Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/1608

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Ingredients.—½ a lb. flour, ½ a lb. of ground rice, ½ a lb. of raisins (stoned and cut into small pieces), ¼ of a lb. of currants, ¼ of a lb. of butter, 2 ozs. of sweet almonds, ¼ of a lb. of castor sugar, ½ a nutmeg grated, 1 pint of milk, 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder.

Method.—Stone and cut the raisins into small pieces; wash, pick and dry the currants; melt the butter to a cream, but without oiling it; blanch and chop the almonds, and grate the nutmeg. When all these ingredients are thus prepared, mix them well together; make the milk warm, stir in the baking-powder, and with this liquid make the whole into a paste. Butter 2 moulds, rather more than half fill them with the batter, and bake the cakes in a moderate oven from 1½ to 2 hours.

Time.—1½ to 2 hours. Average Cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for 2 cakes.

These may be made of any sweet paste, Genoese, pound or sponge cake, and allow of an endless variety of decoration, with different icings, crystallised fruits, candied peel, etc. The simplest way of making petits fours is to cut Genoese, pound, or sponge cakes, into pretty fanciful shapes, icing them with different coloured icings, garnishing them before the icing has set with crystallised fruit, cut in fine slices, angelica, almonds, preserved cherries, and similar fruits.

Average Cost, 2s. per lb.

Ingredients.—1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 4 eggs, 1 teacup of milk, 4 cups of flour, ½ a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, 1 teaspoonful of cream of tartar, rose-water, ground nutmeg or almond extract.

Method.—Sift the carbonate of soda and cream of tartar well with the flour on to a sheet of paper. Put the butter and sugar into a clean basin, and beat up to a light cream. Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, and when all are in, flavour the mixture with rose-water and ground nutmeg. Then add the flour, wet to cake-batter consistency with milk, turn into a papered, buttered hoop or shallow cake tin, and bake in a moderate oven.

Time.—40 minutes. Average Cost, 1s. Sufficient for 1 medium-sized cake.

Ingredients.—1 lb. of flour, 1½ teaspoonfuls of Berwick's baking-powder, ¼ of a lb. of good dripping, 1 teacupful of moist sugar, 3 eggs,