Pancakes.—1 pint flour, 6 eggs, 1 saltspoon salt, 1 teaspoon Royal Baking Powder, and milk to make a thin batter. Add the baking powder to the flour, beat the whites and yolks of eggs separately; add the yolks, salt, 2 cups milk, then the whites and the flour alternately with milk, until the batter is of right consistency. Run 1 teaspoon lard over the bottom of a hot frying-pan, pour in a large ladleful of batter, and fry quickly. Roll pancake up like a sheet of paper, lay upon a hot dish, put in more lard, and fry another pancake. Keep hot over boiling water. Send ½ dozen to table at a time. Serve with sauce, jelly, or preserves.
English Pancakes.—1 pint milk, 2 eggs, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon Royal Baking Powder, 1 cup cream, pinch salt. Sift flour, salt, and powder together; add to it eggs beaten with sugar and diluted with milk and cream; mix into thin batter. Have small round frying-pan; melt little butter in it; pour about ½ cup batter in it, turn pan round, that batter may cover the pan, put on hot fire; turn it and brown other side. Butter each and roll it up; sprinkle with powdered sugar.
French Pancakes.—Proceed as directed for English pancakes; when all are done, spread each with any kind of preserves, roll up, sift over plenty sugar, glaze with red-hot poker.
Cakes
Flour
Fancy-cake makers and confectioners prefer to use “pastry” flour for the making of cakes and pastry, which is a flour of different grade from that used for bread and general baking purposes. Bread flour contains a large proportion of gluten, the nitrogenous property of the wheat grain, which gives bone and muscle, and makes bread a nutritious food. When bread flour is used for cake and pie crust the result is not quite as flaky and light as it should be, because of the gluten in the flour. A special sack of pastry flour for use in making fine cakes and pastry will be advantageous. In appearance pastry flour is whiter than bread flour. When rubbed between the fingers it feels as soft and fine as corn-starch; if squeezed in the hand it forms a firm ball. Because of this tendency to “pack” it should always be sifted very thoroughly.
Generally speaking, Royal Baking Powder used with any good flour will make satisfactory cake which will be creditable to any housekeeper.
Royal Baking Powder
In no department of cookery is Royal Baking Powder of greater use and importance than in making fine cake. Eggs are too expensive nowadays to be used as lavishly as they were a generation ago—ten or more to a cake. Not as a substitute wholly, but as an accessory,—as an aid toward producing the lightness and digestibility of the food,—we use the Royal Baking Powder. We thereby obtain uniformly good results and do a large amount of work at a minimum expense. The quantity called for by the receipt should be thoroughly mixed with the flour before the latter is sifted.
The Royal Baking Powder has worked a revolution in cake-making. It is now no trouble to make at home the finest cakes in almost endless variety, which shall rival the productions of the confectioner. If you follow these directions there will be no spoiled or heavy cakes, no wasted materials through failures in mixing or baking.