General Directions for Making Cake
When cake or pastry is to be made, take care not to make trouble for others by scattering materials, and soiling the table or floor, or by the needless use of many dishes.
Put on a large and clean apron, roll your sleeves above the elbows, tie something over your head lest hair may fall; take care that your hands are clean and have a basin of water and a clean towel at hand.
Place everything you will need on the table, butter your pans, grate your nutmegs and squeeze your lemons. Then break your eggs, each in a cup by itself, lest adding a bad one to the others should spoil the whole.
Then weigh and measure your flour and sugar, and if not already done, sift them. Make your cake in wood or earthen, and not in tin.
Keep saleratus [a leavening agent consisting of potassium or sodium bicarbonate], rolled and sifted, always ready for use. This will prevent the dark spots occasioned by undissolved particles, which are very offensive.
Always put your eggs into cold water some time before you are ready to break them. They cut into a much finer froth for being cold. In warm weather put them in water over night.
For nice cake, the whites should be cut to a stiff froth, and the yolks beaten and strained, and then put to the butter and sugar after these have been stirred till they look like cream. Then mix the flour gradually.
When cream or sour milk is to be put in, half of it should be added when half the flour is mixed in; then the remainder of flour, and then the saleratus dissolved in the other half of the cream or milk.
Lastly, add the spice, wine, lemon juice, or fruit.
In summer, do not stir cake with the hand, the warmth of it makes it less light. A wooden spoon kept on purpose, is the best thing. In winter, soften, but do not melt the butter before using it.
Cake not raised with yeast, should be baked as soon as it is made, except such as is hard enough to be rolled; this may stand a short time. Fresh eggs are needed for nice white cake.
