Part 20

3 pints of flour. 1 quart of milk. 2 eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls cream tartar. 1 tablespoonful soda. 1 tablespoonful salt.

Sift the cream tartar with the flour. Beat the eggs very light. Dissolve the soda in hot water. Bake in rings in a quick oven.

CORN BREAD.

There is a marked difference between the corn-meal ground at the South, and that which is sent out from Northern mills. If any one doubts this, it is not she who has perseveringly tried both kinds, and demonstrated to her own conviction that the same treatment will not do for them. An intelligent lady once told me that the shape of the particles composing the meal was different—the one being round and smooth, the other angular. I am inclined to believe this. The Southern meal is certainly coarser, and the bread made from it less compact. Moreover, there is a partiality at the North for yellow meal, which the Southerners regard as only fit for chicken and cattle-feed. The yellow may be the sweeter, but I acknowledge that I have never succeeded in making really nice bread from it.

Indian meal should be purchased in small quantities, except for a very large family. It is apt to heat, mould, and grow musty, if kept long in bulk or in a warm place. If not sweet and dry, it is useless to expect good bread or cakes. As an article of diet, especially in the early warm days of spring, it is healthful and agreeable, often acting as a gentle corrective to bile and other disorders. In winter, also, it is always acceptable upon the breakfast or supper table, being warming and nutritious. In summer the free use of it is less judicious, on account of its laxative properties. As a kindly variation in the routine of fine white bread and baker’s rolls, it is worth the attention of every housewife. “John and the children” will like it, if it approximates the fair standard of excellence; and I take it, my good friend—you who have patiently kept company with me from our prefatory talk until now—that you love them well enough to care for their comfort and likings.

“My husband is wild about corn bread,” a wife remarked to me not a hundred years ago, “but I won’t make it for him; it is such a bother! And if I once indulge him, he will give me no peace.”

Beloved sister, I am persuaded better things of you. Good husbands cannot be spoiled by petting. Bad ones cannot be made worse—they may be made better. It seems a little thing, so trifling in its consequences, you need not tire further your aching back and feet to accomplish it—the preparation of John’s favorite dish when he does not expect the treat—to surprise him when he comes in cold and hungry, by setting before him a dish of hot milk-toast, or a loaf of corn bread, brown and crisp without, yellow and spongy within, instead of the stereotyped pile of cold slices, brown or white. If he were consulted, he would say, like the generous soul he is—“Don’t take one needless step for me, dear.” And he would mean it. But for all that, he will enjoy your little surprise—ay! and love you the better for it. It is the “little by little” that makes up the weal and woe of life.

May I make this digression longer yet, by telling you what I overheard a husband say to a wife the other day when he thought no one else was near enough to hear him. He is no gourmand, but he is very partial to a certain kind of cruller which nobody else can make, he thinks, so well as his little wife. It so chanced that in frying some of them, she scalded her hand badly. After it was bandaged, she brought up a plate of the cakes for luncheon. He looked at them, then at her, with a loving, mournful smile.

“I can understand now,” said he, “how David felt when his men-of-war brought him the water from the well of Bethlehem.”

Then he stooped and kissed the injured fingers. Yet he has been married twenty years. I was not ashamed that my eyes were moist. I honored him the more that his were dim.

This is my lesson by the wayside _apropos_ to corn-bread.

And now again to business.

_Receipts for Bread made of Northern Indian Meal._

NONPAREIL CORN BREAD. ✠

2 heaping cups of Indian meal. 1 cup of flour. 3 eggs. 2½ cups milk. 1 tablespoonful lard. 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 1 teaspoonful soda. 2 tablespoonfuls cream-tartar. 1 tablespoonful salt.

Beat the eggs very thoroughly—whites and yolks separately—melt the lard, sift the cream-tartar and soda into the meal and flour while yet dry, and stir this in at the last. Then, to borrow the direction scribbled by a rattle-tongued girl upon the above receipt, when she sent it to me—“_beat like mad!_” Bake quickly and steadily in a buttered mould. Half an hour will usually suffice. In cutting corn bread _hold the knife perpendicularly_ and cut toward you.

CORN MEAL MUFFINS.

Mix according to the foregoing receipt, only a little thinner, and bake in rings or small pattypans. All kinds of corn bread should be baked quickly and eaten while hot.

RISEN CORN BREAD.

1 pint Indian meal. 2 cups risen sponge, taken from your regular baking of wheat bread. ½ cup molasses, _or_, what is better, 4 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water. 1 tablespoonful lard, melted. 1 cup flour, or enough for stiff batter.

Mix well, put to rise in a buttered mould until very light. Bake one hour. It is well to scald the meal and stir in while blood-warm.

STEAMED CORN BREAD. ✠

2 cups Indian meal. 1 cup flour. 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 2½ cups “loppered” milk, or buttermilk. 1 teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 heaping tablespoonful lard, melted.

Beat very hard and long, put in buttered mould, tie a coarse cloth tightly over it, and if you have no steamer, fit the mould in the top of a pot of boiling water, taking care it does not touch the surface of the liquid. Lay a close cover over the cloth tied about the mould, to keep in all the heat. Steam one hour and a half, and set in an oven ten minutes. Turn out upon a hot plate, and eat while warm.

This will do for a plain dessert, eaten with pudding-sauce.

CORN-MEAL CRUMPETS.

1 quart Indian meal. 1 quart boiled milk. 4 tablespoonfuls yeast. 2 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 2 heaping tablespoonfuls lard, or butter, or half-and-half. 1 saltspoonful salt.

Scald the meal with the boiling milk, and let it stand until lukewarm. Then stir in the sugar, yeast, and salt, and leave it to rise five hours. Add the melted shortening, beat well, put in greased muffin-rings, set these near the fire for fifteen minutes, and bake. Half an hour in a quick oven ought to cook them.

Never cut open a muffin or crumpet of any kind, least of all one made of Indian meal. Pass the knife lightly around it to pierce the crust, then break open with the fingers.

_Receipts for Corn Bread made of Southern Indian Meal._

JOHNNY CAKE.

1 teacupful sweet milk. 1 teacupful buttermilk. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 teaspoonful soda. 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Enough meal to enable you to roll it into a sheet half an inch thick. Spread upon a buttered tin, or in a shallow pan, and bake forty minutes. As soon as it begins to brown, baste it with a rag tied to a stick and dipped in melted butter. Repeat this five or six times until it is brown and crisp. Break—not cut it up—and eat for luncheon or tea, accompanied by sweet or buttermilk.

AUNT JENNY’S JOHNNY CAKE.

Mix as above; knead well, and bake upon a perfectly clean and sweet board, before a hot fire, with something at the back to keep it up. Incline at such an angle as will prevent the cake from slipping off, until it is hardened slightly by baking, then place upright. Baste frequently with butter until nicely crisped.

BATTER BREAD, OR “EGG BREAD.” ✠

Half a cup cold boiled rice. 2 eggs. 2 cups Indian meal. 1 tablespoonful lard or butter. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 pint milk.

Beat the eggs light, and the rice to a smooth batter in the milk. Melt the shortening. Stir all together very hard, and bake in shallow tins very quickly.

RISEN CORN BREAD.

Mix a tolerably stiff dough of corn-meal and boiling water, a little salt, and a tablespoonful butter. Let it stand four or five hours until light; make into small loaves and bake rather quickly.

CORN-MEAL PONE.

1 quart Indian meal. 1 teaspoonful salt. A little lard, melted. Cold water to make a soft dough.

Mould with the hands into thin oblong cakes, lay in a well-greased pan, and bake very quickly.

The common way is to mould into oval mounds, higher in the middle than at the ends, shaping these rapidly and lightly with the hands, by tossing the dough over and over. This is done with great dexterity by the Virginia cooks, and this corn-meal pone forms a part of every dinner. It is broken, not cut, and eaten very hot.

ASH CAKE

is mixed as above. A clean spot is swept upon the hot hearth, the bread put down and covered with hot wood ashes. It must be washed and wiped dry before it is eaten. A neater way is to lay a cabbage-leaf above and below the pone. The bread is thus steamed before it is baked, and is made ready for eating by stripping off the leaves.

FRIED PONE.

Instead of moulding the dough with the hands, cut into slices with a knife. Try out some fat pork in a frying-pan, and fry the slices in the gravy thus obtained to a light-brown.

GRIDDLE-CAKES, WAFFLES, ETC.

If you have not used your griddle or waffle-iron for some time, wash it off hard with hot soap and water; wipe and rub well with dry salt. Heat it and grease with a bit of fat salt pork on a fork. It is a mistake, besides being slovenly and wasteful, to put on more grease than is absolutely necessary to prevent the cake from sticking. A piece of pork an inch square should last for several days. Put on a great spoonful of butter for each cake, and before filling the griddle test it with a single cake, to be sure that all is right with it as well as the batter.

The same rules apply to waffles. Always lay hot cakes and waffles upon a hot plate as soon as baked.

BUCKWHEAT CAKES. ✠

1 quart buckwheat flour. 4 tablespoonfuls yeast. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 handful Indian meal. 2 tablespoonfuls molasses—_not_ syrup.

Warm water enough to make a thin batter. Beat very well and set to rise in a warm place. If the batter is in the least sour in the morning, stir in a very little soda dissolved in hot water.

Mix in an earthen crock, and leave some in the bottom each morning—a cupful or so—to serve as sponge for the next night, instead of getting fresh yeast. In cold weather this plan can be successfully pursued for a week or ten days without setting a new supply. Of course you add the usual quantity of flour, &c., every night, and beat up well.

Do not make your cakes too small. Buckwheats should be of generous size. Some put two-thirds buckwheat, one-third oat-meal, omitting the Indian.

FLANNEL CAKES. ✠

1 quart milk. 3 tablespoonfuls yeast. 1 tablespoonful butter, melted. 2 eggs, well beaten. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Flour to make a good batter. Set the rest of the ingredients as a sponge over night, and in the morning add the melted butter and eggs.

CORN-MEAL FLAPJACKS.

1 quart sour buttermilk. 2 eggs, beaten light. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 teaspoonful soda dissolved in hot water. 2 tablespoonfuls molasses. 1 tablespoonful lard, melted. ½ cup flour.

Meal to make a batter a trifle thicker than flannel cakes.

GRAHAM CAKES. ✠

2 cups brown flour. 1 cup white flour. 3 cups sour or buttermilk. 1 full teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 heaping tablespoonful lard. 3 eggs, beaten very light.

If you use sweet milk, add two teaspoonfuls cream-tartar. Bake as soon as they are mixed.

AUNTIE’S CAKES (_without eggs_). ✠

1 quart sour or buttermilk. 2 teaspoonfuls soda (small ones). 1 teaspoonful salt. Flour to make a tolerably thick batter.

Stir until smooth—no longer—and bake immediately.

EGGLESS FLANNEL CAKES.

1 quart milk. ½ teacupful yeast. 2 cups white flour. 1 cup Indian meal. 1 tablespoonful lard, melted. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Set over night, adding the lard in the morning.

GRANDPA’S FAVORITES. ✠

1 quart milk. 2 cups stale bread-crumbs. 1 good handful of flour. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. 3 eggs, well beaten. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Work the bread and milk smooth, stir in the butter and eggs, then the salt, lastly just enough flour to bind the mixture. If too thick, add milk. These are wholesome and good. Take care they do not stick to the griddle.

RISEN BATTER-CAKES.

3 cups white Indian meal. 1 cup white flour. 1 tablespoonful butter, melted and added in the morning. 1 quart milk. 4 tablespoonfuls of yeast. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water, and added in the morning. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Mix over night.

RICE CAKES. ✠

One cup cold boiled rice. One pint flour. One teaspoonful salt. Two eggs, beaten light. Milk to make a tolerably thick batter.

Beat all together well.

HOMINY CAKES. ✠

2 cups fine hominy, boiled and cold. 1 cup white flour. 1 quart milk. 3 eggs, very well beaten. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Beat smooth the hominy, work in the milk and salt, then the flour, lastly the eggs. Bake at once, and keep the mixture well stirred.

CREAM CAKES. ✠

1 pint cream and same quantity of milk, slightly sour. 4 eggs, whites and yolks whipped separately. 1 teaspoonful soda dissolved in boiling water. 1 teaspoonful salt. Flour to make a good batter, well beaten in.

VELVET CAKES.

1 quart new unskimmed milk—half cream and half milk is preferable. 3 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately, and very stiff. 1 teaspoonful salt. Rice flour.

Mix the beaten yolks with the milk, add the salt, then rice flour to make a batter as thick as that for flannel cakes; lastly, whip in the stiffened whites very lightly, and bake immediately.

RISEN WAFFLES.

1 quart milk. 1 heaping quart flour. 5 tablespoonfuls yeast. 2 eggs. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Set the mixture—minus the eggs and butter—over night as a sponge; add these in the morning, and bake in waffle-irons.

“MOTHER’S” WAFFLES. ✠

2 cups milk. 2 eggs. 3 cups flour. 1 teaspoonful cream-tartar. ½ teaspoonful soda. 1 saltspoonful salt. 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Sift the cream-tartar into the flour with the salt. Dissolve the soda in a little hot water. Beat the eggs very well. Add the flour the last thing. If the batter is too stiff, put in more milk.

RICE WAFFLES (_No. 1._) ✠

1 cup boiled rice. 1 pint milk. 2 eggs. Lard, the size of a walnut. ½ teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful cream-tartar. 1 teaspoonful salt. Flour for a thin batter.

RICE WAFFLES (_No. 2._)

1 quart milk. 1 cup cold boiled rice. 3 cups rice flour, or enough for thin batter. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. 3 eggs. 1 teaspoonful salt.

QUICK WAFFLES.

1 pint milk. 3 eggs, beaten very light. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. 1 teaspoonful cream-tartar sifted in the flour. ½ teaspoonful soda. 1 teaspoonful salt. A heaping pint of flour, or enough to make soft batter.

RICE AND CORN-MEAL WAFFLES.

1 cup cold boiled rice. ½ cup white flour, and same of corn-meal. 2 eggs well whipped, and milk to make soft batter. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. ½ teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water. 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Beat the mixture smooth before baking.

Be especially careful in greasing your irons for these waffles, as for all which contain rice.

SHORTCAKE, &C.

_Sunnybank Shortcake_ (_for fruit._) ✠

2 scant quarts flour. 2 tablespoonfuls lard. 3 tablespoonfuls butter. 2½ cups sour or buttermilk. ”Loppered“ cream is still better. 2 eggs, well beaten. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Chop up the shortening in the salted flour, as for pastry. Add the eggs and soda to the milk; put all together, handling as little as may be. Roll lightly and quickly into two sheets, the one intended for the upper crust half an inch thick, the lower less than this. Lay the latter smoothly in a well-greased baking-pan, strew it _thickly_ with raspberries, blackberries, or, what is better yet, huckleberries; sprinkle four or five tablespoonfuls of sugar over these, cover with the thicker crust, and bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes, until nicely browned, but not dried. Eat hot for breakfast with butter and powdered sugar.

If sweet milk be used, add two teaspoonfuls cream-tartar sifted into the dry flour. It should be mixed as soft as can be rolled. This shortcake is very nice made with the common “black-caps” or wild raspberries.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. ✠

1 quart flour. 3 tablespoonfuls butter. 1 _large_ cup sour cream or very rich “loppered” milk. 1 egg. 4 tablespoonfuls white sugar. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water. 1 saltspoonful salt.

Proceed, in mixing and baking, as with the huckleberry short-cake, except that, instead of putting the berries between the crust, you lay one sheet of paste smoothly upon the other, and bake until done. While warm—not hot—separate these. They will come apart easily, just where they were joined. Lay upon the lower a thick coating several deep, of strawberries; sprinkle powdered sugar among and over them; cover with the upper crust. It is best to bake strawberry shortcake in round jelly-cake tins, or round pans a little deeper than these, as they should be sent to table whole, while the hot short-cake is generally cut into square slices, and piled upon a plate.

Strawberry shortcake is esteemed a great delicacy in its season. It is eaten at tea, cut into triangles like pie, and sweet cream poured over each slice, with more sugar sifted over it, if desired.

SCOTCH SHORT-BREAD.

2 lbs. flour. 1 lb. best butter. ½ lb. powdered sugar.

Chop the flour and butter together, having made the latter quite soft by setting it near the fire. Knead in the sugar, roll into a sheet half an inch thick, and cut in shapes with a cake-cutter. Bake upon buttered paper in a shallow tin until crisp and of a delicate yellowish brown.

GRANDMA’S SHORTCAKE.

1 lb. flour, dried and sifted. ¼ lb. butter, and half as much lard. 1 saltspoonful salt. A pinch of soda, thoroughly dissolved in just enough vinegar to cover it, and well worked in.

Enough ice-water to enable you to roll out into paste half an inch thick. Cut into squares, prick with a fork, and bake light brown. Split, butter, and eat while hot.

EASTER BUNS (“_Hot Cross._”) ✠

3 cups sweet milk. 1 cup yeast. Flour to make thick batter.

Set this as a sponge over night. In the morning add—

1 cup sugar. ½ cup butter, melted. ½ nutmeg. 1 saltspoonful salt.

Flour enough to roll out like biscuit. Knead well, and set to rise for five hours. Roll half an inch thick, cut into round cakes, and lay in rows in a buttered baking-pan. When they have stood half an hour, make a cross upon each with a knife, and put instantly into the oven. Bake to a light brown, and brush over with a feather or soft bit of rag, dipped in the white of an egg beaten up stiff with white sugar.

These are the “hot cross-buns” of the “London cries.”

PLAIN BUNS

Are made as above, but not rolled into a sheet. Knead them like biscuit-dough, taking care not to get it too stiff, and after the five-hour rising, work in two or three handfuls of currants which have been previously well washed and dredged with flour. Mould with your hands into round balls, set these closely together in a pan, that they may form a loaf—“one, yet many”—when baked. Let them stand nearly an hour, or until very light; then bake from half to three-quarters of an hour until brown. Wash them over while hot with the beaten egg and sugar.

These are generally eaten cold, or barely warm, and are best the day they are baked.

CAKE.

Use none but the best materials for making cake. If you cannot afford to get good flour, dry white sugar, and the best family butter, make up your mind to go without your cake, and eat plain bread with a clear conscience.

There are no intermediate degrees of quality in eggs. I believe I have said that somewhere else, but it ought to be repeated just here. They should be, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion. A tin whisk or whip is best for beating them. The “Dover Egg-beater” is the best in the market. All kinds of cake are better for having the whites and yolks beaten separately. Beat the former in a large shallow dish until you can cut through the froth with a knife, leaving as clear and distinct an incision as you would in a solid substance. Beat the yolks in an earthenware bowl until they cease to froth, and thicken as if mixed with flour. Have the dishes _cool_—not too cold. It is hard to whip whites stiff in a warm room.

Stir the butter and sugar to a cream. Cakes often fail because this rule is not followed. Beat these as faithfully as you do the eggs, warming the butter very slightly if hard. Use only a silver or wooden spoon in doing this.

Do not use fresh and stale milk in the same cake. It acts as disastrously as a piece of new cloth in an old garment. Sour milk makes a spongy cake; sweet, one closer in grain.

Study the moods and tenses of your oven carefully before essaying a loaf of cake. Confine your early efforts to tea-cakes and the like. Jelly-cake, baked in shallow flat tins, is good practice during the novitiate. Keep the heat steady, and as good at bottom as top.

Streaks in cake are caused by unskilful mixing, too rapid or unequal baking, or a sudden decrease in heat before the cake is quite done.

Don’t delude yourself, and maltreat those who are to eat your cake, by trying to make soda do the whole or most of the duty of eggs. Others have tried it before, with unfortunate results. If curiosity tempt you to the experiment, you had better allay it by buying some sponge-cake at the corner bakery.

Test whether a cake is done by running a clean straw into the thickest part. It should come up clean.

Do not leave the oven-door open, or change the cake from one oven to the other, except in extreme cases. If it harden too fast on the top, cover with paper. It should rise to full height before the crust forms.

Except for gingerbread, use none but white sugar.

Always sift the flour.

Be accurate in your weights and measures.

_There is no royal road to good fortune in cake-making. What is worth doing at all is worth doing well._ There is no disgrace in not having time to mix and bake a cake. You may well be ashamed of yourself if you are too lazy, or careless, or hurried to beat your eggs, cream your butter and sugar, or measure your ingredients.

Yet, sometimes, when you believe you have left no means untried to deserve success, failure is your portion. What then?

If the cake be uneatable, throw it away upon the first beggar-boy who comes for broken meat, and say nothing about it. If streaky or burned, cut out the best parts, make them presentable as possible, and give them to John and the children as a “second-best” treat. Then keep up a brave heart and try again. You _may_ not satisfy yourself in a dozen trials. You certainly _will_ not, if you never make another attempt.

Cake should be wrapped in a thick cloth as soon as cool, and kept in tight tin boxes. Do not cut more at a time than you are likely to use, as it is not good when dry. Jelly-cakes are best set away upon plates, cloths wrapped closely about them, and a box enclosing all.