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powder (or other leavening agents) ...a cake belonging to the group we call
‘“‘Butter-type Cakes.”

At this point, I should like to think that you (if you are an earnest student and
want really to understand the art of cake-making) would look back over the infor-
mation I gave you in Lesson 3. I endeavored in that lesson to clear away, once
and for all, any fogginess there might exist for you about the differences in flours,
the differences in fats... I tried to explain in simple fashion what we could expect
of this sort of ingredient, and why that sort would act a little differently in a mixture.
Such knowledge is truly fundamental—and will help you to know exactly what you
are doing when you make a batter or a dough.

INGREDIENTS FOR BUTTER-TYPE CAKES

FLOUR—This is the ingredient which gives a batter its “body.”

It is preferable to use soft-wheat flour (with its smaller proportion of gluten,
and gluten which is itself more delicate than that found in hard-wheat flour) for
cake—it gives an advantage from the start, when your whole object is a tender,
delicate cake. Monarch Pastry Flour established itself long ago, as the leading
soft-wheat flour—it brought a new high level of results to cake-makers generally
and made it easier for anyone to make good cake.

LEAVENINGS—Be sure you choose a dependable baking powder (or combinations
of soda with an acid ingredient, etc.) and that you protect it after it comes into
your possession. Remember that baking powder begins to create gas when it comes
into contact with moisture—and speeds up the gas-making when it is acted upon
by heat. Naturally, this being the case, you will not allow moisture to reach your
baking powder, but will protect it by always keeping the tin closely covered (there’s
humidity a-plenty in your kitchen, most of the time).

Use the amount of leavening called for—don’t get the idea that if 2 spoonfuls
are good, 3 might be better! Leavenings are “‘control ingredients’? and work with
scientific precision. Give them a chance, by measuring them exactly and using
just the amount called for.

Eccs—Here you have an ingredient that is important to most cakes in several
ways.

They act as leavening material, thus cutting down, for instance, in the amount
of baking powder that is required in a batter. The more eggs the recipe calls for,
the less of the other leavenings it will require.

Eggs greatly enrich a cake, both as to flavor and texture—and naturally, they
increase its food value.

Eggs also have much to do with the type of crumb the cake will have—egg
yolks making it smooth and velvety and tender, egg whites making it light and
porous—the two working together, in most cake batters, with excellent results.
The number of eggs and the method of incorporating them can have a great deal
to do with establishing the character of different kinds of butter-type cakes.

FAT—This is an ingredient which, as we learned especially in the years when
fine cooking fats were scarce, can exert a high degree of control over our cake-
making results.

The special rdle of the fat in a cake is to make it tender. But fats can carry a
cake up or down the flavor-scale in an unmistakable way. The fat you use can do
one of three things:

LESSON 9 62