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Classic
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page 253
it smoothly on the bottom and sides of the tin. When the cake is baked, let it
remain in the tin until it is cold; then set it in the oven a minute, or just
long enough to warm the tin through. Remove it from the oven; turn it upside
down on your hand, tap the edge of the tin on the table and it will slip out
with ease, leaving it whole.
If a cake-pan is too shallow for holding the quantity of cake to be baked, for
fear of its being so light as to rise above the pan, that can be remedied by
thoroughly greasing a piece of thick glazed letter-paper with soft butter. Place
or fit it around the sides of the buttered tin, allowing it to reach an inch or
more above the top. If the oven heat is moderate, the butter will preserve the
paper from burning.
FROSTING OR ICING.
In the first place, the eggs should be cold, and the platter on which they are
to be beaten also cold. Allow, for the white of one egg, one small teacupful of
powdered sugar. Break the eggs and throw a small handful of the sugar on them as
soon as you begin beating; keep adding it at intervals until it is all used up.
The eggs must not be beaten until the sugar has been added in this way, which
gives a smooth, tender frosting, and one that will dry much sooner than the old
way.
Spread with a broad knife evenly over the cake, and if it seems too thin, beat
in a little more sugar. Cover the cake with two coats, the second after the
first has become dry, or nearly so. If the icing gets too dry or stiff before
the last coat is needed, it can be thinned sufficiently with a little water,
enough to make it work smoothly.
A little lemon-juice, or half a teaspoonful of tartaric acid, added to the
frosting while being beaten, makes it white and more frothy.
The flavors mostly used are lemon, vanilla, almond, rose, chocolate, and orange.
If you wish to ornament with figures or flowers, make up rather more icing, keep
about one-third out until that on the cake is dried; then, with a clean, glass
syringe, apply it in such forms as you desire and dry as before; what you keep
out to ornament with may be tinted pink with cochineal, blue with indigo, yellow
with saffron or the grated rind of an orange strained through a cloth, green
with spinach juice, and brown with chocolate, purple with cochineal and indigo.
Strawberry, or currant and cranberry juices color a delicate pink.
Set the cake in a cool oven with the door open, to dry, or in a draught in an
open window.
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