Bread, cakes, and biscuits

the same weight of brown sugar ; then add three well-whisked eggs and a wineglassful of elderberry wine. Give all a vigorous beating, then stir in rapidly 12oz. of sifted flour, into which two teaspoonfuls of good baking powder have been sifted ; 12oz. of rich raisins stoned and cut, 4oz. of shred orange peel, a teaspoonful of spice, cloves, and nutmeg mixed. Pour into a well-battered cake tin, and bake for an hour and a half in a moderate oven. Keep in a close-fitting tin for a week before using it. If care be taken over the mixing and baking, this cake, although by no means costly, will be found but little inferior to wedding cake. Fancy. — Of these there are so many that it is impossible to do more than give samples in such a book as the present. For instance, Cake d la Creole. — Remove the centre from a stale sponge or Madeira cake, but without cutting it through at the bottom ; then set it on a glass dish, and soak it lightly with lemon flavoured syrup, just enough to flavour it without making it pappy. When cold glaze with rum glace, garnishing this as it hardens with angelica leaves, cut-up pineapple, cocoa and pistachio nuts roughly chopped. When to be served, fill up the centre with cut-up pineapple, cocoa and pistachio nuts, &c., tossed in rum flavoured syrup. This cake can manifestly be varied according to circumstances. Date Cake is another variety. Slice a stale Madeira cake horizontally, spread these slices thickly with date icing, put it back into shape, and cover it all with the date icing, garnishing this with roughly chopped and blanched almonds or pistachios. For the icing, first make a puree by cooking twenty to thirty dates in half a pint of claret (or any wine to taste) with 1oz. or so of sugar till of the consistency of cream, and sieve it. Now put into a saucepan ½lb. cane icing sugar and three to four tablespoonfuls of the date puree, and stir this all together till just warm and well blended, and use. Any fruit puree (and any cake) may be used in this way, adding a drop or two of colouring to the icing if necessary to bring up the colour. The Yule Log cake is also very pretty, and for anyone handy at “ piping ” is by no means difficult to manage. Procure a rather tall stale sponge cake, and with a column cutter stamp out the centre, leaving rather more than 1in. of cake all round. Now carve the outside to a rough likeness of a tree trunk or log, and with a rose pipe cover it all over with chocolate or coffee Vienna icing, imitating as closely as you can the gnarled bark of an old tree. When nearly set dust it in parts with very finely minced pistachios so as to resemble moss. When this has all set hard, fill up the centre with whipped cream or a macedoine of any kind of fruit or with whipped jelly and whipped cream alternately. Another fancy cake is made by stamping out rounds or hexagons of Genoese paste or Swiss roll, spreading all but one with a thick layer of any kind of icing, or with sieved jam and cream as you please ; then put one slice on the other, using the uncovered one for the top. Press them tightly together and let the cake stand till set, when you ice it all over, and garnish to taste with green fruits, bonbons, crystallised flowers, &c.