Roman Punch—Is made of strong lemonade or orangeade, adding to every quart a pint of brandy or rum. Then freeze it, and serve in saucers or a large glass bowl. Put it into a porcelain kettle, and boil and skim it till the scum ceases to rise. When cold, bottle it, seal the corks and keep it in a cool place.
Syrup of strawberries, raspberries, currants and blackberries, is made in a similar manner.
FLOATING ISLAND.—
For one common-sized floating island have a round thick jelly cake, lady cake, or almond sponge cake, that will weigh a pound and a half, or two pounds. Slice it downwards, almost to the bottom, but do not take the slices apart. Stand up the cake in the centre of a glass bowl or a deep dish. Have ready a pint and a half of rich cream, make it very sweet with sugar, and color it a fine green with a tea-cupful of the juice of pounded spinach, boiled five minutes by itself; strained, and made very sweet. Or for coloring pink you may use currant jelly, or the juice of preserved strawberries. Whip to a stiff froth another pint and a half of sweetened cream, and flavor it with a large glass of mixed wine and brandy. Pour round the cake, as it stands in the dish or bowl, the colored unfrothed cream, and pile the whipped white cream all over the cake, highest on the top.
FINE CAKES.
PLUM CAKE.—
In making very fine plum cake first prepare the fruit and spice, and sift the flour (which must be the very best superfine,) into a large flat dish, and dry it before the fire. Use none but the very best fresh butter; if of inferior quality, the butter will taste through every thing, and spoil the cake. In fact, all the ingredients should be excellent, and liberally allowed. Take the best bloom or muscatel raisins, seeded and cut in half. Pick and wash the currants or plums through two waters, and dry them well. Powder the spice, and let it infuse over night in the wine and brandy. Cut the citron into slips, mix it with the raisins and currants, and dredge all the fruit very thickly, on both sides, with flour. This will prevent its sinking or clodding in the cake, while baking. Eggs should always be beaten till the frothing is over, and till they become thick and smooth, as thick as a good boiled custard, and quite smooth on the surface. If you can obtain hickory-rods as egg-beaters, there is nothing so good; but if you cannot get them, use the common egg-beaters, of thin fine wire. For stirring butter and sugar you should have a spaddle, which resembles a short mush-stick flattened at one end. Stir the butter and sugar in a deep earthen pan, and continue till it is light, thick, and creamy. Beat eggs always in a broad shallow earthen pan, and with a short quick stroke, keeping your right elbow close to your side, and moving only your wrist. In this way you may beat for an hour without fatigue. But to stir butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making. Have this done by a man servant. His strength will accomplish it in a short time—also, let him give the final stirring to the cake. If the ingredients are prepared as far as practicable on the preceding day, the cake may be in the oven by ten or eleven o'clock in the forenoon.
For a large plum cake allow one pound, (or a quart) of sifted flour; one pound of fresh butter cut up in a pound of powdered loaf sugar, in a deep pan; twelve eggs; two pounds of bloom raisins; two pounds of Zante currants; half a pound of citron, either cut into slips or chopped small; a table-spoonful of powdered mace and cinnamon, mixed; two grated nutmegs; a large wine-glass of madeira (or more), a wine-glass of French brandy, mixed together, and the spice steeped in it.