Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit Part 15

"Aunt Sarah," questioned Mary one day, "will you tell me how it is possible to evolve a number of cakes from one recipe?"

"Certainly I will, my dear," said her Aunt. "For instance, take the simple recipe from which I have for years baked layer cake. You may have other recipes given you, equally as good, but I feel positive none better. The cake made from this recipe is not rich enough to be unwholesome, but a good, reliable, inexpensive, easily-made cake, with which I have never had a failure.

"The recipe, as you know, consists of 1-1/4 cups of granulated sugar, 1/2 cup of a mixture of b.u.t.ter and sweet lard (or use all b.u.t.ter), 1/2 cup sweet milk, 2 cups flour and 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder. 3 eggs.

"The simplest manner of baking this cake is in two square cake pans.

When baked, take from pans and ice each cake with a boiled chocolate icing and put together as a layer cake, or ice each cake with a plain, boiled white icing and, when this is cold, you may spread over top of each cake unsweetened chocolate, which has been melted over steam after being grated. When cake is to be served, cut in diamonds or squares. Or add to the batter 1 cup of chopped hickory nut meats, bake in 2 layers and cut in squares.

"For a chocolate loaf cake, add two generous tablespoonfuls of unsweetened melted chocolate to the batter just before baking. If you wish a chocolate layer cake, use the same batter as for the chocolate loaf cake, bake in two layer pans and put together with white boiled icing.

"Or, add to this same batter one scant teaspoonful of cinnamon, ginger, 1/2 teaspoonful of grated nutmeg and cloves, a cup of raisins or dried currants, and you have a small fruit cake.

"Or, add a small quant.i.ty of thinly-shaved citron to the original recipe, flavor with lemon, bake in a loaf and spread a white icing flavored with lemon extract over top of cake, and you have a lemon cake.

"Or, add chocolate and spices to one-half the batter (about one-half as much chocolate and spices as were used in batter for fruit cake) and place spoonfuls of the light and dark batter alternately in a cake pan, until all batter has been used, and you will have a cheap, old-fas.h.i.+oned Marble cake.

"Or, bake cake over original recipe, in two-layer pans, placing between layers either tart jelly, a creamy cornstarch filling, grated cocoanut, apple cream filling, or you might even use half the recipe given for the delicious icing or filling for Lady Baltimore cake.

"Lastly, bake small cakes from this same recipe. Mary, you should have small pans for baking these delicious little cakes, similar to those I possess, which I ordered made at the tinsmith's. I took for a pattern one Frau Schmidt loaned me. They are the exact size of one-quarter pound boxes of Royal baking powder. Cut the box in three pieces of equal height, and your cakes will be equally as large in diameter as the baking powder box, but only one-third as high. I think I improved on Frau Schmidt's cake tins, as hers were all separate, I ordered twelve tins, similar to hers, to be fastened to a piece of sheet iron.

I had two of these iron sheets made, containing twenty-four little pans. I place a generous tablespoonful of the batter in each of the twenty-four small pans, and cakes rise to the top of pans. Usually I have batter remaining after these are filled. Ice all the cake except the top with a white boiled icing or chocolate icing. These small cakes keep exceedingly well, and are always liked by young folks and are particularly nice for children's parties".

"Speaking of cakes, Aunt Sarah," said Mary, "have you ever used Swansdown cake flour? I have a friend in the city who uses it for making the most delicious Angel cake, and she gave me a piece of Gold cake made over a recipe in 'Cake Secrets,' which comes with the flour, and it was fine. I'll get a package of the flour for you the first time I go to the city. The flour resembles a mixture of ordinary flour and cornstarch. It is not a prepared flour, to be used without baking powder, and you use it princ.i.p.ally for baking cakes. I have the recipe for both the Gold and Angel cakes, with the instructions for baking same. They are as follows:"

ANGEL CAKE.

"For the Angel cake, use one even cupful of the whites of egg (whites of either eight large or nine small eggs); a pinch of salt, if added when beating eggs, hastens the work. One and one-quarter cups granulated sugar, 1 cup of Iglehart's Swansdown cake flour. Sift flour once, then measure and sift three times. Beat whites of eggs about half, add 1/2 teaspoonful of cream of tartar then beat whites of eggs until they will stand of their own weight. Add sugar, then flour, not by stirring, but by folding over and over, until thoroughly mixed.

Flavor with 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla or a few drops of almond extract. As much care should be taken in baking an Angel Food cake as in mixing. Bake in an ungreased patent pan. Place the cake in an oven that is just warm enough to know there is a fire inside the range. Let the oven stay just warm through until the batter has raised to the top of the cake pan, then increase the heat gradually until the cake is well browned over. If by pressing the top of the cake with the finger it will spring back without leaving the impression of the finger, the cake is done through. Great care should be taken that the oven is not too hot to begin with, as the cake will rise too fast and settle or fall in the baking. It should bake in from 35 to 40 minutes' time.

When done, invert the pan and let stand until cold before removing it.

Should you see cake browning before it rises to top of pan, throw your oven door open and let cold air rush in and cool your oven instantly.

Be not afraid. The cold air will not hurt the cake. Two minutes will cool any oven. Watch cake closely. Don't be afraid to open oven door every three or four minutes. This is the only way to properly bake this cake. When cake has raised above top of pan, increase your heat and finish baking rapidly. Baking too long dries out the moisture, makes it tough and dry. When cake is done it begins to shrink. Let it shrink back to level of pan. Watch carefully at this stage and take out of oven and invert immediately. Rest on centre tube of pan. Let hang until perfectly cold, then take cake carefully from pan. When baking Angel cake always be sure the oven bakes good brown under bottom of cake. If cake does not crust under bottom it will fall out when inverted and shrink in the fall."

"I never invert my pans of Angel cake on taking them from oven," said Mary's Aunt, "as the cakes are liable to fall out even if the pan is not greased. I think it safer to allow the pans containing the cakes to stand on a rack and cool without inverting the pan.

"Suppose, Mary, we bake a Gold cake over the recipe from 'Cake Secrets,' as eggs are plentiful; but we haven't any Swansdown flour. I think we will wait until we get it from the city."

GOLD CAKE.

Yolks of 8 eggs; 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar, 3/4 cup of b.u.t.ter, 3/4 cup water, 2-1/2 cups of Swansdown cake flour, 2 heaping teaspoonfuls of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoonful lemon extract. Sift flour once, then measure. Add baking powder and sift three times. Cream b.u.t.ter and sugar thoroughly; beat yolks to a stiff froth; add this to creamed b.u.t.ter and sugar, and stir thoroughly through. Add flavor, add water, then flour. Stir very hard. Place in a slow oven at once. Will bake in from 30 to 40 minutes. Invert pan immediately it is taken from oven.

Mary, this batter may also be baked in layers with any kind of filling desired. The Angel cake receipt is very similar to an original recipe Frau Schmidt gave me; she uses cornstarch instead of Swansdown flour and she measures the eggs in a cup instead of taking a certain number; she thinks it more exact.

"Aunt Sarah, did you know Frau Schmidt, instead of using flour alone when baking cakes, frequently uses a mixture of flour and cornstarch?

She sifts together, several times, six cups of flour and one cup of cornstarch, and uses this instead of using flour alone.

"I dearly love the Professor's wife--she's been so very good to me,"

exclaimed Mary.

"Yes," replied her Aunt, "she has very many lovable qualities."

Mary's liking for bright, energetic Frau Schmidt was not greater than the affection bestowed on Mary by the Professor's wife, who frequently entertained Mary with tales of her life when a girl in Germany, to all of which Mary never tired listening. One Aunt, a most estimable woman, held the position of valued and respected housekeeper and cook for the Lord Mayor of the city wherein she resided. Another relative, known as "Schone Anna," for many years kept an inn named "The Four Seasons,"

noted for the excellent fare served by the fair chatelaine to her patrons. The inn was made famous by members of the King's household stopping there while in the town during the Summer months, which was certainly a compliment to her good cooking. One of the things in which she particularly excelled was potato cakes raised with yeast. Frau Schmidt had been given a number of these valuable recipes by her mother, all of which she offered to Mary. One recipe she particularly liked was "Fast Nacht Cakes," which the Professor's wife baked always without fail on Shrove Tuesday (or "Fast Nacht" day), the day before the beginning of Lent. This rule was as "unchangeable as the law of Medes and Persians," and it would have been a very important event, indeed, which would have prevented the baking of these toothsome delicacies on that day.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE OLD "TAUFSCHIEN."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRTH AND CHRISTENING CERTIFICATE

OLD TAUFSCHIEN]

Aunt Sarah had long promised to show Mary her Grandmother's "Taufschien," and she reverently handled the large old family Bible, which contained between its sacred pages the yellowed paper, being the birth and christening certificate of her grandmother, whom we read was born in 1785, in Nockamixon Towns.h.i.+p, was confirmed in 1802, and was married in 1805 to the man who was later Aunt Sarah's grandfather. The old certificate was signed by a German Reformed minister named Wack, who history tells us was the first young man of that denomination to be ordained to the ministry in America. Folded with this "Taufschien"

is another which has never been filled out. This is printed in German.

Pictures of women, perhaps they are intended to represent angels, with golden wings, clothed in loose-flowing crimson drapery and holding harps in their hands; birds with gayly-colored plumage of bluish green, crimson and yellow, perched on branches of what presumably represent cherry trees, also decorate the page. Religious hymns printed on the "Taufschiens," encircled with gay stripes of light blue and yellow, dotted with green, further embellish them. On one we read:

"Infinite joy or endless woe, Attend on every breath; And yet, how unconcerned we go Upon the brink of death."

"Mary, this old 'Taufschien' of my grandmother's is one of my most cherished possessions. Would you like to see your Uncle's old deed, which he came into possession of when he inherited the farm from his father?"

Carefully unfolding the stiff old parchment or pigskin deed, yellowed and brown spotted with age, Mary could faintly decipher the writing wherein, beautifully written, old-fas.h.i.+oned penmans.h.i.+p of two hundred years ago stated that a certain piece of land in Bucks County, Beginning at a Chestnut Oak, North to a post; then East to a large rock, and on the South unsettled land, which in later years was conveyed to John Landis.

"This deed," said Mary's Aunt, "was given in 1738, nearly two hundred years ago, by John, Thomas and Richard Penn, sons of William Penn by his second marriage, which occurred in America. His eldest son, John Penn, you have no doubt heard, was called 'The American,' he having been born in this country before William Penn's return to Europe, where he remained fifteen years, as you've no doubt heard."

At the bottom of the deed a blue ribbon has been slipped through cuts in the parchment, forming a diamond which incloses what is supposed to be the signature of Thomas Penn.

"Aunt Sarah, I am not surprised that you value this old deed of the farm and these 'Taufschiens' of your grandmother I should frame them, so they may be preserved by future generations."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE OLD STORE ON THE RIDGE ROAD.

Aunt Sarah found in Mary a willing listener when talking of the time in years past when her grandfather kept a small "Country Store" on the Ridge Road in Bucks County. She also remembered, when a child of ten, accompanying her grandfather on one of his trips when he drove to Philadelphia to purchase goods for his store.

"They had no trolley cars in those days?" asked Mary.

"No, my dear, neither did they have steam cars between the different towns and cities as we have now."

"At grandfather's store could be bought both groceries and dry goods.

The surrounding farmers' wives brought to the store weekly fresh print b.u.t.ter, eggs, pot cheese and hand-case, crocks of apple-b.u.t.ter, dried sweet corn, beans, cherries, peach and apple 'Snitz,' taking in exchange sugar, starch, coffee, mola.s.ses, etc. My father tapped his sugar maples and mother cooked down the syrup until thick, and we used that in place of mola.s.ses. They also took in exchange shaker flannel, nankeen, indigo blue and 'Simpson' gray calico, which mother considered superior to any other, both for its was.h.i.+ng and wearing qualities. The farmers who came occasionally to the store to shop for different members of the family frequently bought whole pieces of calico of one pattern, and," affirmed Aunt Sarah, "I knew of one farmer who bought several whole pieces of one pattern with rather large figures on a dark wine ground, resembling somewhat the gay figures on an old paisley shawl. He said 'twas a good, serviceable color, and more economical to buy it all alike, and remarked: 'What's the difference, anyway? Calico is calico.' From the same piece of calico his wife made dresses, ap.r.o.ns and sunbonnets for herself and daughters, s.h.i.+rts for the farmer and his sons (the boys were young, fortunately), and patchwork quilts and comfortables from the remainder."