Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

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 a few drops of essence of 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 three quarters of a pound of flour, [Footnote: Sponge cake may be made with rice flour.] 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 a 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