Required: One chocolate cake (about one pound weight). Half a pound of icing sugar. Fight ounces of crystallised apricots. A stick of angelica. A pound pot of strawberry jam. One lemon. Two oranges. Half a gill of syrup. Six sheets of gelatine. Half a pint of whipped cream. One ounce of crystallised violets. Castor sugar. Curacoa and rum. Ice and salt for freezing. (Sufficient for six to eight.)

Carefully remove the centre from the cake, leaving only a case.

Sieve the icing sugar, put it in a saucepan, add enough water and curacoa to make it just flow smoothly over the back of the spoon, and flavour nicely.

Spread a layer of this smoothly over the outside of the cake, leaving a border round the top about half an inch deep to show the chocolate. When almost set, decorate it with the violets and little leaves of angelica.

Put the jam in a stewpan, add to it the orange and lemon juice, the syrup (made by boiling one gill of water with four ounces of sugar till it is reduced to half), the gelatine (dissolved in a little water), and rum to taste. When all are well mixed, rub through a hair sieve.

Half freeze this mixture till it appears like very thick cream, then add the apricots (cut in large dice), the whipped cream, and sugar to taste. Freeze again till quite stiff; then heap it roughly up in the centre of the decorated cake, and serve at once.

A little extra whipped cream, sweetened, flavoured, and tinted to match the ice, looks well, if piped in a large rose pattern round the base of the cake.

Cost, 4s. 6d.