Sift three quarters of a pound of flour. Stir to a cream a pound of butter and a pound of powdered white sugar, and mix in half a tea-cup of rose water, and a grated nutmeg, with a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Beat ten eggs very light, and add them gradually to the mixture, alternately with the flour; stirring the whole very hard. Put your griddle into the oven of a stove; and when it is quite hot, grease it with fresh butter tied in a clean rag, and set on it a tin cake-ring, (about the size of a large dinner plate,) greased also. Dip out two large table-spoonfuls and a half of the cake batter; put it within the tin ring, and bake it about five minutes (or a little longer) without turning it. When it is done, take it carefully off; place it on a large dish to cool; wipe the griddle, grease it afresh, and put on another cake. Proceed thus till all the batter is baked. When the cakes are cool, spread every one thickly over with grape jelly, peach marmalade, or any other sweetmeat that is smooth and thick; currant jelly will be found too thin, and is liable to run off. Lay the cakes smoothly one on another, (each having a layer of jelly or marmalade between,) and either grate loaf-sugar over the top one, or ice it smoothly; marking the icing with cross lines of coloured sugar-sand, all the lines meeting at the centre so as to divide the cake, when cut, into triangular or wedge-shaped slices. If you ice it, add the juice of a lemon to the icing.
Jelly cake should be eaten fresh. It is best the day it is baked.
You may bake small jelly cakes in muffin rings.
SPONGE CAKE.—
Sift half a pound of flour,[I] and powder a pound of the best loaf-sugar. Grate the yellow rind and squeeze into a saucer the juice of three lemons. Beat twelve eggs; and when they are as light as possible, beat into them gradually and very hard the sugar, adding the lemon, and beating the whole for a long time. Then by degrees, stir in the flour slowly and lightly; for if the flour is stirred hard and fast into sponge cake, it will make it porous and tough. Have ready buttered, a sufficient number of little square tins, (the thinner they are the better,) half fill them with the mixture; grate loaf-sugar over the top of each; put them immediately into a quick oven, and bake them about ten minutes; taking out one to try when you think they are done. Spread them on an inverted sieve to cool. When baked in small square cakes, they are generally called Naples biscuits.
If you are willing to take the trouble, they will bake much nicer in little square paper cases, which you must make of thick letter paper, turning up the sides all round, and pasting together or sewing up the corners.
If you bake the mixture in one large cake, (which is not advisable unless you have had much practice in baking,) put it into a buttered tin pan or mould, and set it directly into a hot Dutch oven, as it will fall and become heavy if allowed to stand. Keep plenty of live coals on the top, and under the bottom till the cake has risen very high, and is of a fine colour; then diminish the fire, and keep it moderate till the cake is done. It will take about an hour. When cool, ice it; adding a little lemon juice or extract of roses to the icing. Sponge cake is best the day it is baked.
Diet Bread is a foolish name for Sponge Cake.
ALMOND CAKE.—
Blanch, and pound in a mortar four ounces of shelled sweet almonds and two ounces of shelled bitter ones; adding, as you proceed, sufficient rose-water to make them light and white. Sift half a pound of flour, and powder a pound of loaf-sugar. Beat thirteen eggs; and when they are as light as possible, stir into them alternately the almonds, sugar, and flour; adding a grated nutmeg. Butter a large square pan; put in the mixture, and bake it in a brisk oven about half an hour, less or more, according to its thickness. When cool, ice it. It is best when eaten fresh.