Original White House Cookbook

One cup powdered sugar, one-half cup of butter creamed with the sugar, one-half cup of milk, four eggs, the whites only, whipped light, two and one-half cups of prepared flour. Bitter almond flavoring, spinach juice, and cochineal. Cream the butter and sugar; add the milk, flavoring, the whites and flour. Divide the batter into three parts. Bruise and pound a few leaves of spinach in a thin muslin bag until you can express the juice, Put a few drops of this into one portion of the batter, color another with cochineal, leaving the third white. Put a little of each into small, round pans or cups, giving a light stir to each color as you add the next. This will vein the cakes prettily. Put the white between the pink and green, that the tints may show better. If you can get pistachio nuts to pound up for the green, the cakes will be much nicer. Ice on sides and top. CORNSTARCH CAKES. One cupful each of butter and sweet milk and half a cup of cornstarch, two cupfuls each of sugar and flour, the whites of five eggs beaten to a CAKES. stiff froth, two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar and one of soda; flavor to taste. Bake in gem-tins or patty-pans. SPONGE DROPS. Beat to a froth three eggs and one teacup of sugar; stir into this one heaping coffeecup of flour, in which one teaspoonful of cream of tartar and half a teaspoonful of saleratus are thoroughly mixed. Flavor with lemon. Butter tin sheets with washed butter and drop in teaspoonfuls about three inches apart. Bake instantly in a very quick oven. Watch closely as they will burn easily. Serve with ice cream. SAVORY BISCUITS OR LADY FINGERS. Put nine tablespoonfuls of fine white sugar into a bowl and put the bowl into hot water to heat the sugar; when the sugar is thoroughly heated, break nine eggs into the bowl and beat them quickly until they become a little warm and rather thick; then take the bowl from the water and continue beating until it is nearly or quite cold; now stir in lightly nine tablespoonfuls of sifted flour; then with a paper funnel, or something of the kind, lay this mixture out upon papers, in biscuits three inches long and half an inch thick, in the form of fingers; sift sugar over the biscuits and bake them upon tins to a light brown; when they are done and cold, remove them from the papers, by wetting them on the back; dry them and they are ready for use. They are often used in making Charlotte Russe. PASTRY SANDWICHES. Puff paste, jam of any kind, the white of an egg, sifted sugar. Roll the paste out thin ; put half of it on a baking sheet or tin, and spread equally over it apricot, greengage, or any preserve that may be preferred. Lay over this preserve another thin paste, press the edges together all round, and mark the paste in lines with a knife on the surface, to show where to cut it when baked. Bake from twenty minutes to half an hour ; and, a short time before being done, take the pastry out of the oven, brush it over with the white of an egg, sift over pounded sugar and put it back in the oven to color. When cold, cut it into strips ; pile these on a dish pyramidically and serve. This may be made of jelly-cake dough, and, after baking, allowed to cool before spreading with the preserve ; either way is good, as well as fanciful. NEAPOLITAINES.