is yeast in the cake) the sooner it is put into the oven the
better. While baking, no air should be admitted to it, except for a
moment, now and then, when it is necessary to examine if it is baking
properly. For baking cakes, the best guide is practice and experience;
so much depending on the state of the fire, that it is impossible to
lay down any infallible rules. If you bake in a Dutch oven, let the
lid be first heated by standing it up before the fire; and cover the
inside of the bottom with sand or ashes, to temper the heat. For the
same purpose, when you bake in a stove, place bricks under the pans.
Sheets of iron without sides will be found very useful for baking small
flat cakes. For cakes of this description, the fire should be brisk;
if baked slowly, they will spread, lose their shape, and run into each
other. For all cakes, the heat should be regular and even; if one part
of the oven is cooler than another, the cake will bake imperfectly, and
have heavy streaks through it. Gingerbread (on account of the molasses)
is more apt to scorch and burn than any other cake; therefore it should
be baked with a moderate fire.
It is safest, when practicable, to send all large cakes to a
professional baker's; provided they can be put immediately into the
oven, as standing will spoil them. If you bake them at home, you will
find that they are generally done when they cease to make a simmering
noise; and when on probing them to the bottom with a twig from a
broom, or with the blade of the knife, it comes out quite clean. The
fire should then be withdrawn, and the cake allowed to get cold in the
oven. Small cakes should be laid to cool on an inverted sieve. It may
be recommended to novices in the art of baking, to do every thing in
little tins or in very shallow pans; there being then less risk than
with a large thick cake. In mixing batter that is to be baked in small
cakes, use a less proportion of flour.
Small cakes should be kept closely covered in stone jars. For large
ones, you should have broad stone pans with close lids, or else tin
boxes. All cakes that are made with yeast, should be eaten quite fresh;
so also should sponge cake. Some sorts may be kept a week; black cake
much longer.