Date Cake is another variety. Slice a stale Madeira cake horizontally, spread these slices thickly with date icing, put it back into shape, and cover it all with the date icing, garnishing this with roughly chopped and blanched almonds or pistachios. For the icing, first make a purée by cooking twenty to thirty dates in half a pint of claret (or any wine to taste) with 1oz. or so of sugar till of the consistency of cream, and sieve it. Now put into a saucepan ½lb. cane icing sugar and three to four tablespoonfuls of the date purée, and stir this all together till just warm and well blended, and use. Any fruit purée (and any cake) may be used in this way, adding a drop or two of colouring to the icing if necessary to bring up the colour. The Yule Log cake is also very pretty, and for anyone handy at “piping” is by no means difficult to manage. Procure a rather tall stale sponge cake, and with a column cutter stamp out the centre, leaving rather more than 1in. of cake all round. Now carve the outside to a rough likeness of a tree trunk or log, and with a rose pipe cover it all with chocolate or coffee Vienna icing, imitating as closely as you can the gnarled bark of an old tree. When nearly set dust it in parts with very finely minced pistachios so as to resemble moss. When this has all set hard, fill up the centre with whipped cream or a macedoine of any kind of fruit or with whipped jelly and whipped cream alternately. Another fancy cake is made by stamping out rounds or hexagons of Genoese paste or Swiss roll, spreading all but one with a thick layer of any kind of icing, or with sieved jam and cream as you please; then put one slice on the other, using the uncovered one for the top. Press them tightly together and let the cake stand till set, when you ice it all over, and garnish to taste with green fruits, bonbons, crystallised flowers, etc.