Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

in too much pearl-ash, lest it give the cake an unpleasant taste. Stir the whole very hard; put it into a buttered tin pan, (or into little tins,) and bake it in a brisk oven. Wrapped in a thick cloth, this cake will keep soft for a week. CIDER CAKE. Pick, wash, and dry a pound of currants, and sprinkle them well with flour; and prepare two nutmegs, and a large table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Sift half a pound and two ounces of flour. Stir together till very light, six ounces of fresh butter, and half a pound of powdered white sugar; and add gradually the spice, with two wine glasses of brandy, (or one of brandy and one of white wine.) Beat four eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture alternately with the flour. Add by degrees half a pint of brisk cider; and then stir in the currants, a few at a time. Lastly, a small tea-spoonful of pearl-ash or sal-aratus dissolved in a little warm water. Having stirred the whole very hard, put it into a buttered tin pan, and let it stand before the fire half an hour previous to baking. Bake it in a brisk oven an hour or more according to its thickness. Or you may bake it as little cakes, putting it into small tins; in which case use but half a pound of flour in raising the batter. ELECTION CAKE. Make a sponge (as it is called) in the following manner:--Sift into a pan two pounds and a half of flour; and into a deep plate another pound. Take a second pan, and stir a large table-spoonful of the best West India molasses into five jills or two tumblers and a half of strong fresh yeast; adding a Jill of water, warm, but not hot. Then stir gradually into the yeast, &c. the pound of flour that you have sifted separately. Cover it, and let it set by the fire three hours to rise. While it is rising, prepare the other ingredients, by stirring in a deep pan two pounds