This section is from the book "Progressive Cookery", by E. M. Hinckley. Also available from Amazon: Progressive Cookery.
One-quarter pound of butter, wash free from salt, beat to a cream, and add one-quarter pound of powdered sugar, yolks of three eggs, one cup of sliced almonds, five or six ounces of flour. The paste should be like soft biscuit dough. Dip the hand into powdered sugar, break off pieces of dough, and roll into balls the size of hickory nuts. Bake in quick oven. Stick two cakes together with any preferred frosting.
Bake any light cake in shallow pans as for cream or jelly cake. When ready to serve (not before), cover one cake with sliced bananas, sprinkle with powdered sugar and orange juice. Put on the other cake and cover in the same manner.
Add nuts to any of the cake recipes given except sponge. Chop any kind of nuts liked, mix them into the cake, putting whole ones over the frosting, or mix chopped nuts into frosting and put between layers. Ice the top with boiled icing.
One cup of molasses, one cup of sour milk, one tablespoon of ginger, one even teaspoon of soda, one-half cup of butter, flour enough to roll out. Put one-half of the soda in molasses and one-half in the milk; add to the molasses ginger and butter melted, not hot, beat well and add the milk, then add flour, and roll out one-quarter of an inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter. Bake.
Any of the preceding while cakes, baked in layers, may be used for banana, orange, lemon or pineapple cake, frosting and ornamenting with the same. Bananas should be sliced and sprinkled with sugar a short time before using. Spread the layer with frosting, then a layer of bananas, sliced; let stand awhile to harden, cover with a layer of frosting; let it harden again, and put on the other layer of cake. Frost and ornament with bananas.
Cut four lemons or oranges into thin slices, put them in a china or earthen bowl, cover with two quarts of cold water and soak over night. In the morning lift them carefully from the water, cover them with one-half pound of sugar and one-half pint of water, cook very slowly for three hours, then drain the slices, put them on a meat platter, dust with granulated sugar and stand aside to cool. This can be done a day or two before you wish to use them.
One pint of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, one egg, two-thirds of a cup of milk, one-third of a cup of butter, one-half a teaspoon of salt. Add the baking powder and salt to the flour. Beat the egg and add the milk to it. Make a hole in the flour and stir in the milk and egg. Melt the butter and stir into the dough. Spread into a round pan and bake. Remove from the oven, tear open, spread lightly with butter, pile sweetened strawberries over the top and garnish with whipped cream, or make a soft dough as directed for biscuit, and prepare as above.
One pint of flour, one-half teaspoon of salt, two teaspoons of baking powder, one-quarter cup of butter, one egg, one scant cup of milk, four sour apples, two tablespoons of sugar. Mix the dry ingredients in the order given, rub in the butter, beat the egg and mix it with the milk and stir into the dry mixture. The dough should be soft enough to spread half an inch thick on a shallow baking pan. Core, pare and cut four or five apples into eighths; lay them in parallel rows on top of the dough, the sharp edge down, and press enough to make the edge penetrate slightly. Sprinkle the sugar on the apple. Bake in a hot oven twenty or thirty minutes. To he eaten hot with butter as a tea cake, or with lemon sauce as a padding.
Make the same as apple cake, substituting one pint of huckleberries sprinkled with flour to prevent their falling to the bottom.
Use the same recipe, omitting fruit.
 
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