IN making pastry or cakes, it is best to begin by weighing out the ingredients, sifting the flour, pounding and sifting the sugar and spice, washing the butter, and preparing the fruit. Sugar can be powdered by pounding it in a large mortar, or by rolling it on a paste-board with a rolling-pin. It should be made very fine and always sifted. All sorts of spice should be pounded in a mortar, except nutmeg, which it is better to grate. If spice is wanted in large quantities, it may be ground in a mill. The butter should always be fresh and very good. Wash it in cold water before you use it, and then make it up with your hands into hard lumps, squeezing the water well out. If the butter and sugar are to be stirred together, always do that before the eggs are beaten, as (unless they are kept too warm) the butter and sugar will not be injured by standing awhile. For stirring them, nothing is so convenient as a round hard stick, about a foot and a half long, and somewhat flattened at one end. The eggs should not be beaten till after the other ingredients are ready, as they will fall very soon. If the whites and yolks are to be beaten separately, do the whites first, as they will stand longer. Eggs should be beaten in a broad shallow pan, spreading wide at the top. Butter and sugar should be stirred in a deep pan with straight sides. Break every egg by itself, in a saucer, before you put it into the pan, that in case there should be any bad ones, they may not spoil the others. Eggs are beaten most expeditiously with whisks. A small quantity of white of egg may be beaten with a knife, or a three-pronged fork.—I have found the above directions of great use in my housekeeping, and I can confidently recommend them.—J. M. TO MAKE BARLEY WATER PROPERLY. Either Scotch or pearl-barley may be used. The former is much less expensive, and answers equally well. Soak an ounce in several waters; put it, with some lemon-peel, into a quart of boiling water and infuse it for an hour. Then strain. This will be of a sufficient thickness; but, if it be desired thicker, it is but varying the quantity of barley. This is a cooling drink, and admits of additions either for flavour or medicinal use. The juice and rind of lemons, with loaf sugar, are most agreeable. Figs, raisins, liquorice root, honey, and gum arabic, are often used either for coughs, cold on the chest, confined bowels, strangury, &c. Powdered nitre is often used in feverish complaints, and given in barley water; a drachm to a quart is a good proportion.