The home cook book

Boil together half a cup of water and a cup of sugar until it makes a heavy thread. Take from the fire and add little by little and with constant stirring the whites of two eggs. Beat till cool, stirring in a cup of chopped nuts, either walnuts, hickory nuts, or mixed nuts. FRUIT FILLING Follow the directions above, using candied fruits or chopped and seeded raisins instead of nuts. FILLING FOR ANY FLAVOR A soft filling to which may be added any flavor is made by following the directions for "Nut Filling," substituting a flavoring for the nuts. ANGEL CAKE Beat to a very stiff froth the whites of eleven eggs. To this add a tumbler of white sugar and about two teaspoons of vanilla to taste. Mix one scant even teaspoon of cream of tartar into one tumbler of flour. Sift it four times, the last time sift into the eggs and sugar and mix together. Put in a round pan with circular metal rising in the centre. The pan should not be greased. Bake in a moderate oven until a straw thrust in will come out clean — that is, twenty or twenty-five minutes. Bake a very light brown, and delicately. ANGEL FOOD Sift together four times a cup of flour (measure after sifting) and a teaspoon of cream of tartar. Beat the whites of eleven eggs to a stiff froth, and then beat in gradually a cup and a half of granulated sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. Next put in the flour which you have sifted with the cream of tartar and beat lightly. Bake slowly forty minutes in a pan lightly dredged with flour, or in an earthenware dish. The cake should bake gradually. DRIED APPLE CAKE Put to soak overnight a cup and a half of evaporated apples. Stew them soft in half a cup of molasses the next day, and set away to cool. Stir together half a cup of butter and one cup of sugar. Add two-thirds of a cup of sour milk, the stewed apples, two well-beaten eggs, a teaspoon each of cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and three cups of flour into which you have sifted a teaspoon of finely pulverized soda. Stir hard. Have at hand a cup of seeded raisins, two-thirds of a cup of currants, and some thin slices of shredded citron. Spread a layer of the cake batter in your cake tin, then put in a layer of your mixed raisins, currants, and citron. Next a layer of batter and then a layer of fruit, and so on till you cap the cake with a layer of batter. Bake carefully in a moderate oven. BAKER'S CAKE Cream together one cup of butter with two cups of granulated sugar. Add the yolks of six eggs, beating in one yolk at a time. Add little by little one cup of sweet milk, which you have warmed. Then put in three cups of sifted flour little at a time, stirring constantly until all is well mixed. Add the whites of the eggs which you have beaten to a stiff froth, folding them in gradually, and last of all three teaspoons of baking powder. Flavor with two teaspoons of vanilla, or the juice of one lemon. Bake in a quick oven, either as a loaf cake or in jelly cake tins. The secret of having the cake light is in the stirring. A BIRTHDAY CAKE