½ cup butter.
1 cup sugar.
½ cup brown sugar.
1 teaspoonful ginger.
1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves.
1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water.
Flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon.
Melt the sugar and butter together on the stove, and then take the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe, and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin, and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the bottom of four shallow pans, lift the buns with the cake-turner and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and sprinkle the tops with sugar.
GRANDMOTHER’S SUGAR BUNS
1 cup of butter.
2 cups of sugar.
2 eggs.
1 cup of milk.
2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.
½ teaspoonful of vanilla.
Flour enough to roll out easily.
Rub the butter and sugar to a cream; put in the milk, then the eggs beaten together lightly, then two cups of flour, into which you have sifted the baking-powder; then the vanilla. Take a bit of this and put it on the floured board and see if it “rolls out easily,” and, if it does not, but is soft and sticky, put in a handful more of flour. These buns must not be any stiffer than you can help, or they will not be good, so try not to use any more flour than you are obliged to.
TEA
1 teaspoonful of black tea for each person.
1 teaspoonful for the pot.
Boiling water.
Fill the kettle half-full of fresh, cold water, because you cannot make good tea with water which has been once heated. When it is very hot, fill the teapot and put it where it will keep warm. When the water boils very hard, empty out the teapot, put in the tea, and pour on it the boiling water; do not stand it on the stove, as too many people do, but send it right to the table; it will be ready as soon as it is time to pour out—about three minutes. If you are making tea for only one person, you will need two teaspoonfuls of tea, as you will see by the recipe, and two small cups of water will be enough. If for more, put in a teaspoonful for each person, and one cup of water more.
GINGER BEER
4 gallons water.
4 lbs. lump sugar.
4 oz. ginger.
3 oz. cream of tartar.
4 lemons.