Beat three ounces of butter to a cream with three ounces of sugar; put half a pound of self-raising flour into a basin, and add it by slow degrees to the butter and sugar. Add a well beaten egg and a few drops of essence of vanilla. Make into a smooth dough, form into small cakes, place into a well buttered “Papakuk” bag, and cook fifteen minutes.
FEATHER CAKE.
Beat half a cup of butter to a cream, add two cups of sugar, and beat well; add one cup of milk with one tablespoonful of baking soda dissolved in it; three eggs, the yolks and whites beaten separately, one cup of flour with two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar mixed in it; then add two more cups of flour without the cream of tartar. Beat very thoroughly. Put into a well buttered tin; enclose the tin in a “Papakuk” bag and cook forty-five minutes.
GINGER CAKE.
These are particularly wholesome for children, and are an agreeable laxative.
Take one pound of self-raising flour, and rub it well together with a quarter of a pound of sugar and half an ounce of ground ginger; then add half a pound of golden syrup and a tablespoonful of honey. Melt three ounces of butter in a quarter of a pint of hot milk; dissolve a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda in the milk and add it to the other ingredients. It must be a very stiff dough. Form into flat cakes, slide into very thickly buttered “Papakuk” bags, and cook forty-five minutes.
CHAPTER VI.
MISCELLANEOUS RECIPES.
For those who still hesitate whether to adopt paper-bag cookery or not, it may be as well to repeat the solid advantages of this method. For one thing, it minimises labour and saves time, thus going far to solve the servant problem. The cook who has not the never-ending labour of cleaning saucepans and baking-tins, who has leisure for reasonable rest and recreation, is a contented being, not likely to give notice at awkward moments. The expense of most labour-saving domestic utensils prevents their adoption in households where means are limited, but the bags necessary for paper-bag cooking cost the merest trifle.
Only those who live in small houses or flats know the misery of having each meal heralded by a violent smell of cooking, which invades every room, and robs the average person of all appetite; the tenant of those uncomfortable dwelling-places known as “Maisonettes” knows only too well what it is to inhale the fragrance of the downstairs burned onion or frying bloater; while the occupants of the lower maisonette suffer from audible and pungent remarks upon the odours from their kitchen, remarks which frequently lead to friction. Now, paper-bag cookery does not smell.