CUP CAKE.

One cup of butter; two cups of sugar; four eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately; one cup of milk; three and a half cups of flour; a grated nutmeg, or a teaspoonful of vanilla or lemon; and a heaping teaspoonful of baking powder.

Cream the butter; add the sugar, and then the yolks; then the milk and the whites, and last the flour, in which the baking powder has been sifted.  Bake half an hour, either in two brick loaves or one large one.  It is nice, also, baked in little tins.  Half may be flavored with essence, and the other half with a teaspoonful of mixed spice,—­half cinnamon, and the rest mace and allspice.  By using a heaping tablespoonful of yellow ginger, this becomes a delicious sugar gingerbread, or, with mixed spices and ginger, a spice gingerbread.

This cake with the variations upon it makes up page after page in the large cook-books.  Use but half a cup of butter, and you have a plain Cup Cake.  Add a cup of currants and one of chopped raisins, and it is plain Fruit Cake, needing to bake one hour.  Bake on Washington-pie tins, and you have the foundation for Cream and Jelly Cakes.  A little experience, and then invention, will show you how varied are the combinations, and how one page in your cook-book can do duty for twenty.

POUND CAKE.

One pound of sugar; one pound of flour; three-quarters of a pound of butter; nine eggs; one teaspoonful of baking powder, and one of lemon extract; one nutmeg grated.

Cream the butter, and add half the flour, sifting the baking powder with the other half.  Beat the yolks to a creamy foam, and add; and then the sugar, beating hard.  Have the whites a stiff froth, and stir in, adding flavoring and remainder of flour.  Bake in one large loaf for one hour, letting the oven be moderate.  Frost, if liked.

FRUIT CAKE.

One pound of butter; one pound of sugar; one pound and a quarter of sifted flour; ten eggs; two nutmegs grated; a tablespoonful each of ground cloves, cinnamon, and allspice; a teaspoonful of soda; a cup of brandy or wine, and one of dark molasses; one pound of citron; two pounds of stoned and chopped raisins, and two of currants washed and dried.

Dredge the prepared fruit with enough of the flour to coat it thoroughly.  To have the cake very dark and rich looking, brown the flour a little, taking great care not to scorch it.  Cream the butter, and add the sugar, in which the spices have been mixed; then the beaten yolks of eggs; then the whites beaten to a stiff froth, and the flour.  Dissolve the soda in a very little warm water, and add.  Now stir in the fruit.  Have either one large, round pan, or two smaller ones.  Put at least three thicknesses of buttered letter-paper on the sides and bottom; turn in the mixture, and bake for three hours in a moderate oven.  Cover with thick paper if there is the least danger of scorching.  This will keep, if well frosted, for two years.