French dishes for American tables

ounce of currants, with three ounces of raisins, from which you have removed the seeds, and half an ounce of citron, cut in small pieces, and add them to your paste, also the rest of your paste, with the yeast. Fill a buttered mold a third of its height with your paste, and send to a moderate oven for about three quarters of an hour. Pass the point of a knife into the baba, and if sufficiently done it will come out dry. Then turn it out of your mold, pour over it two liqueur-glasses of rum, sprinkle a little sugar on top, and serve. Instead of putting the baba in a large mold, you may put it in several very small ones if preferred. 547. Eclairs. Put an ounce of butter in a saucepan on the fire, with about six tablespoonfuls of water. When beginning to boil, add about two and a half ounces of flour, stirring with a wooden spoon about five minutes, then remove from the fire, and add, one by one, four eggs, stirring rapidly, until each is well mixed. Then put your mixture in a cornucopia of stiff paper, with a hole in the point, through which press it on a pan, forming little shapes similar to lady fingers. Send them to a gentle oven for about twenty minutes, or until firm ; let them become cold, then make an incision in them, the length of each, through the middle, in which place some whipped cream, to which you have added sugar and a little essence of coffee. Then put in a copper saucepan, or one which is well enameled and thoroughly clean, half a pound of sugar, with a glass of water. After remaining on the fire a few moments, lift out a little of the sugar with a wooden spoon, and drop it in a cup of cold water. Take the sugar between the thumb and third finger, separate them, and, if you may draw the sugar out in a fine thread without breaking, you have reached the desired result. Put it in a bowl, and add a tablespoonful of the extract of coffee, stir until beginning to thicken, cover with it the top of each eclair, and, when cold, serve. 548. Chocolate Eclairs. Make a paste as for the foregoing, which form into eclairs, and bake as the above. Put in a saucepan two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of corn starch, two ounces of sugar, a glass of milk, a teaspoonful of vanilla, and stir all together on the fire. Just before beginning to boil, remove from the fire and let it become cold. Then fill the inside of your Eclairs with your cream. Melt an ounce of chocolate in a tablespoonful of water, boil half a pound of sugar as the foregoing, mix thoroughly with your chocolate, with which cover your eclairs. 549. Duchess Cakes with Peach Marmalade. Make a paste as for eclairs (Art. 547), of which take about half a tablespoonful at a time, and place on a pan in oval form, as for meringues, only smaller, and about three inches apart. Brush them with beaten egg, send them to a gentle oven, and, when they are done, make an incision in each one through the middle, and fill the inside with peach marmalade, or any other preferred. Then put in a copper saucepan, or one which is well enameled and thoroughly clean, half a pound of sugar, with a glass of water. After remaining on the fire a few moments,