Biscuits
Biscuits are more easily made than raised bread and so are used largely in its place while in camp. The proportions of flour and baking-powder are the same as for flapjacks. To 4 cups of flour mix 2 teaspoonfuls of Royal baking-powder and 1 level teaspoonful of salt; add shortening about the size of an egg, either lard or drippings. Divide the shortening into small bits and, using the tips of your fingers, rub it well into the dry flour just prepared; then gradually stir in cold water to make a soft dough, barely stiff enough to be rolled out ¾ inch thick on bread-board, clean flat stone, or large, smooth piece of flattened bark. Whichever is used must be well floured, as must also the rolling-pin and biscuit cutter. A clean glass bottle or smooth round stick may be used as rolling-pin, and the cutter can be a baking-powder can, or the biscuits may be cut square, or 4 inches long and 2 inches wide with a knife. The dough may also be shaped into a loaf ¾ inch thick and baked in a pan by planting the pan in a bed of hot coals, covering it with another pan or some substitute, and placing a deep layer of hot coals all over the cover. The biscuits should bake in about fifteen minutes. For a hurry meal each camper can take a strip of dough, wind it spirally around a peeled thick stick, which has first been heated, and cook her own spiral biscuit by holding it over the fire and constantly turning the stick. Biscuits, in common with everything cooked over a hot wood-fire, need constant watching that they may not burn. Test them with a clean splinter of wood; thrust it into the biscuit and if no dough clings to the wood the biscuits are done.