INDIAN CUP CAKES.—
Sift a pint and a half of yellow Indian meal, and mix it with half a pint wheat flour. Beat two eggs very light, and then stir them gradually into the meal, in turn with almost a quart of sour milk. If you have no sour milk from the preceding day, you can turn some sweet milk sour by setting it in the sun. Lastly, dissolve a tea-spoonful of sal-aratus, or a very small tea-spoonful of pearl-ash in a little of the sour milk reserved for the purpose. The batter must be as thick as that for a pound-cake. More Indian meal may be necessary. Stir it at the last into the mixture, which, while foaming, must be put into buttered cups, or little tin pans, and set immediately into an oven, brisk but not too hot. When well baked, turn out the cakes, and send them warm to the breakfast-table. Eat them with butter.
BRAN BATTER-CAKES.—
Mix a quart of bran with a handful of wheat flour, and a level tea-spoonful of salt. Pour in sufficient milk-warm water to make a thick batter. Add two table-spoonfuls of brewer's yeast, or three, if home-made; and stir it very hard. Cover it, and set it by the fire to rise. Half an hour before you begin to bake, you may add a salt-spoonful of soda, melted in a little warm water. Bake it like buckwheat cakes, on a griddle.
APPLE BREAD PUDDING.—
Pare, core, and slice thin, a dozen or more fine juicy pippins, or bell-flowers, strewing among them some bits of the yellow rind of a large lemon that has been pared very thin, and squeezing over them the juice of the lemon. Or substitute a tea-spoonful of essence of lemon. Cover the bottom of a large deep dish with a thick layer of the sliced apples. Strew it thickly with brown sugar Then scatter on a few very small bits of the best fresh butter. Next strew over it a thin layer of grated bread-crumbs. Afterwards another thick layer of apple, followed by sugar, butter, and bread-crumbs as before. Continue this till you get the dish full, finishing with a thin layer of crumbs. Put the dish into a moderate oven, and bake the pudding well, ascertaining that the apples are thoroughly done and as soft as marmalade. Send it to table either hot or cold, and eat it with cream-sauce, or with butter, sugar, and nutmeg, stirred to a cream. This pudding is in some places called by the homely names of Brown Betty, or Pan Dowdy. It will require far less baking, if the apples are previously stewed soft, and afterwards mixed with the sugar and lemon. Then put it into the dish, in layers, interspersed (as above) with bits of butter, and layers of grated crumbs. It will be much improved by the addition of a grated nutmeg, mixed with the apples.
APPLE CUSTARDS.—
Take fine juicy apples, sufficient when stewed to fill two soup plates. Pare, core, and slice them. Add a lump of butter, about the size of a walnut, and the grated peel of a lemon; and stew them with as little water as can possibly keep them from burning. They must be stewed till they are quite soft all through, but not broken. Then mash them well with the back of a spoon, and make them very sweet with fine brown sugar. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, or add a wine-glass of rose-water. When the apple is quite cold, add a grated nutmeg, a table-spoonful of brandy, and a table-spoonful of cream, mixed with a table-spoonful of finely-grated bread crumbs, and the well-beaten yolk of an egg. Stir the whole very hard. Cover the bottom and sides of two soup plates with thin puff-paste, and put a thick paste round the edges, notching it handsomely. Then fill up with the mixture, and bake it about half an hour. Or you may bake it in cups, without any paste. If for cups, prepare double the above quantity of apple and other ingredients.
Peach custards may be made in a similar manner, of fine ripe free-stone peaches, pared, stoned, quartered, and stewed without any water. Omit the lemon, and add two eggs.