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HINTS ON MAKING AND BAKING CAKES. 201 |
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warm the milk, stir in it the yeast, and mix the whole into a dough, and after kueading it well put it into buttered tins, or better, in tins dredged with fine dry bread crumbs, after wiping the butter off, then let it rise for nearly an hour before baking. The loaf sugar should be well pounded, and then sifted through a fine sieve. Less butter and eggs are required for cakes when yeast is mixed with the other ingredients.
Good butter should always be used in making cakes. It saves much time and labor to warm, but not melt it, before beating, if beaten to a cream.
The heat of the oven is of great importance, especially for large cakes. If the heat of the oven is not tolerably quick, the batter will not rise. If the oven is too fierce, and there is any danger of the cake burning or catching, put apiece of clean paper over the top. Paper that has been printed on or newspaper should never be used for this purpose.
To prevent bread or cake or anything from burning at the bottom of the stove, set the cake-pan on a stove-top or on pieces of iron to prevent its touching the bottom of the stove, or set a vessel or pan of water on the top grate and nothing will burn when the water is in it as the steam prevents it; when sufficiently done and you wish to brown it, you can remove the pan of water.
To know when a cake is sufficientlv baked, pierce it with a straw or plunge a clean knife into the middle of it; draw it quickly out, and if it looks the least sticky put the cake back and close the oven until it is done.
Cakes should be kept in closed tin canisters or glass jars in a dry place, or it the cake be not iced put it in a barrel of brown sugar and place some of the sugar over it. Cakes made with yeast do not keep so light as though made without it.
Panification or bread-making consists of adding one-half or little more of water to the flour and yeast or some leaven matter made of malt and hops. But in different countries different fermenting matter or leaven is used. In the West Indies the refuse of the distillation of rum or "dunder,'" and in the East Indies the liquor which flows by making art incision in the palm tree, called 4fctoddy" or palm wine. The dough is then worked, and the yeast produces fermentation or "rising," the dough again acting upon the leavening principie, the starch of the flour is converted into sacharine matter. This is again transformed into alcohol and carbonic acid. The escape of the carbonic acid in little bubbles, produced by fermentation, is prevented by the gluten of the dough, and this causes the little holes which are seen in leaven or light bread. The bread to be digestable and nice must be made of good and fresh yeast; when made of |
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