Bring a pint of milk to the boiling point and stir into it a teaspoonful of cottolene or other fat. Set aside until the mixture is lukewarm, then add two cups of flour into which a teaspoonful of salt has been sifted. Now beat in half a yeast-cake dissolved in a quarter of a cup of warm water, and set the batter aside to rise all night. In the morning add a cup of sifted flour, and with floured hands make lightly into round muffins and set to rise in greased muffin-tins for half an hour. Slip the rings and their contents on to a greased griddle and bake, first on one side, then on the other, until done.
English crumpets (No. 1)
Mix together three gills of lukewarm water, a half-teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar and a teaspoonful of melted butter; then dissolve a quarter of a yeast-cake in this mixture. Into this stir enough flour to make a very stiff batter. Beat for ten minutes, adding as you do so enough lukewarm milk to make batter just stiff enough to be poured slowly from the bowl. Grease shallow muffin-rings, place these on a soapstone griddle, and when hot pour the batter into them to the depth of a quarter-inch and bake slowly, not turning until brown on the under side. Then turn for just a few minutes.
English crumpets (No. 2)
On baking-day take a pint of dough from your bread-bowl an hour before breakfast. Put into a bowl and make a hole in the middle. Have ready two eggs beaten very light, and work them into the dough. Then thin it with milk and water to the consistency of griddle-cakes; beat it well, let it rise until breakfast, bake them on a hot griddle, butter and send to the table hot.
QUICK BISCUITS, ETCETERA
Milk biscuits
One quart flour, three cups of milk, one tablespoonful mixed butter and cottolene or other fat, one heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, half-teaspoonful of salt. Sift the salt with the flour, chop in the butter and cottolene or other fat, add the baking-powder and the milk and mix to a soft dough. Handle as little as possible. Roll out into a sheet an inch thick, cut into rounds and bake in a floured pan.
Milk-and-water biscuits
Make as in the preceding recipe, but using one and one-half cups of milk and the same quantity of water. Some housewives prefer these to the all-milk biscuits, alleging that the milk tends to make the dough heavy.