Bread, cakes, and biscuits

Scones, Yorkshire. — This, also sometimes called “Yorkshire girdle cake,” is made thus : mix Jib. dried and sifted flour to a dough with sour cream, make it into a large round cake the size of the girdle or pan, and bake on both sides (turning it only once) on a hot greased girdle or pan, then split it, butter generously, and serve hot. This is never a success if baked in an oven. Coomb’s.— Into Jib. of Coomb’s Eureka flour rub 2oz. of butter, and make it into a dough with a gill of curdled cream or sour milk; roll it out rather thin, stamp out into rounds with a tumbler, and bake on the girdle, turning it once in the process. [illustration: CHAPTER IV.] Cake-making of old was a decidedly formidable undertaking, not only because of the Homeric ideas of food then prevalent, but from the amount of actual hai'd, physical labour such a season of baking entailed. Baking powder was not in those days, and ingredients were whipped and beaten to an extent that would send the most willing cook of to-day on strike. Butter was always creamed by hand, the sugar (loaf) had to be “beaten fine/’ every ingredient almost was beaten in singly (great stress is laid in nearly every old recipe on the importance of incessant beating or “ working ”) ; and then it is a great chance if the directions do not run after all this : “ and beat this well for an hour.” Now, without wishing to bring back such kitchen athletics as tbe3e old methods imply, it would be well if we were to pay a little more heed to such things, and not trust so much to artificial labour-savers ; no cake raised by chemicals, perfunctorily mixed, with butter warmed to save the trouble of beating, and egg powder to obviate both the expense and the labour of using eggs, will taste as did the cakes made in the wholesome old way by good honest work. The plainer the cake, the easier it is to mix and to fire. To begin with the mixing of a cake. As a general rule, the butter should first of all be beaten (either by hand or a very clean wooden spoon) till quite light and creamy ; now beat in the sugar, and then the yolks of the eggs, one or two at a time, for if mixed in too many at once they are liable to thin the mixing suddenly, and to curdle it. When these are all thoroughly amalgamated, work in the dry ingredients, adding the flour (into which, when used, the baking powder should be sifted) at the last — the reason for this is that directly the baking powder is put in, the cake should be turned into the tin and baked as soon as possible, as the moment the powder is moistened it begins to effervesce, and it is on this effervescence the lightness of the cake depends, so that if it has passed off before the cake gets into the oven, the latter will be heavy. When baking powder is not used, and whites of eggs are, these latter should be beaten as stiff as possible, and mixed in at the last quickly and lightly, alternately with the flour. Cakes made with yeast are, on the contrary, all the better for being allowed to rise a little before baking. Mixing cannot be too carefully done, for it has a great deal to say to the success of the cake. See that your ingredients are the best you can afford, in good condition, and ready at hand in the quantities required.