Bread, cakes, and biscuits

Cake, Alexandra. — Cream together lib. of butter, 4oz. lard, loz. of “vol.,” and e'ght eggs beaten till light, with lOoz. moist sugar ; mix together in another basin 4oz. freshly ground almonds, fib. flour, and 4oz. finely shred lemon peel candied. Mix well and bake in a square tin — such as is used for tin loaf. Almond. — Beat £lb. of butter to a cream with rather more than 12oz. of caster sugar ; when this is quite creamed work in carefully, one or two at a time, lib. of eggs (this is about eight or nine, but it is best to weigh them) ; now work in 14oz. fine flour mixed with a short teaspoonful of baking powder, l^oz. ground almonds, and a few drops of essence of almonds. Mix well and quickly, and bake at once in well papered hoops or tins, with some shredded almonds sprinkled over the top. If baked in lib. tins these cakes take thirty-five minutes, if in 2lb. tins they will require fifty minutes. Blanch and pound loz. bitter almonds, and beat them to the yolks of twelve eggs, beaten till light with a spoonful or two of rose water, then mix into them lib. of crushed and sifted loaf sugar ; next incorporate into this alternately the whites of the eggs whipped to a stiff froth, and lib. of freshly ground sweet almonds, lastly stirring in five good tablespoonfuls of pounded and sifted biscuit crumbs. Pour the mixture into a well buttered mould, and bake for one hour and a half in a moderate oven, covering the cake with a buttered paper. (This is an old Dutch recipe. Cake, Almond Saccharin. — Beat the yolks and whites of two eggs separately, then stir into the yolks 5oz. of freshly ground almonds, add a pinch each of salt and saccharin, and, lastly, mix in the whites of the eggs beaten to a very stiff froth, and bake in well-buttered patty pans till of a light brown. Some roughly chopped almonds can be strewn on the top of the cakes. Be careful the cakes do not burn. The difficulty about these cakes generally lies in the almond flour. The ordinary ground almonds are seldom fine enough to be perfectly satisfactory, and, moreover, are often not over fresh, so where invalid diet is in question it is best to grind the nuts at home in this way : Blanch the almonds, and let them stand till perfectly dry (if used at once they are too soft to grate well), then rub or grate them through a fine wire sieve till they are in a fine powder ; the bits left over at the ends that will not grate can be utilised for decorating the cakes. Angel Food. — Dry and sift 4oz. of fine flour with a teaspoonful of cream of tartar ; beat the whites of eleven eggs to the stiffest possible froth, and mix them lightly and quickly with 12oz. sifted sugar ; now stir in the flour, add at the last a teaspoonful of rose or orange flower water ( this is a matter of taste), and bake in an unbuttered, pan for forty-five minutes in a moderate oven. When baked lift the cake out of the oven, turn the mould upside down on a reversed sieve, and leave it till the cake drops out of itself. Balmoral. — Cream together 111b. of caster sugar and lib. of butter till white and thick ; now mix in, one by one, twelve eggs, beating in each before adding the next ; then work in loz. carraway seeds and 2oz. finely shred candied peel ; lastly stir in as quickly as possible a short G