Bouchées des Dames, a very ornamental and delicious little French cake, is sufficiently novel to deserve a place here, I think. Make any nice drop cake batter (either sponge, or sponge with a little butter in it I prefer); drop one on buttered paper and bake; if it runs, beat in a little more flour and sugar, but not much, or your cakes will be brittle; they should be the size, when done, of a fifty-cent piece, and I find half a teaspoonful of batter dropped generally makes them about right. Have a tin cutter or tin box lid, if you have no cutter so small, about the size, and with it trim each cake when baked; then take half the number and spread some with a very thin layer of red currant jelly, others with peach or raspberry; then on each so spread put a cake that is unspread, thus making a tiny sandwich or jelly cake. If you have different sorts of jelly, put each separate, as you must adapt the flavor of your icing to the jelly. For red currant, ice with chocolate icing. Recipes for icing are so general that I refer you to your cookery book. Those with peach may have white icing, flavored with almond, or with rum, beating in a little more sugar if the flavoring dilutes your icing too much. Almond flavoring goes well with raspberry. Cakes with raspberry jelly or jam should be iced pink, coloring the icing with prepared cochineal or cranberry juice. Thus you have your cakes brown, pink, and white, which look very pretty mixed.
The process of icing is difficult to do after they are put together, but they are much handsomer this way, and keep longer. You require, to accomplish it, a good quantity of each kind of icing, and a number of little wooden skewers; stick one into each cake and dip it in the icing, let it run off, then stand the other end of the skewer in a box of sand or granulated sugar. The easiest way is to ice each half cake before putting in the jelly; when the icing is hard spread with jelly, and put together.
Curaçoa may be successfully imitated by pouring over eight ounces of the thinly pared rind of very ripe oranges a pint of boiling water, cover, and let it cool; then add two quarts of brandy, or strong French spirit, cover closely, and let it stand fourteen days, shaking it every day. Make a clarified syrup of two pounds of sugar into one pint of water, well boiled; strain the brandy into it, leaving it covered close another day. Rub up in a mortar one drachm of potash, with a teaspoonful of the liqueurs; when well blended, put this into the liqueur, and in the same way pound and add a drachm of alum, shake well, and in an hour or two filter through thin muslin. Ready for use in a week or two.
Maraschino.—Bruise slightly a dozen cherry kernels, put them in a deep jar with the outer rind of three oranges and two lemons, cover with two quarts of gin, then add syrup and leave it a fortnight, as for curaçoa. Stir syrup and spirit together, leave it another day, run it through a jelly bag, and bottle. Ready to use in ten days.
Noyeau.—Blanch and pound two pounds of bitter almonds, or four of peach kernels; put to them a gallon of spirit or brandy, two pounds of white sugar candy—or sugar will do—a grated nutmeg, and a pod of vanilla; leave it three weeks covered close, then filter and bottle; but do not use it for three months. To be used with caution.
CHAPTER XIII.
french candy at home.
This chapter I shall have to make one of recipes chiefly, for it treats of a branch of cooking not usually found in cookery books, or at least there is seldom anything on the art of confectionery beyond molasses or cream taffy and nougat. These, therefore, I shall not touch upon, but rather show you how to make the expensive French candies.