Soda Biscuit without Milk.
1 quart of flour.
2 heaping table-spoonfuls butter, chopped up in the flour.
2 cups cold water.
2 teaspoonfuls cream tartar, sifted thoroughly with the flour.
1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in boiling water.
A little salt.
When flour, cream of tartar, salt and butter are well incorporated, stir the soda into the cold water, and mix the dough very quickly, handling as little as may be. It should be just stiff enough to roll out. Stiff soda biscuits are always failures. Roll half an inch thick with a few rapid strokes, cut out, and bake at once in a quick oven.
Cream Toast. (Very nice.)
Slices of stale baker’s bread, from which the crust has been pared.
1 quart of milk.
3 table-spoonfuls of butter.
Whites of 3 eggs, beaten stiff.
Salt, and 2 table-spoonfuls best flour or corn-starch.
Boiling water.
Toast the bread to a golden brown. Burnt toast is detestable. Have on the range, or hearth, a shallow bowl or pudding-dish, more than half full of boiling water, in which a table-spoonful of butter has been melted. As each slice is toasted dip in this for a second, sprinkle lightly with salt, and lay in the deep heated dish in which it is to be served. Have ready, by the time all the bread is toasted, the milk scalding hot—but not boiled. Thicken this with the flour; let it simmer until cooked; put in the remaining butter, and when this is melted, the beaten whites of the eggs. Boil up once, and pour over the toast, lifting the lower slices one by one, that the creamy mixture may run in between them. Cover closely, and set in the oven two or three minutes before sending to table.
If you can get real cream, add only a teaspoonful of flour and the whites of two eggs, but the same quantity of butter used in this receipt.
GRIDDLE CAKES.
Sour Milk Cakes. (Good.)
1 quart sour, or “loppered” milk.
About 4 cups sifted flour.
2 teaspoonfuls soda, dissolved in boiling water.
3 table-spoonfuls molasses.
Salt to taste.
Mix the molasses with the milk. Put the flour into a deep bowl, mix the salt through it; make a hole in the middle, and pour in the milk, gradually stirring the flour down into it with a wooden spoon. The batter should not be too thick. When all the milk is in, beat until the mixture is free from lumps and very smooth. Add the soda-water, stir up fast and well, and bake immediately.
These cakes are simple, economical, wholesome, and extremely nice. “Loppered” milk, or “clabber,” is better than buttermilk. Try them!