Bread, cakes, and biscuits

Breakfast Cakes. — lib. of flour, loz. of butter or clarified dripping, one full teaspoonful of baking powder, a little salt, and half a pint of buttermilk ; mix all quickly to a smooth dough, roll it out half an inch thick, stamp it out with a tumbler, brush over with milk, prick it a little, and bake. Serve hot, plain, or torn open and buttered generously. Do not put a knife to these. Mix together 2lb. of flour, Jib. butter, 2oz. lard, sugar and a little salt to taste, with four eggs beaten up with just enough milk to make it all to a nice dough ; mix in at the last three level teaspoonfuls of baking powder, make it up in cakes the size of a muffin, and bake fifteen minutes in a quick oven. Turn occasionally, as they burn very quickly, and serve very hot, split and buttered. Cornish Heavy Cakes. — Rub 6oz. to 8oz. butter lightly into lib. of flour, add a pinch of salt and Jib. well washed and dried currants or sultanas; work it all to a nice dough with cold milk or single cream, roll it out Jin. thick on a well-floured board, and stamp it out in rounds with a tumbler or plain cutter, handling the pastry as little as may be. Bake in a quick oven for twenty to thirty minutes till of a pale golden shade. If the oven is not sufficiently hot, bake on a girdle or in a frying-pan; anyhow, serve very hot. If to be used for tea, Cornish cooks very often stir 4oz. of very finely shred candied peel into the mixture. Buckwheat Cakes. — Mix a good teaspoonful of baking powder with a pound of dried and sifted buckwheat flour ; beat the yolks of two eggs with a little water till light ( i.e ., till the fork can be lifted out without leaving any strings), then beat them into the flour, adding gradually enough water to produce a batter, which when lifted will fall in a kind of sheet from the spoon. Now stir in the whites of the eggs whisked to the stiffest possible froth with a pinch of salt (be sure you have removed the "speck" from the eggs!), and drop this batter by spoonfuls into a pan of boiling friture (butter, dripping, ghee, oil, or any fat may be used), and cook over a good, steady fire. When these cakes look like English crumpets, lift them out with a skimmer, drain for a moment, and serve very hot, spread with butter or honey. The fat should have a strong pale blue vapour over it when you drop in the cakes.. Another form of these cakes (known in France as galette de sarrasin ) is made thus : Add one and a half tablespoonfuls of yeast and a pinch or two of salt to a quart of pure buckwheat flour (mind no rye, &c., is mixed with it), and pour it all into a deep basin with enough cold water to make it all into a nice smooth batter; then set this to rise in a warm (but not too hot) place till the next morning. When well risen, shape into rather thin cakes and bake on a hot girdle. Make them only the last thing at night, for if left to rise too long these cakes sometimes “sour.” Serve spread with butter or honey. Indian Corn Calces.— Mix together to a stiff paste Jib. of corn meal, one egg, |lb. of brown sugar, golden syrup, molasses, or treacle, as you choose, and a pinch of salt. At the last stir in quickly two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, pour the mixture into well-buttered tins, and bake twenty minutes in a sharp oven.