Mrs. Lincoln's Boston cook book

Sponge Cake Mixtures, — Beat the yolks until light or lemon-colored and thick. Add the sugar graduallj^, and beat again. Add the lemon juice or flavoring, and water, if that is to be used. Beat the whites until stiff and dry, and cut or fold them in lightl}', then sift in the flour, and fold in carefully without any stirring. Sponge cakes should not be beaten after adding the flour. Those made with soda and cream of tartar require less beating than those without, but they are a very poor substitute for genuine sponge cake. Butter Cake Mixtures, — Warm the bowl with hot water, then wipe dry. Put in the butter, and rub with a wooden or silver spoon until light and creamy. Be careful not to have the bowl so hot as to melt the butter. Add the sugar and beat again. If the habit of rubbing the butter and sugar together with the hand be already formed, and you find it easier than to use a spoon, it is hardly worth while to change ; but for those who are wholly inexperienced it is better to learn to use the spoon, and every lady would prefer to have her cook mix in that way. If the proportion of sugar be large for the butter, — more than double, — beat part of the sugar with the butter, and the remainder with the yolks of the eggs. Where a very small proportion of butter is to be used, it may be melted and mixed with the eggs and sugar. Beat the yolks till light and thick, then beat them well with the butter and sugar. Add the The Boston Cook Book, flavoring. Then add a little milk, then a little flour, and milk again, and continue until all the milk and flour are used. Lastly, add the beaten whites. All cakes made with butter require to be beaten long and vigorously after adding the flour, that they may be smooth and finegrained. Fruit should be added last ; cake with fruit should be a little stifl'er with flour than that without fruit. Citron and large pieces of fruit may be put in in layers, or spread over the dough in the pan. All cake should be baked as soon as possible after it is mixed. Put the scrapings from the bowl into small tins. If put into the loaf, they sometimes cause a heavy streak through the top. Cake is baked when it shrinks from the pan and stops hissing, or when a straw inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove the loaf from the pan as soon as baked, lifting it out by the paper ; or, if not papered, loosen the edges with a knife, and turn the pan over upon a cloth laid over a bread-cooler. Remove the pan as soon as possible. Never let cake stand in the pan to become moist. When cake is baked too hard or burned, rub oflT the burned surface with a coarse grater. Sponge Cake. 5 eggs. 1 cup sugar, powdered or fine granulated. 1 saltspoonful salt. 1 lemon, grated rind and juice 1 cup pastry flour. See general directions for putting together (page 372). The mixture should be stiff and spongy, of the consistency of Charlotte Russe filling, as it is poured into the pan. Bake in a deep bread pan, in a moderate oven, nearly an hour, — in a shallow pan, about fortj' minutes. If stirred instead of beaten, the bubbles of air will be broken and the mixture will become liquid. When baked, it will be tough and too close-grained. To make this cake well, requires strength in beating and judgment in baking; but when successful, it is one of the most satisfactory and perfect