How to Make Snowballs for Dessert, 1798

Isaac Cruikshank, "Snow Balls" (1794), LWL

"Snow Balls. Pare and take out the cores of five large baking apples, and fill the holes with orange or quince marmalade. Then make some good hot paste, roll your apples in it, and make your crust of an equal thickness. Put them in a tin dripping-pan, bake them in a moderate oven, and when you take them out, make icing for them... let your icing be about a quarter of an inch thick, and set them at a good distance from the fire till they are hardened; but take care you do not let them brown. Put one in the middle of a dish, and the others round it. 

[Icing:] Take a pound of double-refined sugar pounded and sifted fine, and mix it with the whites of twenty-four eggs, in an earthen pan. Whisk them well for two or three hours till it looks white and thick." 

William Augustus Henderson, The Housekeeper's Instructor

Ring in the New Year with this festive dessert! Bonus: if you start whisking the icing at exactly 9 PM, you'll die of exhaustion before 2018.

How to Make Artichoke Ice Cream, 1768

L. Boilly, Les Mangeurs de Glaces (1825)

"Artichoke ice cream. Take three or four artichokes, of which you will use only the bottoms; boil them until they are soft; crush them with a quarter-pound of blanched pistachios, a quarter of a candied orange, and a bit of cream; strain this mixture through a sieve; thin it with a chopine [2 cups] of cream, cooked in the manner of the first one which I instructed; add some sugar to taste; strain it all through a sieve, and put it in a sarbotière [ice cream maker]."

Joseph Gilliers, Le Cannaméliste français

Something tells me the kids will see through your efforts to sneak artichokes into their dessert.

How to Make a Watermelon Cake, 1896

Watermelon (c. 1855)

         "1/2 cup butter.
          1 cup sugar.
          1/2 cup sweet milk.
          3 whites of eggs.
          2 cups flour.
          1 teaspoon cream tartar.
          1/2 teaspoon soda.
          Flavor with lemon.


Take a little more than 1/3 of the mixture and to it add 1 teaspoon liquid cochineal and 1/2 cup raisins. Put the red part in the center and bake. Cover with a frosting colored green with spinach."

Smiley's Cook Book (1896)

This is perfect for a child's birthday party. The kids will be so busy picking out the raisins they won't notice the cake is made of spinach goo and liquified insects.