The cake and biscuit book

Chapter 4: Preface

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About This Book

The volume offers practical, kitchen-tested recipes and thorough technique guidance for making cakes and biscuits, beginning with utensils, measuring, mixing methods, and oven advice, then presenting recipes grouped by type—sponge, white, layer, fruit, gingerbread, yeast and fried cakes, icings, little cakes and biscuits, breakfast and tea cakes, and schoolroom cakes—plus cleaning and preparing ingredients like currants, raisins, and almonds. Instructions emphasize freshness of eggs and quality of butter, detailed measurements, and mixing and baking methods for reliable results.

Preface

The recipes in this book are English, French, Portuguese and Dutch; while some of the best come from America, which is the true land of cakes. All are good: the best I have starred.

Amateur cooks should know that for cakes to be successful it is almost imperative that they are made and baked by the same person. Delegation too often means ruin, the bond of sympathy between maker and baker being only in very rare instances sufficiently close to defeat the imp of mischief that lurks in every oven.

Lastly, I might say that the eggs cannot be too fresh, nor the butter too pure; and molasses is better than treacle.

E. D.