Cake Shortened With Oil Recipe

Instructions

1. The objection is sometimes made to cakes in which soda or baking powder is not used and which are made light by beating air into them, that they are dry and unpalatable compared with cakes made in the usual way.
2. The reason they seem dry is because they contain no shortening (fat in some form), which is used in cakes of the ordinary kind to make them moist and tender.
3. Cakes made light by beating depend for their lightness upon air beaten into the eggs which are used in them.
4. Fat of any kind added to the eggs will prevent them from catching air and becoming light.
5. Therefore shortening cannot be added to such cakes in the usual way.
6. But it is possible to add a little oil to cakes of this kind if it is added at the right time and in the right way, and this makes the cake more moist and more tender.
7. The following is a recipe for a cake in which a little oil is used:
8. Cake Shortened with Oil
9. 3 eggs
10. 1/2 teaspoon salt
11. 1/3 cup boiling water
12. 1 cup sugar
13. 1 1/2 cups sifted pastry flour
14. 1/3 cup cooking oil
15. Grated yellow rind of 1 lemon
16. Break the eggs into an earthenware mixing bowl, and set the bowl in a pan of hot water.
17. Add the salt to the eggs, and beat the eggs with a Dover egg beater till they become light and stiff.
18. Beat the boiling water into the eggs and beat again till stiff.
19. Gradually beat in the sugar, adding it a little at a time, and beating well between the additions of sugar, and until the batter is stiff and light and nearly fills a one-and-one-half-quart bowl.
20. Beat in the lemon rind and the oil.
21. Now comes the most particular part of the making of the cake--the folding in of the flour.
22. It is easy, if care is not taken, to work out all the air that has been beaten into the batter, and the air is what is depended upon to make the cake light.
23. A flat wire whip is the best utensil to use in folding in the flour.
24. Sift a little of the flour over the top of the stiffly beaten batter.
25. Fold it in by dipping the whip edgewise down at the side of the bowl and lifting it up flatwise through the center.
26. When this flour is partly folded in, sift on more flour and fold it in the same way.
27. Continue folding flour in until all the flour has been used, but do not fold a stroke more than is necessary to get the flour completely blended with the batter.
28. Pour at once into a cake tin which has a piece of oiled paper fitted into the bottom.
29. Do not oil the sides of the tin.
30. Bake in a moderate oven till a broom straw run into the cake comes out clean.
31. When the cake is taken from the oven, turn it upside down to cool in the tin, placing something under the edge of the tin so that air can circulate under it.
32. Then if the cake falls, it will fall upward and be lighter.
33. When the cake is cool, it can be removed from the tin by running a knife around the sides of the cake.
34. By baking this batter in three pie tins it can be used for a layer cake.
35. It will not be necessary to fit oiled paper to the bottom of the tins.
36. Instead, oil the tins, then sprinkle them with flour.
37. This batter may also be baked in the form of cup cakes, oiling the tins and sprinkling them with flour to prevent the cake from sticking to them.