Mix in a pan half a pint of arrow-root, and half a pint of sifted wheat flour. Cut up a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, and rub it into the pan of flour, crumbling the bits of butter so small as to be scarcely visible. Mix a quarter of a pound of powdered white sugar, and wet it with a beaten egg. Add gradually a very little cream, just enough to make it into a stiff dough. Flavor it with the grated yellow rind and juice of a lemon, and half a nutmeg grated. Roll out the dough into thin sheets, and cut it out into biscuits with the edge of a tumbler. Prick every biscuit all over with a fork. Lay them in square pans slightly floured, and bake them immediately. They will be improved by adding (at the last of the mixture) a table-spoonful of the best rose-water. If rose-water is put into cakes early in the mixing, much of its strength will evaporate before baking. It should always be deferred to the last. These are very nice tea biscuits.
ONTARIO CAKE.—
Take a pint and a half (or three large breakfast cups,) of sifted flour, and the same quantity of powdered white sugar, and half a pint of milk; a quarter of a pint or half a cup of the best fresh butter, and the grated yellow rind and juice of a large lemon. Have ready four well-beaten eggs, and two table-spoonfuls of strong fresh yeast.
Cut up the butter into the pan of flour. Add the milk and sugar gradually, and then the beaten egg, and then the lemon; next the yeast. Stir the whole very well, and set it to rise in a buttered pan. Place it near the fire, and cover it with a clean flannel or a double cloth. When it has risen and is quite light, and is cracked all over the surface, transfer it to a square baking pan, put it immediately into the oven, and bake it well. When cool, either ice it or sift white sugar over it, and cut it into squares. Or, you may bake it in a round loaf, or in small round cakes.
NEW-YEAR'S CAKE.—
Stir together a pound of nice fresh butter, and a pound of powdered white sugar, till they become a light thick cream. Then stir in, gradually, three pounds of sifted flour. Add, by degrees, a tea-spoonful of soda dissolved in a small tea-cup of milk, and then a half salt-spoonful of tartaric acid, melted in a large table-spoonful of warm water. Then mix in, gradually, three table-spoonfuls of fine carraway seeds. Roll out the dough into sheets half an inch thick, and cut it with a jagging iron into oval or oblong cakes, pricked with a fork. Bake them immediately in shallow iron pans, slightly greased with fresh butter. The bakers in New York ornament these cakes, with devices or pictures raised by a wooden stamp. They are good plain cakes for children.