Beat three-quarters of a pound of butter and a pound of sugar to a cream; add three eggs, one saltspoon of salt, a gill of caraway seeds and a teaspoon of powdered mace, stirring all well together to a cream; then pour in a cup of sour milk in which a level teaspoon of baking-soda is stirred. Hold the cup over the mixing bowl while stirring in the soda, as it will foam over the cup. Last of all stir in enough sifted flour to make a light dough, stiff enough to roll thin. Roll on a pastry board well dusted with flour. Cut in round shapes and place in baking-tins well rubbed with flour. Sprinkle a little sugar over the cookies and bake them in a moderate oven till a light brown. When cool, carefully lift the cookies from the pans with a pancake turner.
Put in a mixing bowl one generous cup of butter which has stood in a warm place until quite soft; add two cups of New Orleans molasses; whip these ingredients to a foam; then add two teaspoons of powdered ginger, one teaspoon of powdered cinnamon and grate in half a large nutmeg; stir these spices well through the mixture; then dissolve two teaspoons of baking-soda in half a cup of hot water; stir it through the mixture, and last, stir in enough sifted flour to make a light dough just stiff enough to roll out. Dust the pastry board well with flour and rub the rolling-pin well with flour; then flour the hands well, take out some of the dough, put it on the pastry board, quickly roll it out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch; cut the dough out with a round cutter, with or without scallops, and put them in well-floured baking-pans and bake in a slow oven till a golden brown.
Take a half-pint or a tumbler full of cold water, and mix it with half a pound of powdered white sugar. Sift three pounds of flour into a large pan and cut up in it a pound of butter; rub the butter very fine into the flour. Add a grated nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon, with a wine glass of rose water. Work in the sugar, and make the whole into a stiff dough, adding, if necessary, a little cold water. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of pearl-ash in just enough of warm water to cover it, and mix it in at the last. Take the lump of dough out of the pan, and knead it on the paste-board till it becomes quite light. Then roll it out rather more than half an inch thick, and cut it into square cakes with a jagging iron or with a sharp knife. Stamp the surface of each with a cake print. Lay them in buttered pans, and bake them of a light brown in a brisk oven. They are similar to what are called New Year's cakes, and will keep two or three weeks. In mixing the dough, you may add three table-spoonfuls of carraway seeds.
1 cup of molasses 2 tablespoons of fat 1 teaspoon soda and 1 teaspoon water (hot) 1 cup of flour 1 tablespoon ginger 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt About 3 cups flour
Heat molasses and fat until fat is melted. Sift spices with one cup of flour. Dissolve soda in one teaspoon of hot water. Combine all and add enough more flour to make dough stiff enough to roll out. Bake 12 to 15 minutes in moderate oven.
Use none but the best materials, and all the ingredients should be properly prepared before commencing to mix any of them. Eggs beat up much lighter and sooner by being placed in a cold place sometime before using them; a small pinch of soda sometimes has the same effect. Flour should always be sifted before using it. Cream of tartar or baking powder should be thoroughly mixed with the flour; butter be placed where it will become moderately soft, but not melted in the least, or the cake will be sodden and heavy. Sugar should be rolled and sifted; spices ground or pounded; raisins or any ether fruit looked over and prepared; currants, especially, should be nicely washed, picked, dried in a cloth and then carefully examined, that no pieces of grit or stone may be left amongst them. They should then be laid on a dish before the fire to become thoroughly dry; as, if added damp to the other ingredients, cakes will be liable to be heavy. Eggs should be well beaten, the whites and yolks separately, the yolks to a thick cream, the whites until they are a stiff froth. Always stir the butter and sugar to a cream, then add the beaten yolks, then the milk, the flavoring, then the beaten whites, and, lastly, the flour. If fruit is to be used, measure and dredge with a little sifted flour, stir in gradually and thoroughly. Pour all in well-buttered cake-pans. While the cake is baking care should be taken that no cold air enters the oven, only when necessary to see that the cake is baking properly; the oven should be an even, moderate heat, not too cold or too hot; much depends on this for success. Cake is often spoiled by being looked at too often when first put into the oven. The heat should be tested before the cake is put in, which can be done by throwing on the floor of the oven a tablespoonful of new flour. If the flour takes fire, or assumes a dark brown color, the temperature is too high and the oven must be allowed to cool; if the flour remains white after the lapse of a few seconds, the temperature is too low. When the oven is of the proper temperature the flour will slightly brown and look slightly scorched. Another good way to test the heat, is to drop a few spoonfuls of the cake batter on a small piece of buttered letter paper, and place it in the oven during the finishing of the cake, so that the piece will be baked before putting in the whole cake; if the little drop of cake batter bakes evenly without burning around the edge, it will be safe to put the whole cake in the oven. Then, again, if the oven seems too hot, fold a thick brown paper double, and lay on the bottom of the oven; then after the cake has risen, put a thick brown paper over the top, or butter well a thick white paper and lay carefully over the top. If, after the cake is put in, it seems to bake too fast, put a brown paper loosely over the top of the pan, care being taken that it does not touch the cake, and do not open the door for five minutes at least; the cake should then be quickly examined, and the door shut carefully, or the rush of cold air will cause it to fall. Setting a small dish of hot water in the oven, will also prevent the cake from scorching. To ascertain when the cake is done, run a broom straw into the middle of it; if it comes out clean and smooth, the cake will do to take out. Where the recipe calls for baking powder, and you have none, you can use cream of tartar and soda in proportion to one level teaspoonful of soda, two heaping teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar. When sour milk is called for in the recipe, use only soda. Cakes made with molasses burn much more easily than those made with sugar. Never stir cake after the butter and sugar is creamed, but beat it down from the bottom, up and over; this laps air into the cake batter, and produces little air cells, which cause the dough to puff and swell when it comes in contact with the heat while cooking. When making most cakes, especially sponge cake, the flour should be added by degrees, stirred very slowly and lightly, for if stirred hard and fast it will make it porous and tough. Cakes should be kept in tight tin cake-cans, or earthen jars, in a cool, dry place. Cookies, jumbles, ginger-snaps, etc., require a quick oven; if they become moist or soft by keeping, put again into the oven a few minutes. To remove a cake from a tin after it is baked, so that it will not crack, break or fall, first butter the tin well all around the sides and bottom; then cut a piece of letter paper to exactly fit the tin, butter that on both sides, placing it smoothly on the bottom and sides of the tin. When the cake is baked, let it remain in the tin until it is cold; then set it in the oven a minute, or just long enough to warm the tin through. Remove it from the oven; turn it upside down on your hand, tap the edge of the tin on the table and it will slip out with ease, leaving it whole. If a cake-pan is too shallow for holding the quantity of cake to be baked, for fear of its being so light as to rise above the pan, that can be remedied by thoroughly greasing a piece of thick glazed letter paper with soft butter. Place or fit it around the sides of the buttered tin, allowing it to reach an inch or more above the top. If the oven heat is moderate the butter will preserve the paper from burning.
One cupful and a half of sugar, one cupful of butter, one-half cup of sweet milk, one egg, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, a teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, three tablespoonfuls of English currants or chopped raisins. Mix soft and roll out, using just enough flour to stiffen sufficiently. Cut out with a large cutter, wet the tops with milk and sprinkle sugar over them. Bake on buttered tins in a quick oven.
1/2 cup butter. 1 cup molasses. 1/2 cup brown sugar. 1 teaspoonful ginger. 1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water. Flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon.
Melt the molasses and butter together on the stove, and then take the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe, and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin, and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the bottom of four shallow pans, lift the cookies with the cake-turner and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and sprinkle the tops with sugar.
One cupful of butter, two of sugar, five of flour, a teaspoonful of saleratus, dissolved in four of milk; one egg, flavor to taste. Roll and bake like seed cakes.
One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, a small teacupful of sweet milk, half a grated nutmeg and five cups of sifted flour, in which there has been sifted with it two teaspoonfuls of baking powder; mix into a soft dough and cut into round cakes; roll the dough as thin as pie crust. Bake in a quick oven a light brown. These can be made of sour milk and a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in it, or sour or sweet cream can be used in place of butter. Water cookies made the same as above, using water in place of milk. Water cookies keep longer than milk cookies.
Four cups of sifted flour, or enough for a stiff dough, one teacupful of butter, two cups of sugar, the juice of one lemon and the grated peel from the outside, three eggs whipped very light. Beat thoroughly each ingredient, adding, after all is in, a half teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of milk. Roll out as any cookies and bake a light brown. Use no other wetting.
