The next day Mrs. Welles and Molly were in the kitchen bright and early. She had ordered the day before all she would need for dinner, and did not require to leave the house. They had planned to make macaroons and fancy cakes. For the macaroons, half a pound of almond paste and three quarters of a pound of powdered sugar were weighed carefully, then three large eggs were separated and beaten. Mrs. Welles put the almond paste in the chopping-bowl, and chopped it into fine crumbs (which saves a good deal of mashing with a fork), while Molly beat eggs and added the sugar, making icing, in fact; then the crumbled almond paste was put to it and mashed with the back of a fork into the icing, till it was all smooth and perfectly blended; some sheets of thin paper were rubbed with suet and cut to fit the dripping-pan, on which they were to be baked; half a tea-spoonful was dropped on a bit of paper, and put in to try the oven, and meanwhile a dozen or so of almonds were blanched and each split into six.
The macaroon, when looked at, had flattened down, as it should do, but just a shade more than was just right, and a tea-spoonful more powdered sugar was stirred in. Then the mixture was taken up on the end of a tea-spoon, and bits as large as small nutmegs were dropped on the greased paper,—about two inches apart,—and then on each of them three or four bits of almond were put irregularly. The oven was moderate,—not too cool, nor yet hot enough to color them till they had been in it ten minutes.
“While you bake those, I’ll make some Genoese pastry,” said Mrs. Welles.
“That is a novelty to me; at least, I have heard of it, but not tried it. If I remember rightly you told me you had once tried it, but found it very unsatisfactory.”
“Yes, it was too sticky while warm to cut, and too brittle when cold, but I have now another recipe which I want to try, and if it is good it will be just the thing for your fancy cakes. This is the recipe:
“Genoese pastry.—Four ounces of flour, three of butter, four of almond paste, and five eggs. Melt the butter in a bowl, taking care it does not get very hot. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the sugar to them, stand the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water, and whip eggs and sugar for twenty minutes, but they must not get very hot; take the bowl from the water, add the almond paste, crumbled fine, to it, beat till smooth, then add the butter, and last of all slip in the flour, stirring lightly all the time; bake, in a round jelly-cake-pan lined with buttered paper very neatly fitted and standing an inch above the edge, in a rather quick oven for half an hour. When it is done, no mark should remain on it when pressed with the finger.”
“Has any one you know tried the recipe?”
“Oh, yes; and I have eaten the cake, and found it excellent.”
Molly now opened the oven to look at the macaroons, and found they could be put for one minute at the top, to take a deeper tint, and another pan which she had ready could be put in the bottom of the oven.
Then she prepared one more sheet, after taking the first from the oven. These she left on the pan to cool a few minutes before touching them; then she lifted the paper from it, replaced it by a fresh one, and did not attempt to take the macaroons from the paper till they were nearly cold. She handled them after they were baked, and until cold, as if they were egg shells.