Puzzling Rice Cooker Recipe Translation

One of the benefits of being one of the younger elders in my community is that I am offered a lot of interesting objects by my neighbors as they de-clutter or downsize. As someone who loves to cook, I have collected a number of appliances and related cookbooks that I enjoy, but this new item has stumped me.

I do a lot of Asian cooking; I own quite a few rice cookers with differing functions, and I gladly accepted a hand-me-down small Tiger brand rice cooker that had a "cake" function. "Cake" was, I thought, self-explanatory, until I consulted the garbled translation in the accompanying cookbook, and found this instruction in all of the cake recipes: "Put the dough into the buttered inner pot. Remove the air on a soft cloth and then select the "cake" function." Despite quite a lot of baking experience (I used to work for a catering service as their dessert chef) I have no idea what this instruction could be referring to. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks for any assistance!

PS The cookbook is only provided in English, and I have yet to receive a reply to an email sent to the company.

Problem, I think, solved! A friend sent me a YouTube video about using the cake function in another brand of rice cooker. After instructing the cook to pour the batter into the buttered inner pan, the video shows the cook tapping the flat bottom of the pan on a dish towel spread on the counter, with the instruction "remove air bubbles from the batter." So "remove air on a soft cloth" seems to refer to the same process, although with a few words missing!

*Ketzel sings the Problem Solved Song.