The Story of Crisco

by Marion Harris Neil

In the fifth way the sugar and eggs are beaten thoroughly over boiling water, then cooled before the melted shortening and dry ingredients are added. This method is used for Gennoise cake and some kinds of layer cakes. Care must be taken to insure the right consistency of cakes. The mixture should be fairly stiff. If too moist the fruit will sink to the bottom. For rich cakes the tins should be lined with paper, the paper coming a short distance above the tins, so that the cake is protected as it rises. For very rich fruit cakes, experience has shown that it is best not to grease the paper or tin. The cake is not so liable to burn, and the paper can be removed easily when the cake is done without injuring it. On the other hand, if tins are lined for sponge cakes or jelly-rolls, the paper should be greased.

When making cakes in which baking powder, carbonate of soda, cream of tartar or tartaric acid are used, almost everything depends upon the handling, which should be as light and as little as possible. The more rapidly such cakes are made the better they will be. Two cooks working from the same recipe will often produce entirely different results, if one kneads her mixture as if it were household bread, while the other handles it with due lightness of touch. As soon as the baking powder or other rising medium is added to the mixture, the cake should be put into the oven as quickly as possible. Soda alone is never good in a cake where there is shortening, unless some substance containing acid is used along with it. Molasses is one of the substances containing acid.

The greatest care and cleanliness must be exercised in all cake making; and accuracy in proportioning the materials to be used is indispensable. The flour should be thoroughly dried and sifted, and lightly stirred in. Always sift flour before measuring, then sift it again with the baking powder to insure a thorough blending.

Good cakes never can be made with indifferent materials. Eggs are used both as an aerating agent and as one of the "wetting" materials. It is not economy to buy cheap eggs, for such eggs are small, weak, colorless, and often very stale. Eggs should be well beaten, yolks and whites separately, unless other directions are given. The yolks must be beaten to a thick cream and the whites until they are a solid froth. Sugar tends to improve the texture of cakes, and when cheap cakes are made, plenty should be used, provided that the cake is not made too sweet. It should be dissolved before being added to the fat and the flour.

For best cakes, and all that are required of a light color, fine-grained sugar should be used. With coarse-grained sugar there is danger of producing specks which show on the cakes after baking, unless they have been made by the method of beating up the eggs and sugar together with a beater over hot water. This method will dissolve the grains of sugar.

Always buy the best fruits for cake making, as they are sweetest and cleanest. Currants and sultana raisins for cakes should not be too large, but of medium size, sweet and fleshy. Cheap dry sultanas should not be used. Though there is no need to wash sultanas, yet if the fruit is inclined to be very dry, it will be better to do so than to put them in to spoil the appearance and the flavor of the cake. Currants always should be washed, cleaned, and dried before using. Orange, lemon, and citron peel should be of good color and flavor. They should not be added to cake mixture in chunks, as often is done, but should be in long shredded pieces. Large pieces of peel are sometimes the cause of a cake cutting badly. In making fruit cakes add the fruit before the flour, as this will prevent it falling to the bottom.

If a cake cracks open while baking, the recipe contains too much flour. There are two kinds of thick crusts which some cakes have. The first of these is caused by the cake being overbaked in a very hot oven. Where this is so, the cake, if a very rich one, has a huge crack in the top caused by the heat of the oven forming a crust before the inside has finished aerating; then as the interior air or gas expands, it cracks the crust to escape. This crack spoils the appearance of the cake, and when cut it generally will be found to be close and heavy in texture. To guard against this it is necessary to bake them at a suitable temperature, noting that the richer the cake the longer the fruit takes to bake.

The second kind of thick crust referred to may only be on top of the cake, and in this case may be caused by an excess of fat and sugar being mixed together, or otherwise insufficient flour. In this case the mixture will not bake, but only forms a kind of syrup in the oven, and the cake sinks in the center. A cake made under such conditions would have a thick shiny crust, and be liable to crumble when touched. The inside of the cake would be heavy, having more the appearance of pudding than cake.

Successful cake making means constant care. In recipes in which milk is used as one ingredient, either sweet or buttermilk may be used but not a mixture of both. Buttermilk makes a light, spongy cake, and sweet milk makes a cake which cuts like pound cake. In creaming shortening and sugar, when the shortening is too hard to blend easily warm the bowl slightly, but do not heat the shortening, as this will change both the flavor and texture of the cake. For small cakes have a quick oven, so that they set right through, and the inside is baked by the time the outside is browned. For all large cakes have a quick oven at first, to raise them nicely and prevent the fruit sinking to the bottom. The oven then should be allowed to become slower to fire the cakes thoroughly.

Cake must not be hurried. Keep the oven steady though slow, and after putting a large cake into it do not open the door for at least twenty minutes. During baking, do not open the door unnecessarily, or in fact do anything to jar the cake lest the little bubbles formed by the action of the baking powder burst, causing the gas to escape and the cake to sink. This produces what is known as a "sad" cake, but refers probably to the state of mind of the cook. A very light cake put into a quick oven' rises rapidly round the sides, but leaves a hollow in the middle.