The household gas cookery book

Sardinian Cake.— Ingredients : ½ lb. flour, ½ lb. butter, 1 lb. sugar, 3 eggs, 3 ozs. currants, 3 ozs. sultanas, 1 teaspoonful of baking powder. Pass the flour through a wire sieve, and then add the currants and sultanas well cleaned and picked; mix the baking powder with the castor sugar, and having mixed all the dry ingredients together in a basin ; add the eggs well beaten, and lastly, the butter, which should be melted and poured in. Bake for one hour in a cake tin lined with buttered paper. Shrewsbury Cakes. — Ingredients : 3 ozs. butter, 3 ozs. castor sugar, 6 ozs. flour, 1 lemon, 1 egg. Cream the butter and sugar well, then beat in the egg, add the flour and grated lemon rind, and about six drops of lemon juice. Knead it and roll out thinly, cut into small rounds, and bake ten minutes a pale lemon colour in a slow oven. Coffee Icing. — Ingredients : ½ lb. butter, ½ lb. icing sugar, essence of coffee. Cream the butter and sugar together smoothly, and add about one dessertspoonful of strong coffee essence gradually. This icing is used for sponge cake mix¬ tures. When the cake is iced, keep it in a cool place until wanted. Cake Icing.— Ingredients : ½ lb. icing sugar, 1 white of egg, juice of half a lemon. Rub the icing sugar through a hair sieve; put the white of egg and lemon juice in a clean basin, work well with a wooden spoon, adding the sugar gradually till all is in and the mixture smooth. Spread a layer over the cake, dipping the knife in cold water, and orna¬ ment the edges with the same icing through a forcer. Almond Icing. — Ingredients: ½ lb. ground almonds, 6 ozs. icing sugar, the white of 1 egg, 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice, 1 teaspoonful of orange flower water. Place the white of egg and lemon juice in a basin, work it well, and gradually add the other ingredients till it forms a stiff paste. Spread on the top of cake, and dry in a cool oven. Almond Paste Icing. — Ingredients : ½ lb. ground almonds, 3 ozs. icing sugar, 1 white of egg, 1 large tablespoonful of orange flower water. Boil the sugar and orange flower water for six or seven minutes, then add the almonds. Take it off the gas and mix in the white of egg. Turn out on to an oiled plate and let it cool. Then roll out or form into fancy shapes. t BREAD. Home-Made Bread. — A very large number of persons, especially those who have been brought up in the country, would be very glad indeed if they could easily and successfully make and bake their own bread, because, apart from having the decided advantage of knowing exactly what ingredients are used in the making — a matter of truly vital importance in the case of bread — those who are their own bakers save no little money, and obtain bread of the very highest quality and most delicious flavour. Few, however, realise that bread-making is more easily accomplished with a gas stove than in country houses having special bread ovens, but that is the fact; because there is no better oven for bread baking than the oven of a gas cooker. Bread baking in the ordinary coal range is rarely, if ever, a success. In a gas cooker, it should never be a failure — it being only a question, in this as in most other things, of “ knowing how.”