Page:Domestic French Cookery.djvu/92

sets several hours, it will be the better for it; and better still if the paste is made the night before it is wanted; always keeping it in a cold place.

While buttering and rolling, do every thing as quickly as possible.

Before you put it into the dishes, roll it out once more. It is difficult in warm weather to make good puff paste without a marble table, or slab, to roll it on.

Mix together a quart of flour, half a pound of butter, a little salt, and two beaten eggs. Add a little cold water; make it into a paste, and set it away to cool. Then roll it out again. Cut it into round shapes with the edge of a tumbler. Lay round each a rim made of an even strip of the paste, and notch it handsomely. Bake them for a quarter of an hour, and then take them from the oven. Beat together a pint of cream, four eggs, and four table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar. Fill the tarts with this mixture, grate nutmeg over each, and bake them again for a quarter of an hour.

Blanch half a pound of shelled sweet almonds and three ounces of shelled bitter almonds. Beat them, a few at a time, in a mortar, mixing them well, and adding at times a little rose-water. When done, mix with them a quarter of a pound of loaf-sugar powdered, and the juice and grated peel of half a lemon.

Have ready some fine paste. Cut it into circular pieces about the size and thickness of a dollar. Put into each piece of paste some of the almond