Making a Cake

– Move out of my way, Peter. I want to make a cake.

– How do you make a cake, Mum?

– Fancy you being interested. Well, listen and I’ll tell you. First you take some flour and add the eggs. Oh, no, that’s wrong. You mix the fat and sugar first. But you’d better watch me doing it. Now look, first I mix the fat and the sugar. There, do you see?

– Yes.

– Then I add the eggs, one by one with a little flour and beat them into a mixture.

– Why do you beat them?

– Well, eggs help to make the cake rise nieely if you beat them. And then I add the rest of the dry things.

– What are the dry things?

– Oh, the rest of the flour, the fruit if you are making a fruit-cake or the chocolate powder if it’s a chocolate cake. It depends what sort of cake you are making.

– Make a chocolate cake.

– Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Now I stir in a little baking powder.

– Does that make the cake rise too?

– Yes, but not until you heat it.

– Is that chocolate powder you are putting in now, Mum?

– Of course it is.

– I say, Mum.

– What is it, Peter?

– What’s the salt for?

– What salt, I don’t put salt in a cake.

– You did, you know. Perhaps you thought it was sugar.

– What! Oh, good gracious! I’ve put salt in instead of sugar. The cake is spoiled. What a shame. Those lovely eggs. I’m always doing things like that. Now I shall have to begin again and make buns instead. They don’t need eggs.

(From ‘Meet the Parkers’ by D. Hicks)