"Company coming to-morrow and not a crumb of cake in the house!" said
Mrs. Brown one morning. "Jane's gone and there's all the sweeping to do,
the baby to take care of, and three meals a day to get!"
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"Mother, mother dear," called Ruth from the next room, "do let me make
the cake. I should like nothing better. It would be great fun."
"Great fun! Now that is what one says who knows nothing about it. It
would be better to go without any cake at all than to place before our
friends some that they cannot eat," replied the tired mother.
"When I was at Aunt Fanny's," said Ruth, "she taught me how to make a
kind of cake that we all liked. Uncle John said he could eat all I could
make. Do let me try, mother dear."
"Oh, Ruth, what a tease you are. Well, it will keep you quiet for a
while and I suppose you must learn somehow."
Then Ruth ran into the kitchen in high glee. First she looked at the
fire in the stove as Aunt Fanny had taught her to do. More coal was
needed. So she had to go down cellar and bring up as much as she could
in the hod. She opened the draughts and put on a little coal at first.
When that had kindled she put on a little more. She took a whisk and
swept out the stove oven. Then she put more water into the kettle on on
top of the stove. Soon it was time to close the draughts. She put her
hand into the oven to feel how hot it was just as she had seen her Aunt
Fanny do.
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When the stove was as she wanted it, Ruth ran out to the barn and found
four warm eggs in nests among the hay. These she brought into the house,
and breaking them into a bowl, began to beat them up quickly. Next she
took a yellow dish from the dresser and put into it one cup of butter
and two cups of sugar. For a long time she mixed these two together
until they were "all one," as she called it.
Next she put the four beaten eggs into the bowl with the butter and
sugar, and beat them until her little hands ached. Then she measured out
three cups of flour and sifted it into another dish. With this she put
two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, and then sifted flour and baking
powder together. After this was done, she added a little of it at a time
to the mixture of butter and eggs, beating away until all the flour had
been used up. Then she put into it a teaspoonful of vanilla essence and
added enough milk to make a thick batter. Little pans shaped like hearts
and rounds, and one large round pan were then well greased, and the
beaten up cake put into each pan until it was half full. Then the pans
of cake were set into the oven and in ten or fifteen minutes all the
tiny "hearts and rounds" were baked a light brown, while the large pan
had to stay baking ten or fifteen minutes more.
A very happy child was young Ruth when she took out her pans of cake.
Her father, mother, brothers and the "company" who arrived the next day
thought it the "nicest cake ever made by so young a little girl."