Hi Everyone! I was looking through an ancient cake decorating book and I found this poem that the author had found in an old McCall's Magazine from August 1899. It's very cute and I wanted to share it with y'all!

Her First Cake

She measured out the butter with a very solemn air;
The milk and sugar also; and she took the greatest care
To count the eggs correctly and add a little bit
Of Baking Powder, which you know, beginners oft omit.
Then she stirred it all together, and she baked it full an hour;
But she never quite forgave herself for leaving out the flour.

Edited to say the author of said poem is unknown.

Thanks for sharing. It is nice to know some things never change!

That is sooo cute!!! Thanks for sharing

Omg thats adorable. Thanks for sharing that.

I like it - thanks for sharing!

You know it's funny, I made a cake once and my neighbor was over while I was mixing the batter and after seeing it bake up very shallow, I realized (after tasting it) that I forgot to put the sugar in the recipe! Yep, some things NEVER change!!

My best cooking lesson ever came at my mom's expense.

I was probably 11 or 12 and my mom had given me a scolding for putting nail polish remover in an empty food jar and not labling what it was. (I don't remember what I was doing or why I did it.) A few days later I made a cake that called for sour milk and mom said to add a table spoon of vinegar to 1 cup of milk. So I followed her instructions without knowing that she had mixed up some homemade cleaning solution (I think with amonia) in an old vinegar bottle. Needless to say she was pretty sheepish about not labling her container and both of us learned to be careful.

Cute poem, thanks for sharing! I'm pretty good at forgetting an ingredient off and on. Last time it was the eggs. Don't know how I missed them, but once the cake was in the oven & I went to clean up, there they were sitting on the counter! Needless to say, it was not a very good cake!

I love reading about the history of cakes, or any cooking and baking for that matter. Its always interesting to read what we don't have to do nowadays if we want to bake a cake. Beating the batter 200 times with a wooden spoon or a cleaned twig & smoothing the "icing" with cleaned feathers is not really my style!