Page:Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats.djvu/63

 ALMOND CAKE.

Take two ounces of shelled bitter almonds, or peach-kernels. Scald them in hot water, and as you peel them, throw them into a bowl of cold water, then wipe them dry, and pound them one by one in a mortar, till they are quite fine and smooth.

Break ten eggs, putting the yolks in one pan and the whites in another. Beat them separately as light as possible, the whites first, and then the yolks.

Add the sugar, gradually, to the yolks, beating it in very hard, then by degrees beat in the almonds, and then add the rose-water. Stir half the whites of the eggs into the yolks and sugar, divide the flour into two equal parts, and stir in one half slowly and lightly, till it bubbles on the top, then the other half of the white of egg, and then the remainder of the flour very lightly.

Butter a large square tin pan, or one made of paste-board which will be better. Put in the mixture, and set immediately in a quick oven which must be rather hotter at the bottom than at the top. Bake it according to the thickness. If you allow the oven to get slack, the cake will be spoiled. Make an icing with the whites of three eggs, twenty-four tea-spoonfuls of loaf sugar, and eight drops of essence of lemon.

When the cake is cool, mark it in small squares with a knife. Cover it with icing and ornament it while wet, with nonpareils dropped on in borders, round each square of the cake. When the icing is dry, cut the cake in squares, cutting through