Easter Cake

An Easter Cake
Wash one cup of butter in cold water, to remove the salt. Pat until the water is removed. Then beat to a cream, and beat in, gradually, one cup of fine granulated sugar.
Add a portion of the whites of eight eggs, beaten dry, and two cups of sifted flour, sifted again with two level teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.
Flavor with one teaspoonful of vanilla and a scant half a teaspoonful of almond extract, or with one teaspoonful of violet extract. Then beat in the rest of the whites of the eggs.
Bake, in a round sponge-cake pan with a tube, between forty and fifty minutes. When cold, ice with confectioner's icing flavored with lemon juice.
Decorate with a wreath of candied violets and blanched pistachio nuts.
The Boston Cooking-School Magazine. 1903