Practical household cookery

Note, — The mm or brandy may be omitted, and the baba served with a sauce composed of apricot jam warmed up in a stewpan with half a pint of syrup and a gill of rum, and poured over the baba. 802. GENOESE CAKE. Ingredients : Half a pound each of flour, pounded sugar, and butter, four eggs, half a gill of brandy, and a good pinch of salt. Mix the flour, sugar, eggs, brandy, and salt well together in a basin with a wooden spoon; then add the butter (merely melted by the side of the fire) ; work this well with the paste ; pour it afterwards on a baking-sheet, previously spread with butter, to the thickness of about an eighth of an inch, and bake in a moderately-heated oven to a light colour ; when done, turn it on a sheet of paper, and cut or stamp it out either in circular, oblong, oval, angular, leaflike, or any other fancy shapes; these should then be decorated with white of egg and sugar prepared as for meringues (No. 867), and ornamented with currants, &a 803. GINGER CAKE. Ingredients : One pound of flour, twelve ounces each of fresh butter and pounded sugar, two ounces of ground Jamaica ginger, and eight yolks of eggs. Work the whole of the above-named ingredients into a paste on the slab, then gather this into a compact mass and separate into four parts, roll these to the thickness of the sixth of an inch, and with a tin cutter stamp out as many cakes as the paste will produce; place them on a slightly buttered baking-sheet, pass a paste-brush over when they are about half done, shake some sugar over, and set them back in the oven to finish baking of a very light colour. 804. SPANISH CAKE. Ingredients required : Half a pint of water, a quarter of a pound of butter, two ounces of pounded sugar, five ounces of flour, three eggs, a few drops of orange essence, two ounces of chopped almonds, and a pinch of salt Put the water, butter, salt, and sugar into a stewpan on the fire, and as soon as these begin to boil withdraw the stewpan; add the flour, stir the whole well together with a wooden spoon for about three minutes, when the paste should be of a soft and compact appearance, then add the essence and one egg; mix these well with the paste, then mix in the other two eggs, and if the paste should be stiif, add another egg^ or the yolk only may be added ; this paste, when properly made, should be laid out on a bakingsheet in small round balls the size of a pigeon's egg^ and egged over with a paste-brush, then the chopped almonds must be mixed with a tablespoonful of pounded sugar and a very small quantity of white of egg, and strewn over the balls with a little sifted sugar shaken over, and baked of a very light colour, then served either plain or garnished with cream or any kind of preserve. 805. MADELEINES. These are made with the same kind of paste as for Genoese cakes, to which currants, dried cherries, candied peel| or angelica may be added When the paste is ready, pour it into a sufficient number of small fluted or plain madeleine moulds previously buttered inside, then place them on a baking-sheet, and bake in an oven of moderate heat. When properly baked turn out of the moulds, and let them get cold before serving. 806. RICE CAKE. Put one pound of pounded sugar in a whipping-bowl with sixteen eggs; whip both together over a very slow fire for fifteen minutes ; then add half a pound of ground rice, three-quarters of a pound of fresh butter slightly melted in half a gill of Maraschino. Mix the whole lightly together; then butter and flour a cylinder mould three inches high, put the paste in It, and bake it in a moderate oven. When done, turn the cake out of the mould, glaze it by pouring over a coating of apricot jam reduced with syrup, and sprinkle over the hot jam an ounce of chopped almonds, and let the cake cool before serving.