The easiest way in housekeeping and cooking

half lard and half butter ; one large cup of hot milk. Rub the butter into the flour. Add the milk, and roll out the dough, cutting in small square cakes and baking to a light brown. For a strawberry or peach short-cake have three tin pie-plates buttered ; roll the dough to fit them, and bake quickly. Fill either, when done, with a quart of strawberries or raspberries mashed with a cup of sugar, or with peaches cut fine and sugared, and served hot. Corn Bread. Two cups of corn meal ; one cup of flour ; one teaspoonful of soda and one of salt ; one heaping tablespoonful of butter ; a teacupful of sugar ; three eggs; two cups of sour milk, the more creamy the better. If sweet milk is used, substitute baking powder for soda. Sift meal, flour, soda, and salt together; beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar; add the milk, and stir into the meal; melt the butter, and stir in, beating hard for five minutes. Beat the whites stiff, and stir in, and bake at once either in one large, round loaf, or in tin pie-plates. The loaf will need half an hour or a little more ; the pieplates, not over twenty minutes. This can be baked as muffins, or, by adding another cup of milk, becomes a pancake mixture. Hoe-Cake. One quart of corn meal ; one teaspoonful of salt ; one tablespoonful of melted lard ; one large cup of boihng water. Melt the lard in the water. Mix the salt with the meal, and pour on the water, stirring it into a dough. When cool, make either into one large oval cake or two smaller ones, and bake in the oven to a bright brown, which will take about half an hour ; or make in small cakes, and bake slowly on a griddle, browning well on each side. Genuine hoe-cake is baked before an open fire on a board. Buckwheat Cakes. Two cups of buckwheat flour ; one of wheat flour ; one of corn meal ; half a cup of yeast ; one teaspoonful of salt ; one quart of boiling water. Mix the corn meal and salt, and pour on the boiling water very slowly, that the meal may swell. As soon as merely warm, stir in the sifted flour and yeast. All buckwheat may be used, instead of part wheat flour. Beat well, cover, and put in a cool place, — about 60°. In the morning stir well, and add half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little warm water. Grease the griddle with a bit of salt pork on a fork, or a very little drippings rubbed over it evenly, but never have it floating with fat, as many cooks do. Drop in large spoonfuls, and bake and serve few at a time, or they will become heavy and unfit to eat. If a cupful of the batter is saved, no yeast need be used for the next baking, and in cold weather this can be done for a month. Huckleberry Cake. One quart of flour ; one teaspoonful of salt and two of baking powder sifted with the flour ; one pint of huckleberries ; half a cup of butter ; two eggs ; two cups of sweet milk ; two cups of sugar. Cream the butter, and add the sugar and yolks of eggs ; stir in the milk, and add the flour slowly ; then beating the whites of the eggs stiff, and adding them. Have the huckleberries picked over, washed, dried, and well dusted with flour. Stir them in last of all ; fill the pans threequarters full, and bake in a moderate oven for about half an hour. Apple Cake.