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Log of Wood Cake
1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar I lemon 1/2 lb. (2 cups) flour 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 6 ozs. (3/4 cup) butter Few drops red color Strawberry jam Marzipan icing Coffee or chocolate fondant Few blanched 2 little robins and chopped pistachio nuts Grate the rind of the lemon into a basin, add the eggs and sugar, and beat over a pan of boiling water. Remove from the hot water when thick Cakes and white and beat until cold, then add the flour, baking powder and the butter, melted. Color one-half pink with red color and leave the other half yellow. Bake the mixture in two flat buttered tins about twelve inches square; it should be an inch in thickness when baked. Let cool, and then cut in long strips, spread each strip with sieved strawberry jam, and place them together, one pink and one yellow alternately, three or four in a row, and one row above the other until you have the same number each way. Press them all together and roll up in a piece of white paper until stuck. Form knots with round pieces of marzipan icing, cover these knots and the ends of the cake with fondant icing and mark them with a little melted chocolate or brown color. Put some chocolate or coffee fondant icing into a bag with a tube and force it along the sides and top of the cake to represent the bark of a tree, then sprinkle over with a few chopped pistachio nuts and decorate with two little robins and a pink flower and three green leaves made of marzipan. 1 To make fondant icing. Put three pounds of sugar into a saucepan, add two cupfuls of cold water, and stir over the fire until the sugar is dissolved. Then add one tablespoonful of glucose, and allow it to boil until it forms a soft ball in cold water. Let the bubbles die down, and pour into a basin which has been rinsed out with cold water. When you can bear your finger in the middle, begin to cream it, and when thick, put your hands in and knead and squeeze until it is a solid, firm, creamy mass. Then flavor and color it and it is ready for use.
To make marzipan icing: Mix in a basin ten ounces of fondant with eight ounces of ground almonds. Boil two cupfuls of sugar with two cupfuls of water to soft ball. During the boiling add a pinch of cream of tartar and one tablespoonful of almond extract, then pour it quickly on to the ingredients in basin. Get some one to hold the basin firmly for you, while with a wooden spoon you stir as quickly as you can as the mass begins to harden; turn out on to a clean baking- Cakes board and knead and roll until it is smooth.
Color it while it is warm. It will keep for three weeks. Should it be too hard when you want to work it, add a few drops of lukewarm water and knead it, or roll it out with a rolling-pin until it becomes soft and pliable.