“Let ‘Em Eat Cake”—the delightful insouciance of this famous phrase, which to most of us brings associations not of Marie Antoinette but the Gershwin brothers, finds an echo in the heart of every hostess who has to provide for a children’s or young people’s party. While some like ice cream and others prefer sherbets, while some enjoy fruits, while others eschew them, young people of all kinds and conditions are lovers of cake. In fact, the enjoyment of cake may be taken as the supreme test of an undiminished youthfulness. No matter what your years, so long as cake still presents a temptation and an allurement to you, your youth has not quite fled.
Of course, it has to be good cake, for despite the pessimistic views which Sir Harry McGowan, the English critic of modern progress, entertains about up-to-date cooking, our palates have become quite fastidious, and cake has to be well made, well baked, and of fluffy lightness to be acceptable. Otherwise—but you probably know the story of the young husband who sued for a divorce. “The ship of our marriage foundered on a rock —and the rock was the cake she made.”
No marital tragedy of this kind will ensue if the lady-tyro follows the following recipe for a plain cake. This cake—simple to make but delicious in taste—will on the contrary ensnare even the most critical husband, and as to children—well, they simply adore it and cannot get enough. The needed ingredients are: one-half cup of shortening, three-fourths cup of sugar, one egg, one and one-half cups of pastry flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, one-half cup of milk and one-half teaspoon of vanilla flavoring. Cream the butter and add sugar gradually. Beat yolk till thick and lemon colored and add to the creamed butter and sugar. Sift together the remaining dry ingredients and add these alternately with milk, beating the whole mixture most thoroughly. Flavor with vanilla. Beat the white of the egg till stiff and fold into the batter. Bake in a moderate oven in a loaf pan for about 45 minutes, and then—why then “Let ‘Em Eat Cake.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
