But Norma discovered that the same muscles in her hips and back that had ached so dreadfully all night, began aching again, with the bending over the flower garden to weed, so she had to give up all hopes of gardening that day. Having put her tools away in their accustomed place, she went to the kitchen to offer her services to Belle.
“You can stir up the chopped almonds if you will,” said Belle, busily engaged in beating the cake batter.
“Where is it?” asked Norma, looking on the table for a dish of nuts.
“On the stove—in the frying pan,” returned Belle.
“Goodness sake! Do you fry the nuts before you use them?” asked Norma, amazed at this way of making a nut cake.
“No, I do not fry nuts but I fry that mixture,” explained Belle. “You see this is a recipe a woman way back in the country gave me. She never has any nuts so she uses this counterfeit, and no one ever knows the difference.”
“What is it?” was Norma’s question, as she sniffed the mixture she was supposed to stir to keep from scorching.
“I cracked a lot of cherry stones that came from the pitter when Rachel canned those cherries, and the meat was soaked in a tablespoonful of alcohol to extract the flavor. Then I took a cupful of grape nuts cereal and soaked it in some cream. When it was soft I added the flavoring to taste, and now you are about to brown the whole thing in butter to keep the chopped nuts soft enough to chew like real nut-meat when it is in the cake. See?”
“Well, I never! What a fake!” laughed Norma.
“The woman told me of all sorts of fakes the bakers do to make customers believe they are getting first-class food stuffs. She told me how they used egg coloring to make the cakes and things look yellow as if plenty of eggs were used in them. Then she told me of the substitute for milk, which many bakers used because milk costs so much these days. Lots of them actually use a substitute for sugar and hardly any of them use vanilla bean, or real lemon, or genuine fruit extracts for their flavoring. It all is made of synthetic preparations that counterfeit the real flavors and are so much cheaper.”