The Sally Lunn mixture may be baked on a griddle, as muffins in muffin rings, and split and buttered at table.
In mixing this cake, add neither sugar nor spice. They do not improve, but spoil it, as would be found on trial. It is the best of plain tea cakes, if properly made and baked.
DELAWARE CAKES.—
This is a plain tea cake. Sift into a pan two quarts of flour. Cut up half a pound of fresh butter, and rub it into the flour with your hands. Beat five eggs very light and thick; make a hole in the centre of the flour, and gradually stir the beaten eggs, in turn with a pint of milk. Then add a jill of fine fresh yeast. Mix the whole thoroughly with a broad knife. Transfer it to large square tin pans. Cover it with a clean flannel, and set it on the hearth to rise. When it is quite light, and cracked all over the surface, divide the dough into cakes and bake them in muffin rings, on a griddle or in a stove. If baked in one large cake, there is a risk of their being made heavy, by cutting them when hot.
To make sweet cakes with the above mixture, add gradually to the flour in the pan, half a pound of powdered sugar before you rub in the butter, and after the eggs and milk. Stir in a wineglass of rosewater, or less, if it is very strong, (which rosewater seldom is) and also it loses much of its strength in cooking. Or, substitute the yellow rind and juice of a lemon, and some powdered nutmeg. They will then be a cake for company; otherwise, they will be for family teas.
Either plain or sweet they are very good. We rather prefer them plain. If plain, omit even sugar. Sugar, without other flavoring, gives plain tea cakes a faint sickly taste, and is better left out entirely, except for children—and they like any kind of sweetness, however little.
MARYLAND BISCUIT.—
Take two quarts of sifted wheat flour, and add a small tea-spoonful of salt. Rub into the pan of flour a large quarter of a pound of lard, and add, gradually, warm milk enough to make a very stiff dough. Knead the lump of dough long and hard, and pound it on all sides with a rolling-pin. Divide the dough into several pieces, and knead and pound each piece separately. This must go on for two or three hours, continually kneading and pounding, otherwise it will be hard, tough, and indigestible. Then make it into small round thick biscuits, prick them with a fork, and bake them a pale brown.