Sift a pint of fine yellow Indian meal, and half a pint of wheat flour, and mix them well together. Prepare a nutmeg beaten, and mixed with a table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Stir together till very light, half a pound of powdered white sugar; and half a pound of fresh butter; adding the spice, with a glass of white wine, and a glass of brandy. Having beaten eight eggs as light as possible, stir them into the butter and sugar, a little at a time in turn with the meal. Give the whole a hard stirring at the last; put it into a well-buttered tin pan, and bake it about an hour and a half.
This cake (like every thing else in which Indian meal is an ingredient) should be eaten quite fresh; it is then very nice. When stale, (even a day old,) it becomes dry and rough as if made with saw-dust.
Sift fourteen ounces of the finest flour, being two ounces less than a pound. Cakes baked in little tins, should have a smaller proportion of flour than those that are done in large loaves. Prepare a table-spoonful of beaten cinnamon, a tea-spoonful of mace, and two beaten nutmegs; and mix them all together when powdered. Mix in a tumbler, half a glass of white wine, half a glass of brandy, and half a glass of rose water. Powder a pound of loaf-sugar, and sift it into a deep pan; cut up in it a pound of fresh butter; warm them by the fire, and stir them to a cream. Add gradually the spice and the liquor. Beat ten eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture in turn with the flour. Stir in twelve drops of essence of lemon, and beat the whole very hard. Butter some little tins; half fill them with the mixture; set them into a brisk oven, and cake them about a quarter of an hour. When done, they will shrink from the sides of the tins. After you turn them out, spread them on an inverted sieve to cool. If you have occasion to fill your tins a second time, scrape and wipe them well before they are used again.
Make an icing flavoured with oil of lemon, or with extract of roses; and spread two coats of it on the queen cakes. Set them to dry in a warm place, but not near enough the fire to discolour the icing and cause it to crack.
Queen cakes are best the day they are baked.
Make them in the above manner, with the addition of a pound of currants, (picked, washed, dried, and floured,) and the juice and grated peel of two large lemons, stirred in gradually at the last. Instead of currants, you may put in sultana or seedless raisins, cut in half and floured.
You may make a fruit pound cake in this manner.