As we're in the middle of the festive season, things are a little busy with all the entertaining.

I like to have a few things in the store cover that I can turn into dishes for dinner to make life a little easier.

Should there be unexpected guests.

Today, I'm making Gertrude Allah Clem from one of my favorite recipe books, written by Eliza Acton.

For this recipe, you will need s slightly stale sponge cake, eggs, sugar cream, a selection of preserves, crystallized fruit and flowers, Armand paste and food coloring.

This recipe is one of many I have for using up stale sponge cakes.

I always make a second sponge cake.

Whenever I make one, I'm going to slice the cake horizontally with equal slices.

And then, for each slice, I'll just cut out the center, then spread different colored jams over each slice.

It's an ideal way of using up some of the half jars in the back of the cupboard.

I have blackberry, lime and lemon, strawberry and apricot, and then once I've spread them, I'll stack it back up again.

This time of year is really very busy, and there's only four of us.

So we have to be more organized than usual.

After all, we don't just make breakfast, luncheon, dinner and supper for Lord and Lady Bre Brick and their guests.

But also four meals for just under 30.

Indoor servants and the upper servants and the lower servants have different meals.

Okay.

I'll keep these bits, perhaps for a trifle.

Mhm.

Okay.

Mhm.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Mhm.

Yeah, Yeah.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Okay.

We often buy confectionery and fancy cakes and such, like, in, we rarely bake our own bread.

And there are several women locally that I used to do the rougher work leaving my maids to work here in the kitchen.

Yeah.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, Yeah.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Yeah.

Mhm.

Mm.

And now I'm going to cover the whole thing in icing the way.

This is quite an old fashioned way to ice a cake.

It's not quite royal izing and not quite meringue.

I'm going to whisk my egg whites until they're stiff and then add some sugar.

Yeah, yeah.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Yeah, Yeah.

I'm now going to ice my cake.

This cake has a curious name, Gertrude.

I think it was probably supposed to be Gerland, which means Garland in French.

I understand Eliza Acton spent some time in France, but she calls it Gertrude.

And so shall I.

Uh huh.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Mhm.

Now you don't need to worry too much about your ice in.

You can cover up mistakes by adding some decoration.

I'm now going to put the cake into a very slow oven to let it dry out.

I've already started decorating my cake using some candied fruit.

But while it Mr Ryan, I made some leaf shapes out of some Armand paste, which I mixed with food coloring and then rolled it out and used my cutters.

You can get many different shapes of cutters nowadays.

I'm going to stick the shapes on using some royal icing.

Synthetic food coloring is like this have been around for about 10 years now.

I think they come from the coal industry.

They were even some when I was training.

I remember us being very excited when move arrived.

I still insist that the girls learn how to make food coloring in the old traditional way the spinach for green carrots for orange, but they aren't as good.

They're a bit watery.

and leave a taste.

Mhm.

Mm hmm.

Mhm.

Yeah.

And now all I need to do is to fill the center.

I'm filling the center of the cake or garland with whipped cream.

You must make sure you get right down to the bottom.

And I'm going to finish the decoration with some sugar flowers and some more leaves.

There you are, Gertrude.

L.

A.

Claim.

Happy Christmas.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh huh.

Okay, right.

Mhm, no.