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Rusks (Make them just before dinner)

Make them just before dinner - if kept they lose their crispness. 1½ lb. flour, ½ lb. fresh butter, 1½ lb. castor sugar, 4 eggs. Warm the butter, then add the sugar; stir for about 5 minutes, then add by degrees the flour and the eggs. Stir for another 10 minutes. Spread on a buttered baking sheet, then cover the top of the pastry with unblanched, sweet Jordan almonds, and bake in a moderate oven.

When done, cut in strips about 3 inches long, and 1 or 1½ wide, and dry them in entrance to oven; this gives the almonds a parched taste. The rusks should be as thick as breakfast toast. They are very sweet. Ginger Rusks. 3/4 lb. of flour, 3/4 lb. castor sugar, 4 eggs, and about ½ OZ. powdered ginger; beat the yolks and whites separately, then beat in the sugar and the ginger, and add the flour. Bake in a quick oven on floured tins.

Sweet Rusks. (Hirschspieg'l Inn, Tyrol.) Take 3 whole eggs in their shells, weigh them; you will want their full weight in white sugar, and the weight of 2 eggs in flour, but keep all separate. Beat the whites to a stiff froth; have the yolks in another basin, stir only one way, and add the sugar. Mix thoroughly, and then add the stiff white froth, and lastly add the flour; mix well but lightly. Do not beat the flour in or the rusks will be heavy. Flavour with lemon peel or vanilla - the Germans use a little scraped cloves and cinnamon. (If you use a pod of vanilla, pound it with a little sugar.) Press through a paper funnel 1½ tablespoonfuls at a time on to a buttered baking sheet in strips the length of your finger.

Spread the mixture out thin - each should look like a "lady's finger" sponge biscuit crushed out flat. Bake in a quick oven for 3 minutes to make them crisp, by which time they should be a nice light brown. Leave oven door open. Glaze the tops if you like with egg. They may require 15 or 20 minutes to dry off all depends on the heat of the oven. Dry them on a sieve in the top of the screen to keep crisp till served. Their crispness is their merit. Serve them with a cream shape. Lady Clark prefers them unglazed.