Gingerbread, “such as mother used to make”
Mix together a half-cupful each of brown sugar and New Orleans molasses, and stir in a tablespoonful of melted butter, a teaspoonful of ground ginger and a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Set the bowl containing these ingredients at the side of the range until the contents are blood-warm; then remove from the range and beat with an egg-beater until the batter is light brown in color. Now stir in a cupful of sour milk and three cupfuls of sifted flour. Beat very hard, adding, last of all, a teaspoonful of baking-soda dissolved in hot water. Beat for two minutes longer and bake in deep muffin-tins, or in a shallow baking-pan.
Sour milk gingerbread
Mix together a half cupful of sugar, a half cupful of molasses, a tablespoonful of butter, a half teaspoonful of ground cinnamon and a teaspoonful of ground ginger. Set the bowl containing this mixture at the side of the range until the contents are warm, then beat until light in color and foamy in appearance. Now beat in a teacupful of sour milk, a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of boiling water, and two and a half cupfuls of flour. Turn into a greased shallow pan, and bake in a steady oven. Eat hot.
Currant gingerbread
Make as directed in last recipe, adding at the last half a cupful of currants that have been carefully washed and picked over, then soaked for half an hour in warm water, dried between two towels and dredged with flour.
Honey gingerbread
Warm a generous half-cupful of butter and beat into it two scant cupfuls of strained honey. When you have a light cream, beat in one tablespoonful of powdered sugar, a tablespoonful of ginger and half a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Now add the beaten yolks of four eggs, and, alternately with the frothed whites, three even cupfuls of flour sifted twice with a teaspoonful of baking-powder.
Beat hard for one minute and bake in buttered shallow pans in a moderate oven forty-five minutes. Keep covered for thirty minutes.