Home cookery

Rub the butter into the flour, add the salt, sugar, and baking powder. Make into a stiff paste with buttermilk. Divide into two parts, roll each into a round, cut in half, and each half into three. Brush with a little milk, sift sugar over, and bake at once in a rather quick oven, or on a hot girdle. If soda be used, dissolve it in a little lukewarm water. Brown Scones. Whole meal flour i lb. 3 oz. Butter Sugar Salt ... Baking powder Milk I dessertspoonful, a pinch. 3 teaspoonfuls. to mix. Rub the butter into the flour, add salt, sugar, and baking powder. Mix into a light soft dough with milk. Roll out, cut into rounds, or scone shapes, brush over with milk, and bake in a quick oven. Brown Cream Scones. Whole meal flour i lb. Sugar I tablespoonful, or less. Salt a pinch. Baking powder 3 teaspoonfuls. Cream to mix. Mix the baking powder, salt and sugar with the flour, make into a soft dough with cream. Roll out, cut into shapes, brush over with egg or milk, and bake in a quick oven. The more elaborate cakes here given are chiefly from foreign sources. The recipes for some of them were obtained from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, which is celebrated for the excellence and variety of its cakes. Butter a shallow round tin, Hne it with Pate Fonce, rolled very thinly ; make it fit the tin well, using a small ball of the paste to press the paste into the corners. Prick the paste all over to prevent its rising. Put a thin layer of apricot jam at the bottom ; then pour in the Almond and Sponge Mixture until the tin is threequarters full. Bake at once in a quick oven about half an hour. When cold, pile on the top the French Icing Cream, and pour all over the cake some Apricot Glaze. Throw browned almonds over the sides of the cake, and ornament the top of the cake with crystallised fruits, pistachios, and cocoanut. Serve as a dessert cake. Gateau Richelieu. Almond Mixture. Almonds ... Castor sugar Flour I oz. Eggs... Vanilla. Chop and pound the almonds, then add one egg (not beaten) — pound all the time ; then add the sugar — pound well ; then the remaining- eggs ; lastly, add the flour and vanilla. Then a Sponge Cake Mixture, made as follows : — Sponge Cake Mixture. Castor sugar 3 oz. Flour 3 oz. Eggs 3. Whisk the sugar and eggs in a basin in a warm place until light and frothy, then stir this to the Almond Mixture, and stir in, lastly, the three ounces of flour, but do not beat it. Add a little almond flavouring. Pate Fonce. Flour si oz. Castor sugar 2 oz. Butter i\ oz. Egg I yolk. Orange flower water ... a dessertspoonful. Milk a little. Make all these ingredients into a firm paste with the hand, working it well to prevent its rising. French Icing Cream. Boil half a pound of lump sugar with half a gill of cold water without stirring it. Wet the sides of the pan (to prevent the sugar crystallising). When the syrup is au-houlet, add it to the whites of four eggs beaten very very firm ; beat all the time. When firm, flavour it with vanilla and pile the icing cream on the top of the cake. It must not run over the sides. Set it in a cool oven to get firm outside. Apricot Glaze. Boil apricot jam with water until a thin jelly. Tinned apricots will do boiled with sugar and rubbed through a hair sieve. N