À la mode cookery

Take the weight of four eggs in castor sugar, the same quantity of butter and flour, and four penny sticks of chocolate. Mix all well together and beat four whites of eggs to snow ; place it in cake pastry pans or tins as in ' Chocolate Cake,' page 199. Put chocolate cream between each row and cover the top with chocolate-icing. Nougat Take half a pound of sugar, put it in a basin with a little water. When the sugar becomes soft, add half a pound of sweet almonds peeled and cut into strips ; stir without ceasing till the sugar becomes a good brown colour. Grease the moulds and place in the mixture, and put into the oven to dry. Orange Cake. No. i Beat one pound of butter to a cream with one pound of castor sugar ; add ten well-beaten eggs, one pound of flour, and one pint of orange wine. Bake in prepared tins in thin sheets, remove the brown crusts with a sharp knife, and cut each sheet into equal parts ; spread them with a layer of orange marmalade and place a layer of sliced oranges on the top, then place the other half on the top and glaze with orange-icing, and when the icing is set place in a design on the top some of the preserved orange slices. To make the orange-icing, take the juice of two lemons and two oranges, and mix with icing sugar till thick enough to spread over the cake. Orange Cakes Beat three eggs and five ounces of castor sugar to a cream, add six ounces of Vienna flour into which has been put a teaspoonful of baking-powder and the grated rind of one orange. Beat all well together and bake in dariole-moulds in a quick oven for a quarter of an hour. When cold, ice with the following icing : — Squeeze the juice from a large juicy orange, and mix it smoothly with a pound of icing sugar. Pour this all over the cakes and place in the oven, with the CAKES, ETC. 203 door open, just to harden. The centre of the cake, if made in a cake-tin, can be ornamented with slices of orange preserve in the middle, or if made in the smaller moulds a slice of the orange preserve can be cut into four pieces, and arranged with a sugar violet in the centre. Elysium Cakes, or Petits Gateaux a TElysee Take four ounces of flour, four ounces of butter, four ounces of castor sugar, two ounces of grated cocoa-nut, a quarter of the grated rind of a lemon, and two eggs. Cream the butter, beat in the sugar, then the eggs, well beaten ; next, the dried and sifted flour ; then cocoa-nut and lemon-peel. Have ready some little square moulds about an inch square, butter them and put in the mixture ; sprinkle the moulds thickly with very finely grated cocoa-nut before putting in the mixture ; bake them in a quickish oven. When cooked, decorate the tops with four balls of almond paste (see Plate XVIII.) and colour some red, some pink, some brown, some violet, and some pale green. Arrange them in three, and one on the top. Before placing these balls, the tops of the cake should be iced between the balls; some pistachio-nuts or strips of angelica cut into leaf shapes should be placed between the balls. Of course, the almond paste must be coloured before making into balls. Sometimes these balls are made of preserved cherries cut in half and covered over with coloured icings. (See Plate XVIII.) Smyrna Cake