The American Pictorial Home Book
or Housekeeper's Encyclopedia - online book

A reference manual of household management in Victorian times.

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SWEET CAKES.                                    275
SWEET CAKES.
Cream Cake.—One cup of sugar, 1 1-2 cups of flour, 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons of cold water and 1 teaspoon of yeast powder. Cream for the same, 1 pint of milk, 2 large spoons of corn starch and 1 of sugar. Flavor with extract of vanilla.
Golden Gate Cakes.—Rub 1-2 lb. of butter, 1 lb. of pounded loaf sugar, 1 oz. caraway seeds, 4 spoonfuls each of brandy and sack, into 1 lb. of the finest flour, with enough rose water to form a paste; then make it up into little thin cakes; wash them over with rose water, scrape off some loaf sugar and bake on a tin or buttered paper.
Fruit Washington Cake.—One lb. of butter, 1 lb. of sugar, 1 lb. of flour, 8 or 10 eggs, 3 lbs. of currants, 4 lbs. of raisins, 1 lb. of citron, 1 teacup molasses, 1 gill brandy, 1 oz. cinnamon, 1 oz. mare or nutmeg, 1 oz. cloves and 1 dessert spoonful soda put in to dry. Bake from 3 to 4 hours.
Sponge Cake.—Ten eggs, 1 pint of sugar, 1 pint of flour, beat the eggs and the sugar together until very light. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth. Stir all gently together. Bake in a deep tin pan or cake mould in a moderately hot oven.
Excellent Sponge Cake.—Separate the whites from the yolks of 12 eggs, beat them separately for 1-2 to 3-4 of an hour, by which time the whites will become a strong froth. Have ready 1 1-4 lbs. of fine loaf sugar and 3-4 of a lb. of fine flour both sifted; mix all together, but do not beat the cake any more. Well butter the tins, half-fill and bake in a quick oven 1 hour.
Tri-Color Cake.—One coffee cup white sugar, 1 tablespoonful butler, the whites of 4 eggs, 2-3 of a cup of sweet milk, 1 cup flour, and 1 1-2 teaspoonfuls yeast powder. Make another cake the same with the yolks, and another with red candy instead of sugar. Bake in bars. Put in first the pink cake, then the white and then the yellow.
Variegated Marble Cake.—Make the cake as directed above; take the juice of spinach, mix it with some of the white portion of the cake, a little cochineal and a little tameric with the juice of the spinach and mix all with some of the light portion of the cake. Pour it in both light and dark layers in little veins across and every way. The spinach juice will form a delicate green, and mixed with the tameric another shade of green, and the cochineal a beautiful car­mine color, and a yellow may also be added by treating the well beaten yolk of an egg in the same way. The slices will be beautiful.
Royal Fruit Cake.—Take i quart of flour, 6 eggs, and i pint