Stir until smooth—no longer—and bake immediately.
Set over night, adding the lard in the morning.
Work the bread and milk smooth, stir in the butter and eggs, then the salt, lastly just enough flour to bind the mixture. If too thick, add milk. These are wholesome and good. Take care they do not stick to the griddle.
Mix over night.
Beat all together well.
Beat smooth the hominy, work in the milk and salt, then the flour, lastly the eggs. Bake at once, and keep the mixture well stirred.
Mix the beaten yolks with the milk, add the salt, then rice flour to make a batter as thick as that for flannel cakes; lastly, whip in the stiffened whites very lightly, and bake immediately.
Set the mixture—minus the eggs and butter—over night as a sponge; add these in the morning, and bake in waffle-irons.
Sift the cream-tartar into the flour with the salt. Dissolve the soda in a little hot water. Beat the eggs very well. Add the flour the last thing. If the batter is too stiff, put in more milk.
Beat the mixture smooth before baking.
Be especially careful in greasing your irons for these waffles, as for all which contain rice.
Chop up the shortening in the salted flour, as for pastry. Add the eggs and soda to the milk; put all together, handling as little as may be. Roll lightly and quickly into two sheets, the one intended for the upper crust half an inch thick, the lower less than this. Lay the latter smoothly in a well-greased baking-pan, strew it thickly with raspberries, blackberries, or, what is better yet, huckleberries; sprinkle four or five tablespoonfuls of sugar over these, cover with the thicker crust, and bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes, until nicely browned, but not dried. Eat hot for breakfast with butter and powdered sugar.
If sweet milk be used, add two teaspoonfuls cream-tartar sifted into the dry flour. It should be mixed as soft as can be rolled. This shortcake is very nice made with the common “black-caps” or wild raspberries.
Proceed, in mixing and baking, as with the huckleberry short-cake, except that, instead of putting the berries between the crust, you lay one sheet of paste smoothly upon the other, and bake until done. While warm—not hot—separate these. They will come apart easily, just where they were joined. Lay upon the lower a thick coating several deep, of strawberries; sprinkle powdered sugar among and over them; cover with the upper crust. It is best to bake strawberry shortcake in round jelly-cake tins, or round pans a little deeper than these, as they should be sent to table whole, while the hot short-cake is generally cut into square slices, and piled upon a plate.
Strawberry shortcake is esteemed a great delicacy in its season. It is eaten at tea, cut into triangles like pie, and sweet cream poured over each slice, with more sugar sifted over it, if desired.
Chop the flour and butter together, having made the latter quite soft by setting it near the fire. Knead in the sugar, roll into a sheet half an inch thick, and cut in shapes with a cake-cutter. Bake upon buttered paper in a shallow tin until crisp and of a delicate yellowish brown.
Enough ice-water to enable you to roll out into paste half an inch thick. Cut into squares, prick with a fork, and bake light brown. Split, butter, and eat while hot.
Set this as a sponge over night. In the morning add—
Flour enough to roll out like biscuit. Knead well, and set to rise for five hours. Roll half an inch thick, cut into round cakes, and lay in rows in a buttered baking-pan. When they have stood half an hour, make a cross upon each with a knife, and put instantly into the oven. Bake to a light brown, and brush over with a feather or soft bit of rag, dipped in the white of an egg beaten up stiff with white sugar.
These are the “hot cross-buns” of the “London cries.”
Are made as above, but not rolled into a sheet. Knead them like biscuit-dough, taking care not to get it too stiff, and after the five-hour rising, work in two or three handfuls of currants which have been previously well washed and dredged with flour. Mould with your hands into round balls, set these closely together in a pan, that they may form a loaf—“one, yet many”—when baked. Let them stand nearly an hour, or until very light; then bake from half to three-quarters of an hour until brown. Wash them over while hot with the beaten egg and sugar.
These are generally eaten cold, or barely warm, and are best the day they are baked.
Use none but the best materials for making cake. If you cannot afford to get good flour, dry white sugar, and the best family butter, make up your mind to go without your cake, and eat plain bread with a clear conscience.
There are no intermediate degrees of quality in eggs. I believe I have said that somewhere else, but it ought to be repeated just here. They should be, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion. A tin whisk or whip is best for beating them. The “Dover Egg-beater” is the best in the market. All kinds of cake are better for having the whites and yolks beaten separately. Beat the former in a large shallow dish until you can cut through the froth with a knife, leaving as clear and distinct an incision as you would in a solid substance. Beat the yolks in an earthenware bowl until they cease to froth, and thicken as if mixed with flour. Have the dishes cool—not too cold. It is hard to whip whites stiff in a warm room.
Stir the butter and sugar to a cream. Cakes often fail because this rule is not followed. Beat these as faithfully as you do the eggs, warming the butter very slightly if hard. Use only a silver or wooden spoon in doing this.
Do not use fresh and stale milk in the same cake. It acts as disastrously as a piece of new cloth in an old garment. Sour milk makes a spongy cake; sweet, one closer in grain.
Study the moods and tenses of your oven carefully before essaying a loaf of cake. Confine your early efforts to tea-cakes and the like. Jelly-cake, baked in shallow flat tins, is good practice during the novitiate. Keep the heat steady, and as good at bottom as top.
Streaks in cake are caused by unskilful mixing, too rapid or unequal baking, or a sudden decrease in heat before the cake is quite done.
Don’t delude yourself, and maltreat those who are to eat your cake, by trying to make soda do the whole or most of the duty of eggs. Others have tried it before, with unfortunate results. If curiosity tempt you to the experiment, you had better allay it by buying some sponge-cake at the corner bakery.
Test whether a cake is done by running a clean straw into the thickest part. It should come up clean.
Do not leave the oven-door open, or change the cake from one oven to the other, except in extreme cases. If it harden too fast on the top, cover with paper. It should rise to full height before the crust forms.
Except for gingerbread, use none but white sugar.
Always sift the flour.
Be accurate in your weights and measures.
There is no royal road to good fortune in cake-making. What is worth doing at all is worth doing well. There is no disgrace in not having time to mix and bake a cake. You may well be ashamed of yourself if you are too lazy, or careless, or hurried to beat your eggs, cream your butter and sugar, or measure your ingredients.
Yet, sometimes, when you believe you have left no means untried to deserve success, failure is your portion. What then?
If the cake be uneatable, throw it away upon the first beggar-boy who comes for broken meat, and say nothing about it. If streaky or burned, cut out the best parts, make them presentable as possible, and give them to John and the children as a “second-best” treat. Then keep up a brave heart and try again. You may not satisfy yourself in a dozen trials. You certainly will not, if you never make another attempt.
Cake should be wrapped in a thick cloth as soon as cool, and kept in tight tin boxes. Do not cut more at a time than you are likely to use, as it is not good when dry. Jelly-cakes are best set away upon plates, cloths wrapped closely about them, and a box enclosing all.
Cream your sugar and butter, measure milk, spices, etc., before beginning work. For fruit-cake it is best to prepare the materials the day before. Let your icing dry thoroughly before wrapping up the cake.
Sift your flour before measuring, as all the following receipts are for sifted flour.
Break the whites into a broad, clean, cool dish. Throw a small handful of sugar upon them, and begin whipping it in with slow, steady strokes of the beater. A few minutes later, throw in more sugar, and keep adding it at intervals until it is all used up. Beat perseveringly until the icing is of a smooth, fine, and firm texture. Half an hour’s beating should be sufficient, if done well. If not stiff enough, put in more sugar. A little practice will teach you when your end is gained. If you season with lemon-juice, allow, in measuring your sugar, for the additional liquid. Lemon-juice or a very little tartaric acid whitens the icing. Use at least a quarter of a pound of sugar for each egg.
This method of making icing was taught me by a confectioner, as easier and surer than the old plan of beating the eggs first and alone. I have used no other since my first trial of it. The frosting hardens in one-fourth the time required under the former plan, and not more than half the time is consumed in the manufacture. I have often iced a cake but two hours before it was cut, and found the sugar dry all through.
Pour the icing by the spoonful on the top of the cake and near the centre of the surface to be covered. If the loaf is of such a shape that the liquid will settle of itself to its place, it is best to let it do so. If you spread it, use a broad-bladed knife, dipped in cold water. If it is as thick with sugar as it should be, you need not lay on more than one coat. You may set it in a moderate oven for three minutes, if you are in great haste. The better plan is to dry in a sunny window, where the air can get at it, and where there is no dust.
Color icing yellow by putting the grated peel of a lemon or orange in a thin muslin bag, straining a little juice through it, and squeezing it hard into the egg and sugar.
Strawberry-juice colors a pretty pink, as does also cranberry-syrup.
Blanch the almonds by pouring boiling water over them and stripping off the skins. When dry, pound them to a paste, a few at a time, in a Wedgewood mortar, moistening it with rose-water as you go on. When beaten fine and smooth, beat gradually into icing, prepared according to foregoing receipt.
Put on very thick, and, when nearly dry, cover with plain icing.
This is very fine.
Mingle a few bitter almonds with the sweet. The blended flavor of these and the rose-water is very pleasant.
Bake in jelly-cake tins, and spread, when cold, with fruit-jelly.
This is, although so simple and inexpensive, an admirable foundation for the various kinds of jelly, cream, and méringue cake, which are always popular. It seldom fails, and when well mixed and baked, is very nice. If prepared flour be used leave out soda and cream-tartar.
Bake in a loaf, or as jelly-cake.
Bake in thin layers as for jelly-cake, and spread between them, when cold, the following mixture:—
Heat the milk to boiling, and stir in the corn-starch, wet with a little cold milk; take out a little and mix gradually with the beaten egg and sugar; return to the rest of the custard, and boil, stirring constantly until quite thick. Let it cool before you season, and spread on cake. Season the icing also with vanilla.
Bake in shallow tins, and when cold put jelly between.
Bake as for jelly-cake.
Mix with the other half of the grated cocoanut four tablespoonfuls powdered sugar, and strew thickly on top of cake.
Sift cream-tartar and soda into the dry flour; cream the butter and sugar; add the beaten eggs, then the milk; lastly the flour. Bake in jelly-cake tins.
Grate one cocoanut; mix with it a cup and a half of white sugar, also the milk of the cocoanut. Set the mixture in the oven until the sugar melts; then spread between the cakes.
Bake immediately.
Dissolve one pound of sugar in the milk and water. Stew until it becomes a “ropy” syrup, and turn out into a buttered dish. Have ready the beaten white of egg, with the remaining half-pound of sugar whipped into it; mix with this the grated cocoanut, and little by little—beating all the while—the boiled syrup, so soon as it cools sufficiently not to scald the eggs. Drop in tablespoonfuls upon buttered papers. Try one first, and if it runs, beat in more sugar. Bake in a very moderate oven, watching to prevent scorching. They should not be suffered to brown at all.
These will keep some time, but are best quite fresh.
Whip the eggs as for icing, adding the sugar as you go on, until it will stand alone, then beat in the cocoanut and arrowroot.
Mould the mixture with your hands into small cones, and set these far enough apart not to touch one another upon buttered paper in a baking-pan. Bake in a very moderate oven.
Beat whites and yolks separately; add to all the yolks and the whites of seven eggs the sugar, the rind of two lemons, and juice of one. Bake as for jelly-cake.
To the whites of three eggs allow a pound and a quarter of powdered sugar; beat stiff as for icing, take out enough to cover the top of the cake and set aside. Add to the rest the juice and half the grated rind of a large orange. When the cake is nearly cold, spread this between the layers. Beat into the icing reserved for the top a little lemon-juice, and, if needed, more sugar. It should be thicker than that spread between the cakes.
You can make a very delightful variation of this elegant cake, by spreading the orange icing between layers made according to the receipt given for “Martha’s Jelly-Cake” several pages back, and frosting with lemon méringue, as above.
Icing, whites of three eggs, 1 lb. powdered sugar. Flavor with lemon-juice. Bake in jelly-cake tins, and fill with grated cocoanut, sweetened with a quarter of its weight of powdered sugar, or with icing such as is made for Lee cake, only flavored with lemon entirely.
Baked in small square tins, and iced on sides and top, these are sometimes called biscuits glacés.
Flour to make tolerably thin batter (a little over three cups). Of some qualities of flour four cups will be needed.
Bake in a quick oven.
Flavor with bitter almond, and bake in square, not very deep tins. Flavor the frosting with vanilla. The combination is very pleasant.
Bake in a square or oblong tin, and frost with whites of two eggs beaten stiff with powdered sugar.
Flavor the frosting with lemon-juice.
Bake in jelly-cake tins.
Beat well together, spread between the layers and on top of cake.
Boil this mixture five minutes, add half a cake Baker’s chocolate (grated), boil until it is the consistency of rich custard. Add a pinch of soda, stir well, and remove from fire.
When cold, flavor with a large teaspoonful vanilla, and spread between the layers of cake, which should be baked as for jelly-cake. Cover the top with the same, and set in an open, sunny window to dry.
The above quantity will make two large cakes.
Butter your mould, and put in the dark and light batter in alternate tablespoonfuls.
When the cake is mixed take out about a teacupful of the batter, and stir into this a great spoonful of grated chocolate, wet with a scant tablespoonful of milk. Fill your mould about an inch deep with the yellow batter, and drop upon this, in two or three places, a spoonful of the dark mixture. Give to the brown spots a slight stir with the tip of your spoon, spreading it in broken circles upon the lighter surface. Pour in more yellow batter, then drop in the brown in the same manner as before, proceeding in this order until all is used up. When cut, the cake will be found to be handsomely variegated.
You may color the reserved cupful of batter with enough prepared cochineal to give it a fine pink tint, and mix as you do the brown.
Mix together these ingredients, with the exception of the vanilla; boil it two minutes (after it has fairly come to a boil), flavor, and then sweeten to taste with powdered sugar, taking care to make it sweet enough.
Boil twenty-five minutes; then stir in half a pound of grated chocolate wet in half a cup of sweet milk, and boil until it hardens on the spoon, with which you must stir it frequently. Flavor with a teaspoonful of vanilla.
If you bake these often, it will be worth your while to have made at the tinner’s a set of small tins, about five inches long and two wide, round at the bottom, and kept firm by strips of tin connecting them. If you cannot get these, tack stiff writing-paper into the same shape, stitching each of the little canoes to its neighbor after the manner of a pontoon bridge. Have these made and buttered before you mix the cake; put a spoonful of batter in each, and bake in a steady oven. When nearly cold, cover the rounded side with a caramel icing, made according to the foregoing receipt.
These little cakes are popular favorites, and with a little practice can be easily and quickly made.
Bake in jelly-cake tins, and fill with jelly or chocolate. A simple and excellent cake.
Flavor with lemon—half the juice and half the rind of one. Bake twenty minutes in shallow tins.
Beat yolks and whites very light, the sugar into the former when they are smooth and stiff; next, the juice and grated peel of the lemon, then the beaten whites; lastly, the flour, very lightly.
The lady from whom I had this admirable receipt was celebrated among her acquaintances for her beautiful and delicious sponge-cake.
“Which should always be baked in tins like these,” she said to me once, sportively, “or it does not taste just right.”
The moulds were like a large brick in shape, with almost perpendicular sides. I instantly gave an order for a couple precisely like them, and really fancied that cake baked in them was a little better than in any other form. But you can hardly fail of success if you prepare yours precisely as I have directed, bake in whatever shape you will. Be careful that your oven is steady, and cover the cake with paper to prevent burning.
It is a good plan to line the pans in which sponge-cake is baked with buttered paper, fitted neatly to the sides and bottom.
Cream the butter and sugar with great care; beat the yolks and whites separately; sift the cream-tartar well through the flour. Add the flour last.
Cream half the flour with the butter, and add brandy and spice. Beat the yolks until light, add the sugar, then the beaten whites and the rest of the flour alternately. When this is thoroughly mixed, put all together and beat steadily for half an hour.
If properly made and baked this is a splendid cake.
Mix as usual and stir in, at the last—
Fruit-cake takes longer to bake than plain, and the heat must be kept steady.
Cream the butter and sugar, put with them the yolks whipped light, then the cream and spice, next the flour, then the rose-water, and a double-handful of citron cut in slips and dredged; finally, the beaten whites of the eggs. Stir all well, and bake in a loaf or in a “card,” using a square shallow baking-pan.
This is a good cake, and keeps well.
Cream the butter and sugar, add the beaten yolks of the eggs, and stir all well together before putting in half of the flour. The spice should come next, then the whipped whites stirred in alternately with the rest of the flour, lastly the brandy.
The above quantity is for two large cakes. Bake at least two hours in deep tins lined with well-buttered paper.
The icing should be laid on stiff and thickly. This cake, if kept in a cool, dry place, will not spoil in two months.
I have eaten wedding-cake a year old.
Test the cakes well, and be sure they are quite done before taking them from the oven.
Cream butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks, then the spice and the whipped whites alternately with the flour; the fruit and brandy last.
Beat whites and yolks separately; stir butter and sugar to a cream; add to this the yolks; beat very hard before putting in the flour; stir in the almond-paste alternately with the whites. Put in the brandy last.
Season the icing with rose-water.
Cream the butter and sugar, and stir in the yolks. Beat very hard for five minutes before putting in the flour. The soda next, and lastly the lemon-juice, in which the grated orange-peel should have been steeped and strained out in a piece of thin muslin, leaving the flavoring and coloring matter in the juice.
Flavor the icing also with lemon.
Cream butter and sugar; put next the whites of the eggs; then the flour, lastly the flavoring.
Make gold and silver cake on the same day; bake them in tins of corresponding size, and lay them in alternate slices in the cake-basket. Flavor the icing of silver cake with rose-water.
Prepare the almonds the day before you make the cakes, by blanching them in boiling water, stripping off the skins, and pounding them when perfectly cold—a few at a time—in a Wedgewood mortar, adding from time to time a little rose-water. When beaten to a smooth paste, stir in, to a pound of the sweet almonds, a generous tablespoonful of essence of bitter almonds; cover closely, and set away in a cold place until the morrow. Then to a pound of the nuts allow:—
Stir the sugar and white of egg lightly together; then whip in gradually the almond-paste.
Line a broad baking-pan with buttered white paper; drop upon this spoonfuls of the mixture at such distances apart as shall prevent their running together. Sift powdered sugar thickly upon each, and bake in a quick oven to a delicate brown.
Try the mixture first, to make sure it is of the right consistency, and if the macaroons run into irregular shapes, beat in more sugar. This will hardly happen, however, if the mixture is already well beaten.
Stir the butter and sugar to a cream, add the beaten yolks; then the milk, the flour, and spice, the whites whipped stiff, and the soda. At the last stir in the huckleberries with a wooden spoon or paddle, not to bruise them. Bake in a loaf or card, in a moderate but steady oven, until a straw comes out clean from the thickest part.
This is a delicious cake, and deserves to be better known. It is best on the second day after baking.
Sift the corn-starch with the flour, and add the last thing. Bake in small tins and eat while fresh. They dry in two or three days and become insipid, but are very nice for twenty-four hours after they are baked.
Flour to make batter just stiff enough to be moulded with well-floured hands.
Flavor with lemon.
Make into round cakes and bake in a quick oven.
Cut in round cakes and bake quickly.
Rub the butter, or, what is better, chop it up in the flour; dissolve the sugar in the water; mix all well with the beaten eggs, cut in square cakes, or with oval mould, and bake quickly.
Flour to make soft dough, just stiff enough to roll out. Try two cups to begin with, working it in gradually. Cut in round cakes, stick a raisin or currant in the top of each, and bake quickly.
If you use sweet milk, add two teaspoonfuls cream-tartar. You may substitute caraway for the coriander-seed.
Beat yolks and whites very light; then put the sugar with the yolks. Beat ten minutes, add the orange-flower water and lemon; lastly, the flour and whites alternately. Beat the mixture half an hour. Bake immediately in patty-pans. Eat while fresh.
Sufficient flour to make soft dough. Mould with the hands into small cakes, and bake in a steady rather than quick oven, as they are apt to burn.
Ginger-Snaps. (No. 1.)
Flour for tolerably stiff dough.
Roll out rather thinner than sugar cakes, and bake quickly. These ginger-snaps will keep for weeks, if locked up.
Roll thin and cut into small cakes. Bake in quick oven.
Sufficient flour to make soft dough. Roll out, cut into shapes and sift sugar over them before they go into the oven.
Mix rather stiff. Roll and cut out with a cake-cutter.
Cream the butter and sugar, add the beaten yolks, then the rose-water, next half the flour, lastly the whites, stirred in very lightly, alternately with the remaining flour. Have ready a pan, broad and shallow, lined on the bottom with buttered paper. With a tablespoon form regular rings of the dough upon this, leaving a hole in the centre of each. Bake quickly, and sift fine sugar over them as soon as they are done.
You may substitute lemon or vanilla for the rose-water.
Bake in rings, as directed in previous receipt.
Cream butter, and sugar; stir in the beaten yolks, the milk, the flour, and the rose-water, the almonds, lastly the beaten whites very lightly and quickly. Drop in rings or round cakes upon buttered paper, and bake immediately.
You may substitute grated cocoanut, or the chopped kernels of white walnuts, for the almonds, in which case add a little salt.
Drop from a spoon upon well buttered paper, lining a baking-pan. Bake quickly.
Drop upon buttered paper, not too near together. Try one, and if it runs, beat the mixture some minutes longer hard, adding a very little flour. Your oven should be very quick, and the cakes a delicate yellow brown.
Are mixed like drop sponge-cakes, but disposed upon the paper in long, narrow cakes. They are very nice dipped in chocolate icing, or caramel.
This is for a large quantity of crullers. Roll out in a thin sheet, cut into shapes with a jagging-iron, and fry in plenty of boiling lard. Test the heat first by dropping in one. It should rise almost instantly to the surface. Crullers and doughnuts soak in fat at the bottom of the kettle. These should be a fine yellow.
The most delicious and the nicest-looking crullers I have ever seen were made by the dear old lady from whom I had this receipt. They were as pretty and perfect a picture of their kind as she was of hers.
Crullers are better the second day than the first. If the fat becomes so hot that the crullers brown before they puff out to their full dimensions, take the kettle from the fire for a few minutes. Have enough cut out before you begin to fry them, to keep a good supply all the while on the fire. If you undertake the task alone, cut out all before cooking one.
Cream the butter and sugar, add the milk, yeast, and one quart and a pint of flour. Set to rise over night. In the morning beat the eggs very light, and stir into the batter with the spice and rest of the flour. Set to rise three hours, or until light; roll into a pretty thick sheet, cut out, and fry in boiling lard. Sift powdered sugar over them while hot.
Cut into shapes and fry in hot lard.
About five cups of flour—enough to make it thick as cup-cake batter, perhaps a trifle thicker. Work in four cups first, and add very cautiously.
Stir butter, sugar, molasses, and spice together to a light cream, set them on the range until slightly warm; beat the eggs light; add the milk to the warmed mixture, then the eggs, the soda, and lastly the flour. Beat very hard ten minutes, and bake at once in a loaf, or in small tins. Half a pound raisins, seeded and cut in half, will improve this excellent gingerbread. Dredge them well before putting them in. Add them at the last.
Mix the molasses, sugar, butter, and spice together; warm them slightly, and beat until they are lighter in color by many degrees than when you began. Add the milk, then the saleratus, and having mixed all well, put in the flour. Beat very hard five minutes, and bake in a broad, shallow pan, or in pâté-tins. Half a pound of seeded raisins cut in pieces will be a pleasant addition.
Try this gingerbread warm for tea or luncheon, with a cup of hot chocolate to accompany it, and you will soon repeat the experiment.
Warm the molasses, lard, butter, and ginger, and beat them ten minutes before adding the milk, soda, and flour. Roll out, cut into shapes, and bake in a quick, but not too hot oven. Keep in a tight tin box. Brush over with white of egg while hot.