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 vitae, (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 aides 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 butter or lard 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. [Footnote: All the utensils
necessary for cake and pastry-making, (and for the other branches
of cooking,) may be purchased in Philadelphia; at Gideon Cox's
household store in Market street, No. 335, two doors below Ninth.
Every thing of the sort will be found there in great variety, of
good quality, and at reasonable prices.]
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 he 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 paste-board 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 he 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 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.