Raisins and dried currants should be washed and dried before using in cake.  All fruit should be dredged with flour before being added to cake.  Citron may be quickly and easily prepared by cutting on a slaw cutter or it may be grated before being added to cake.  When a recipe calls for butter the size of an egg it means two tablespoonfuls.  A tablespoonful of butter, melted, means the butter should be measured first, then melted.  Aunt Sarah frequently used a mixture of butter and lard in her cakes for economy’s sake, and a lesser quantity may be used, as the shortening quality of lard is greater than that of butter.  When substituting lard for butter, she always beat the lard to a cream before using it and salt it well.  If raisins and currants are placed in oven of range a few minutes to become warmed before being added to cake, then rolled in flour, they will not sink to bottom of cake when baked.

FRAU SCHMIDT’S LEMON CAKE

1-1/2 cups sugar. 1/2 cup butter and lard. 3 small eggs or 2 large ones. 1/2 cup sweet milk. 2 cups flour. 1/2 teaspoonful saleratus. 1 teaspoonful cream of tartar.  Grated yellow rind and juice of half a lemon.

Beat sugar and butter to a cream and add the yolks of eggs.  Add the milk, then the flour and cream of tartar and saleratus; and the flavoring.  Lastly, the stiffly-beaten whites of eggs.

This makes one loaf cake.  The original of this recipe was a very old one which Frau Schmidt had used many years.  Every ingredient in the old recipe was doubled, except the eggs, when five were used.  Mary thought this cake fine and from the recipe, when she used half the quantity of everything, she baked a fine loaf cake, and from the original recipe was made one good sized loaf and one layer cake.  Thinly sliced citron added to this cake is a great improvement.

FINE “KRUM KUCHEN”

One cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter and lard, mixed; 2 cups flour and 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup sweet milk.

Crumb together with the hands the sugar, butter, flour and baking powder sifted together.  Take out 1/2 cup of these crumbs to be scattered over top of cake.  To the remainder add the yolks of the eggs, well beaten, and the sweet milk, and lastly the stiffly beaten whites of eggs.  Put the mixture in a well-greased pan (a deep custard pie tin will answer), scatter the half cup of crumbs reserved over top of cake and bake about 3/4 of an hour in a rather quick oven.  When cake is baked, sprinkle over 1 teaspoonful of melted butter and dust top with cinnamon.

AUNT SARAH’S “QUICK DUTCH CAKES”