twelfth-cake

An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _nécessaire_ for the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 382, July 25, 1829 Various

Sunday; for the snow had been falling all through the last three days and nights, and lay deep on the ground, hiding the low thatched roofs, and making feathery festoons about the leafless branches, until Lisford looked like a village upon the top of a twelfth-cake.

Henry Dunbar A Novel 1875

Or how, at the tender age when a confectioner seems to him a very prince whom all the world must envy -- who breakfasts on macaroons, dines on meringues, sups on twelfth-cake, and fills up the intermediate hours with sugar-candy or peppermint -- how is he to foresee the day of sad wisdom, when he will discern that the confectioner's calling is not socially influential, or favourable to a soaring ambition?

Brother Jacob George Eliot 1849

And he was sure to bring a twelfth-cake, or a Noah's ark, or something of the sort.

Loss and Gain The Story of a Convert John Henry Newman 1845

A few people at night -- only Forster, the De Gex's, John Ross, Mitton, and the Beards, besides our families -- to twelfth-cake and forfeits.

The Letters of Charles Dickens Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 Charles Dickens 1841

His throne is a wine-cask and his foot-stool a twelfth-cake.

Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 Volume 23, Number 3 Various 1840

After two or three preliminary dances, to give time for the arrival of the whole of the company, the twelfth-cake was divided.

Gryll Grange Thomas Love Peacock 1825

The larger room was appropriated to grown dancers; the smaller to children, who came in some force, and were placed within the magnetic attraction of an enormous twelfth-cake, which stood in a decorated recess.

Gryll Grange Thomas Love Peacock 1825

(which is mostly twelfth-cake and holiday time) is like the first four or five years of a little boy's life; then comes dismal February, and the working-days with it, when chaps begin to look out for themselves, after the Christmas and the New Year's heyday and merrymaking are over, which our infancy may well be said to be.

The Fatal Boots William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

For I have often thought that January (which is mostly twelfth-cake and holiday time) is like the first four or five years of a little boy’s life; then comes dismal February, and the working-days with it, when chaps begin to look out for themselves, after the

The Fatal Boots 2006