1 cup butter or lard - 8 ounces, 1 cup sugar - 8 ounces.

1 cup water.

2 teaspoons baking powder 6 cups flour - pounds

Mix butter and sugar together, then the water (not too cold) then the flour with the powder in it. The softer the dough can be handled the better the cakes will be. Roll out thin, sift granulated sugar over, run the rolling pin over again to make the sugar stick; cut out and bake.

Note. - In the bakeries baking-powder means pulverized carbonate of ammonia. It is the most effective agent for raising cakes because it all evaporates with great rapidity and great force when the substance it is incorporated with is exposed to the action of heat

In making sugar cakes or cookies some practice is necessary to produce them properly for the reason that the softness of the butter or lard used makes a difference in the amount of flour that will be taken up in making them out, and if too much flour the cakes come out like common biscuits, so that with the same receipt to work by one person will make a sugar cake twice as good as another. Another thing to be watched is the amount of baking powder - whether the common household baking powder or ammonia it all at aces the sime - because too much destroys the cakes by making them too light, full of holes and spread all over the pans, while with too little or with weak powder they remain harder than crackers.