Cream Tart

Make a fine puff-paste of equal quantities of fresh butter and sifted flour; mixing into the pan of flour a heaped table-spoonful of powdered sugar, and wetting it with a beaten egg. Rub one quarter of the butter into the pan of flour. Divide the remainder of butter into six, and roll it into the flour at six turns till it is all in. Have, ready grated, the yellow rind and the juice of a large lemon or orange mixed with a quarter of a pound of powdered loaf sugar; or a flavoring of a split-up vanilla bean; or a dozen bitter almonds broken up, and boiled in a very little milk. Mix the flavoring with a pint of rich cream, and the well-beaten whites of three eggs. Take small deep pans, line them all through with the paste rolled out very thin, and cut square. Fill them with the cream, and turn the square pieces of paste a little over it at the top, so as to form corners. Bake the tarts in a brisk oven, and when cold, grate nutmeg over the surface.

Are these the cream tarts of the Arabian Nights?

Orange Cocoa-Nut

Break up a fine ripe cocoa-nut, and- after peeling off the brown skin, lay the pieces in cold water for a while. Then wipe them dry with a clean towel, and grate them into a deep dish. Mix in, plenty of powdered white sugar. Take some fine large oranges, very ripe and juicy. Peel off all the rind, and slice the oranges rather thick. Cover the bottom of a large glass bowl with sliced orange, (the first layer being double, where the bowl is small) and strew among the slices sufficient sugar. Then put in a thick layer of the grated cocoa-nut, next another layer of orange - again a layer of cocoa-nut, and so on, alternately, till the bowl is filled, finishing with cocoa-nut heaped high. This is a handsome and delicious article for a supper-table, and a nice impromptu addition to the dessert at a dinner; and soon prepared, as it requires no cooking. When the fruit is in season, a dessert for a small company may consist entirely of orange cocoa-nut, raspberry charlotte, and cream strawberries.

Never send oranges whole to table. To ladies they are unmanageable in company.

Creamed Strawberries. - Take fine large ripe strawberries. Hull or stem them, and set them on ice till just before they are wanted. Divide them into saucerfulls. If you have glass saucers, they will make a better show than china. Put some powdered white sugar in the bottom of each saucer. Fill them with strawberries, and then strew on a liberal allowance of sugar, for American strawberries (however fine in appearance) are seldom sweet. Have ready sufficient whipped cream, that has been frothed with rods or with a tin cream-churn. Pile high a portion of the whipt cream on each saucer of strawberries.

Strawberries are sometimes eaten with wine and sugar, when cream is not convenient. With milk they curdle, and are unwholesome - besides tasting poorly.

Creamed Pine-apple. - Cut into four pieces two large ripe pine-apples. Stand them up successively in a deep dish, and grate them from the rind. When all is grated, transfer it to a large glass bowl, and make it very sweet by mixing in powdered white loaf sugar. Whip to a stiff froth a sufficiency of rich cream, adding to it some sugar, and heap it high upon the grated pine-apple.

Peaches and Cream. - Take fine juicy freestone peaches. Pare them, and cut them in slices. Put them, with their juice, into a large bowl, and make them very sweet with powdered loaf sugar. Set them on ice, and let them remain in the juice till wanted. Then send them to table with fresh sugar sifted over the top. Set near them pitchers of plain cream, not frothed.

If you cannot obtain cream, it is better to be satisfied with sugar alone, than to substitute milk, with peaches, or any other fruit.