EXCELLENT SMALL CAKES

Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire, and put to it a pound and half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currants well washed and dryed in a cloth and set by the fire; When your flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, you must put in it a pound and half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three new-laid Eggs beat with it, one Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack.  When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through warm.  Then make them up in little Cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed.  Afterwards Ice them over with Sugar.  The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin:  of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.

MY LORD OF DENBIGH’S ALMOND MARCH-PANE

Blanch Nut-Kernels from the Husks in the best manner you can.  Then pun them with a due proportion of Sugar, and a little Orange-flower, or Rose-water.  When it is in a fitting uniform paste, make it into round Cakes, about the bigness of your hand, or a little larger, and about a finger thick; and lay every one upon a fine paper cut fit to it; which lay upon a table.  You must have a pan like a tourtiere, made to contain coals on the top, that is flat, with edges round about to hold in the coals, which set over the Cakes, with fire upon it.  Let this remain upon the Cakes, till you conceive, it hath dryed them sufficiently for once; which may be within a quarter of an hour; but you take it off two or three times in that time, to see you scorch not the outside, but only dry it a little.  Then remove it to others, that lye by them; and pull the Papers from the first, and turn them upon new Papers.  When the others are dryed enough, remove the pan back to the first, to dry their other side:  which being enough, remove it back to the second, that by this time are turned, and laid upon new Papers.  Repeat this turning the Cakes, and changing the Pan, till they are sufficiently dry:  which you must not do all at once, least you scorch them:  and though the outside be dry, the inside must be very moist and tender.  Then you must Ice them thus:  Make a thick pap with Orange flower or Rose-water, and purest white Sugar:  a little of the whites of Eggs, not above half a spoonful of that Oyl of Eggs, to a Porrenger full of thick Pap, beaten exceeding well with it, and a little juyce of Limons.  Lay this smooth upon the Cakes with a Knife, and smoothen it with a feather.  Then set the pan over them to dry them.  Which being if there be any unevenness, or cracks or discolouring, lay on a little more of that Mortar, and dry it as before.  Repeat this, till it be as clear, and smooth, and white, as you would have it.  Then turn the other sides, and do the like to them.  You must take care, not to scorch them:  for then they would look yellow or red, and they must be pure, white and smooth like Silver between polished and matte, or like a looking Glass.  This Coat preserves the substance of the Cakes within, the longer moist.  You may beat dissolved Amber, or Essence of Cinnamon, with them.