Required: Six eggs.

Eight ounces of castor sugar. Six ounces of flour. Five ounces of butter. Cochineal, vanilla, coffee essence. Apricot jam. Almond icing.

Have ready three small bak-ing-tins, such as are used for Swiss roll. Line with greased paper.

Put the eggs and sugar in a basin, and place it over a pan of hot water on the stove. Beat these together for ten minutes, then take the basin to the table and continue beating for another ten minutes or until the mixture looks thick and ropy. Sieve the flour and melt the butter gently. Add half the flour and half the butter to the eggs and sugar, and stir all lightly together, then add the rest of the butter and flour. Divide the mixture into three basins. Leave one division the natural colour, colour one-third a deep pink with cochineal and flavour it with vanilla, and colour the remainder a deep coffee tint. Put each mixture into a separate tin, and bake carefully until they feel firm and spongy. Then cut them at once into strips about three-quarters of an inch square.

Take a small, empty, oblong biscuit-tin, and line it with pieces of grease-proof paper. Now fit the blocks of cake into the tin in alternate colours, using the apricot jam, thinly spread on, to join the pieces together. When the tin, is full put a flat tin on the top with a few light weights on it, and let it stand for an hour or more. Then lift out the cake, and cover the sides - but not the ends - with almond icing, using a knife dipped in water to smooth it over. Serve it either whole or cut in slices. Cost, 2s.