Cottage Pudding.
Two eggs.
One cup of milk.
One cup of sugar.
One tablespoonful of butter.
Three cups of prepared flour.
If you have not the prepared, use family flour with two tablespoonfuls of baking powder, sifted twice with it.
One tablespoonful of salt.
Put the sugar in a bowl, warm the butter slightly, but do not melt it, and rub it with a wooden spoon into the sugar until they are thoroughly mixed together. Beat the eggs light in another bowl, stir in the sugar and butter, then the milk, the salt, and lastly the flour.
Butter a tin cake mould well, pour in the batter and bake about forty minutes in a steady oven.
Should it rise very fast, cover the top with white paper as soon as a crust is formed, to prevent scorching.
When you think it is done stick a clean, dry straw into the thickest part. If it comes up smooth and not sticky the loaf is ready to be taken up.
Loosen the edges from the mould with a knife, turn out on a plate, and send hot to table. Cut with a keen blade into slices, and eat with pudding sauce.
An easy receipt and one that seldom fails to give general satisfaction.
13
CAKE-MAKING.
NEVER undertake cake unless you are willing to give to the business the amount of time and labor needed to make it well. Materials tossed together “anyhow” may, once in a great while, come out right, but the manufacturer has no right to expect this, or to be mortified when the product is a failure.
Before breaking an egg, or putting butter and sugar together, collect all your ingredients. Sift the flour and arrange close to your hand, the bowls, egg-beater, cake-moulds, ready buttered, etc.
Begin by putting the measured sugar into a bowl, and working the butter into it with a wooden spoon. Warm the butter slightly in cold weather. Rub and stir until the mixture is as smooth and light, as cream. Indeed, this process is called “creaming.”
Now, beat the yolks of your eggs light and thick in another bowl; wash the egg-beater well, wipe dry and let it get cold before whipping the whites to a standing heap in a third vessel. Keep the eggs cool before and while you beat them. Add the yolks to the creamed butter and sugar, beating hard one minute; put in the milk when milk is used, the spices and flavoring; whip in the whites, and lastly, the sifted and prepared flour.
Beat from the bottom of the mixing-bowl with a wooden spoon, bringing it up full and high with each stroke, and as soon as the ingredients are fairly and smoothly mixed, stop beating, or your cake will be tough.
Let your first attempt be with cup-cake baked in small tins. Learn to manage your oven well before risking pound or fruit-cake.
Should the dough or batter rise very fast lay white paper over the top, that this may not harden into a crust before the middle is done. To ascertain whether the cake is ready to leave the oven, thrust a clean straw into the thickest part. If it comes out clean, take out the tins and set them gently on a table or shelf to cool before turning them upside down on a clean, dry cloth or dish.