A Washington Pudding

Pick, and wash clean half a pound of Zante currants; drain them, and wipe them in a towel, and then spread them out on a flat dish, and place them before the fire to dry thoroughly. Prepare about a quarter of a pound or half a pint of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Have ready a heaping tea-spoonful of powdered mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg mixed. When the currants are dry, dredge them thickly on all sides with flour, to prevent their sinking or clodding in the pudding while baking. Cut up in a deep pan half a pound of the best fresh butter, and add to it half a pound of fine white sugar, powdered. Stir the butter and sugar together with a wooden spaddle, till they are very light and creamy. Then add a table-spoonful of wine, and a table-spoonful of brandy. Beat in a shallow pan, eight eggs till perfectly light, and as thick as a good boiled custard. Afterwards, mix with them, gradually, a pint of rich milk and the grated bread-crumbs, stirred in alternately. Next, stir this mixture, by degrees, into the pan of beaten butter and sugar, and add the currants a few at a time. Finish with a table-spoonful of strong rose-water; or a wine-glass full, if it is not very strong. Stir the whole very hard. Butter a large deep white dish, or two of soup-plate size. Put in the batter. Set it directly into a brisk oven, and bake it well. When cold, dredge the surface with powdered sugar. Serve it up in the dish in which it was baked. You may ornament the tops with bits of citron cut into leaves and forming a wreath; or with circles of preserved strawberries.

This will be found a very fine pudding. It must be baked in time to become quite cold before dinner.

For currants, you may substitute raisins of the best quality; seeded, cut in half, and well dredged with flour.

Instead of rose-water you may stir in the yellow rind (finely grated) of one large lemon, or two small ones, and their juice also.

A Cottage Pudding

Take ripe currants, and having stripped them from the stalks, measure as many as will make a heaping quart. Cover the bottom of a deep dish with slices of bread, slightly buttered, and with the crust cut off. Put a thick layer of currants on the bread, and then a layer of sugar. Then other layers of bread, currants, and sugar, till the dish is full; finishing at the top with very thin slics of bread. Set it into the oven, and bake it half an hour. Serve it either warm or cold; and eat it with sweetened cream.

Instead of currants you may take cherries, (first stoning them all,) raspberries, ripe blackberries, or barberries, plums, (first extracting the stones,) stewed cranberries, or stewed gooseberries. If the fruit is previously stewed, the pudding will require but ten minutes' baking. When it is sent to table, have sugar at hand in case it should not be sweet enough.

Ice-Cream Cakes

Stir together, till very light, a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter. Beat six eggs very light, and stir into them a half pint of rich milk. Add, gradually, the eggs and milk to the butter and sugar, alternately with a half pound of sifted flour. Add a glass of sweet wine and some grated nutmeg. When all the in^re-dients are mixed, stir the batter very hard. Then put it into small deep pans, or cups that have been well buttered, filling them about two thirds with the batter. Set them immediately into a brisk oven, and bake them brown. When done, remove them from the cups, and place them to cool on an inverted sieve. When quite cold make a slit or incision in the side of each cake. If very light, and properly baked, they will be hollow in the middle. Fill up this cavity with ice cream, carefully put in with a spoon, and then close the slit with your fingers to prevent the cream running out. Spread them on a large dish. Either send them to table immediately before the icecream melts or keep them on ice till wanted.