Sponge Cake. No. 2. (Mrs. Huthwaite.)
This is nice to eat with ices.
Lady Clark says: “The great secret of making light sponge cakes is, when beating the eggs, to add orange-flower water—the quantity to vary from a dessert- to a tablespoonful according to the size of your cake. It also makes beating the eggs easier.”
Or use lemon juice instead of orange flower water.
Weigh 5 eggs in their shells, and put ready the same weight of sugar; but of flour take the weight of three eggs only.
Keep these three ingredients separate.
Break the 5 eggs into a basin, and as you beat them make them a little warm over a pan of hot water. Beat the eggs thoroughly first by themselves, then add the sugar and a table-spoonful of lemon-juice or orange-flower water, and beat all together another ¼ of an hour. Then add the grated rind of a lemon, and lastly, add the flour very gently, as for a soufflé.
Mix lightly together, and pour into an ornamental mould and bake in a slow oven.
N.B. The mould must first be well buttered, and sprinkled with 1 spoonful of flour and 2 spoonfuls powdered sugar, thoroughly mixed together before using them. For this clarify the butter, pressing all the milk out of it, and first grease the mould with the butter, then add the sugared flour.
“Almond Sponge Cake,” same mixture as above, has almonds chopped, pounded with a little orange-flower or rose water to prevent their oiling, passed through a sieve, and added just at the last.