Almond cake recipe
- Two ounces of blanched bitter almonds, pounded very fine.
- Seven ounces of flour, sifted and dried.
- Ten eggs.
- One pound of loaf sugar, powdered and sifted.
- Two table-spoonfuls of rose-water
Take two ounces of shelled bitter almonds or peachkernels. Scald them in hot water, and as you peel them,
throw them into a bowl of cold water, then wipe them dry,
and pound them one by one in a mortar, till they are quite
fine and smooth.
Break ten eggs, putting the yolks in one pan and the
whites in another. Beat them separately as light as possible,
the whites first, and then the yolks.
Add the sugar, gradually, to the yolks, beating it in very
hard.
Then by degrees, Beat in the almonds, and then add the
rose-water.
Stir-half the whites of the eggs into the yolks and sugar.
Divide the flour into two equal parts, and stir in one half,
slowly and lightly, till it bubbles on the top. Then the other
half of the white of egg, and then the remainder of the flour
very lightly.
Butter a large square tin pan, or one made of paste-board
which will be better. Put in the mixture, and set immediately
in a quick oven, which must be rather hotter at the bottom
than at the top. Bake it according to the thickness. If you
allow the oven to get slack, the cake will be spoiled.
Make an icing with the whites of three eggs, twenty-four
tea-spoonfuls of loaf-sugar, and eight drops of essence of
lemon.
When the cake is cool, mark it in small squares with a
knife. Cover it with icing, and ornament it while wet, with
nonpareils dropped on in borders, round each square of the
cake. When the icing is dry, cut the cake in squares, cutting
through the icing very carefully with a penknife. Or you may
cat it in squares first, and then ice and ornament each
square separately.
