A SHORT ESSAY ON CAKE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10653, 14 May 1895, Page 6

A SHORT ESSAY ON CAKE.

(New York Sun.) The little fancy cakes and other confections of the caterers, together with the tendency nowadays, at least among city housekeepers, to oversee, not participate, in the family cooking, has almost made the art of cake-making a lost one. Yet it is a real accomplishment to make light, delicate cake, and one which the faddist hostess, seeking for a novelty,' will find more striking than a new pate or a fresh salad dressing. Like trimming a kerosene lamp, to makej a good cake requires judgment, and a degree of intelligence that is not, as a rale, a part of the natural endowments of the kitchen queen. Many a cook will tell you she can make cake as light as a feather, and so, perhaps she can, the feathery element being imparted by free use of baking powder. Such cake is as different from the real, old-fashioned, fine-grained, rich flavoured cake as is the turned and glued furniture from band made cabinet work. Both are called by the same specific name, and both do a similar duty, but as only one is really furniture, so only one is really cake.

Cake is a luxury always, and should be regarded as such. The best of materials are indispensible for all wholesome cake. If cake can be afforded at all, then sweet butter, fresh eggs, good flour, and sugar can go into it. Don’t try to’ uso inferior articles and trust to generous flavouring to condone * the offence. The result must inevitably be disaster. Marion Harland, in one of her cook books, happily quotes an epicure : “ Cooking butter is a good thing, an admirable thing—in its place, which is in the soap fat kettle or upon waggon wheels.” It is certainly out of place in cake, as are limed eggs, skimmed milk, poor -flavouring extracts, or any similar subterfuges of the false economist. It is perfectly easy to go without csko; it is impossible to make good cake without the beat of materials.

The knack of making cake is not acquired wither practice. You may study an authority on whist for years, you will never become an accomplished player .except through long practice. So the good cakemaker reaches that height often after many failures; ate learns finally, however, that eggs vary in size and .weight-and other ingredients must be proportioned . accordingly ; that holes and 1 lumps in the loaf ' show 1 poor • mixing as clearly as if it were written down, and that a cake touch, a certain light quick movement, in putting the materialatogether, is as valuable in its way as a good touch on the piano. When the cake impulse comes, look first of all to the oven. An even, strong heat is needed for most cake; open-the door as little as possible; every, cakemaker signs for the speedy coming of the announced day of glass oven doors. To loobat her cake without danger of the disturbing chill of the outer air reaching the oven will he a boon indeed. After testing the oven, see that all the materials are together and ready. Have the eggs broken, the yolks in bowl, the whites in another, both 1 in the ice chest; the flour sifted first, then duly measured, and ou a deep pis plate; the cup or halfcup of milk ready; the lemon and grater at hakid, or the vanilla or rosewater bottle out; 'the baking powder measured and sifted into the flour; the butter measured in its cup, and the sugar also measured, and in another deep pie plate like that which holds the flour; if fruit is to be used, have raisins stoned, currants washed and flouted, citron cut, almonds blanched and chopped or shaved, figs or citron cut up, and pans and greased papar at hand. Cream the butter with a wooden spoon in the large cake bowl, add the sugar by degrees, and beat the mixture to a frothy lightness; if some one is helping you, she may beat the yolks to have them ready when the butter and sugar ate creamed, but if doing the work alone, the cold yolks will beat in one minute, and the cake foundation suffer no harm from the wait; stir part of the yolks in, part of the milk, and part of the flour; repeat the round till materials are used, adding the flavouring and giving the mixture fifty seconds’ hard whisking at the end of the process ; the whites must be frothed to the standing-alone point, and quickly stirred in, the fruit, if any, being added at the. same time; then the mixture is ready for the oven. In many kitchens the tradition, survives that cake should be stirred only one way; the writer is willing to admit; that it does in hers. Two cake receptacles ate necessary. A tin box keeps crisp and dry such cakes as

" ' ." - •'*rv ■ should be. sokopt, as ginger snaps* jumWas,' and the like, while a stone crock, Wideandf deep, to hold-loaves unbroken, and with faclose cover, keeps fresh and moist sponge,; loaf, and layer cake. Fruit cake made to last months should be folded in dampened cloths and put in a separate stone jar. It should be iced only as needed. Agreab improvement is to pour sherry wine over; the loaf when it is about a month old,' or as it is needed to use. Ice afterward,,, - It is an excellent plan that the daughter of the household should be the cakamaker* Let her serve her novitiate as assisting to her mother, and soon the mantle d! this accomplishment may fall wholly upon, hfir*