Plan No. 29. Baking Fruit Cake to Sell
Who doesn’t love fruit cake? And yet how few can make it as it should be made. A lady who really knew how, found that she could make a fruit cake at a cost of about 10 cents a pound, and make it so good that anybody would be glad to buy it at more than three times its cost. She used the following receipt. Two cups of flour, 1 cup of raisins, 1 cup of currants, one-half cup of lard, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon, 1 teaspoonful of cloves, 1 teaspoonful of soda, 1⁄4 teaspoonful of salt; flavor with lemon extract. These, with the exception of the flour, the soda and the extract, she boiled for a few minutes in an agate-ware sauce-pan, then took it off the fire, and when lukewarm mixed in the flour and soda and added the lemon extract. This, baked one hour in a moderate oven, will make a 21⁄2-pound loaf, and, requiring no eggs or butter, is not expensive.
She found her first customers were steady customers, and tho she had very limited baking facilities, she cleared from $25 to $30 a month. With greater baking capacity, added from time to time, and with the aid of a few small ads, she increased her profits gradually, until now she is realizing a net profit of over $100 a month, and expects soon to do even better than that. Just a simple plan, intelligently carried out, and the result was—success.