What and how much.

Flour

Baking powder

Salt

Eggs

Milk

Butter or butter substitute

Sugar, if desired

1 pint

3 teaspoonfuls

1/2 teaspoonful

2 or 1

1 cup

I tablespoonful

1 tablespoonful

Utensils. For baking use greased muffin pan. Bake half an hour.

How to make. Sift together the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs, without separating the yolk and white, and stir the eggs and milk together. Pour the liquid gradually into the flour, first stirring, then beating. Melt the butter or other shortening, and beat it into the batter.

This recipe may be varied in many ways :

(a) Use 1/2 cup cooked cereal in place of an equal quantity of flour.

Will you change the amount of wetting?

(b) One cup fine white corn meal, or 1/2 cup yellow meal, may be used in place of equal quantities of flour. Corn meal absorbs more water than white flour.

What change in the wetting?

The oven should be the temperature for bread, and the baking at least 3/4 of an hour.

(c) One cup graham or rye meal may be used in place of an equal quantity of flour.

Baking Powder Or Sour Milk And Soda Biscuit

What and how much. Flour

Baking powder Salt

Butter or butter substitute Milk

1 pint

3 teaspoonfuls

1/2 teaspoonful

1 or 2 tablespoonfuls

1 scant cup

Fig. 80. - A plate of muffins for breakfast or supper.

If you use sour milk and soda, take a scant teaspoonful of soda.

Utensils. For shaping, use molding board, rolling pin, and biscuit cutter.

For baking, use an iron sheet or pan sprinkled with flour. Test the oven with a ten-second count or golden brown paper, in five minutes. This would be about 425°F. Bake from twenty minutes to half an hour.

How to make. Sift together the dry ingredients. Cut in or chop in the butter. Add the wetting slowly.

To shape. Dust the board with flour, turn out the dough, dredge with flour, pat into a firm mass, and then pat or lightly roll out to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out with a cutter dipped in flour. (A small glass or the top of a round tin can may be used.)

It saves time to mix the biscuit soft enough to drop from a spoon.

Variations. Add I egg. This makes a delicious biscuit. Sprinkle the top with granulated sugar, and spice. Dried currants, washed and dredged with flour, may be laid on the top.

Increase the butter to two or three tablespoonfuls and decrease the wetting; the mixture becomes shortcake. This is the mixture to use for the true strawberry shortcake. Many other fruits may be used, both uncooked and cooked.

Fig. 81 - A plate of baking powder biscuit, light and baked well.

The class had learned how to grease their muffin pans and cups neatly, to fill each little pan or cup half full, and to bake them in a quicker oven than for loaf bread.

A table for baking will be found on page 296.

We shall not learn to bake properly until we have thermometers for our ovens; no other test can be exact. A good general rule in baking is this: with batters and doughs, the larger the portion, the slower the oven. A cooky can be baked in a "quicker," or hotter, oven than a muffin, and a muffin or small cake in a quicker oven than a loaf. Cakes that have many eggs in them, like sponge cake and angel cake made only with the whites, are more tender baked in a slow oven. The reason for this you will understand because we have studied the egg in Lesson 19.

On the day of the exhibit the quick breads were prettily displayed upon plates on a long table, and the recipes were written on the board. Miss Travers was there; but before she began her talk, the pupils themselves performed the experiments given in Marjorie's notebook, page 298, and gave little talks themselves about baking powder. One girl talked while another performed the experiment, and what they said was something like this :

Making quick breads light. We can do this, partly, by beating air into eggs and putting the eggs into the batter. In popovers the steam puffs up the crust. But why do we use sour milk and soda, or molasses and soda, or cream of tartar and soda, or baking powder?

Agnes Groves will pour some boiling water on a mixture of cream of tartar and soda. See how it bubbles ! If we catch the gas in a small bottle and touch a match to it, see, - the match goes out. It is carbon dioxide gas. Here is a saucer that held a teaspoonful of cream of tartar and 1/2 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in water, and the water has evaporated. See the white powder left behind. It does not taste like the cream of tartar nor the soda; and you could never guess what it is ! It is Rochelle salts; and so every time we eat a biscuit made light with cream of tartar, we take a little dose of Rochelle salts.1

This is what the chemists say: whenever you put soda, or bicarbonate of soda, with an acid, this gas is formed, and some substance is left behind in the food, - one kind of thing from sour milk, another from cream of tartar, and so on. Some of the best baking powders are made with cream of tartar and soda with a little starch mixed in to keep the two substances from working on each other. An acid phosphate powder also is on the market.

The Mothers Club and other guests were much' pleased with the little talks and the experiments. Then Miss Travers was ready to answer questions. Here are a few of them :

Question. What kind of baking powder would you buy? Answer. Not the cheapest, for they may have alum instead of cream of tartar, and too much starch or flour.

1 Rochelle salts is a medicine.

Question. Is it cheaper to buy or to make the baking powder?

Answer. It may cost a little less to make it, but in the factory, where it is put up, everything is weighed exactly and thoroughly mixed; you get a better product and it is just as economical.

Question. Isn't quick bread just as wholesome as yeast bread?

Answer. Not when it is eaten just baked, and not for all the time.

Question. But people always want quick breads hot. What can you do?

Answer. Try reheating them. This makes the crust a little crisper, and the crumb drier, and less pasty to be digested. Then, this saves work at the time of the meal, often. If they seem too dry, moisten the crust a little before reheating in the oven.

Question. I used some canned molasses with soda for my gingerbread, and the bread was heavy. What was the matter?

Answer. Canned molasses has no acid in it, and you should use baking powder with it.

The exhibit was ended by serving the quick breads and simple cakes with cocoa for refreshment. Some of the biscuits were used for little shortcakes; that is, were split and filled with some fruit that the girls had canned. Thin baking-powder biscuit make very nice sandwiches to serve at any entertainment.

Exercises And Problems

1. Try the experiments on page 298.

2. Explain how baking powder makes a batter light.

3. Explain why puffovers do puff over.

4. Make tests with pieces of white paper, and paste them in your cook book, with the time against each one.

5. Explain why an oven for cookies can be hotter than for a loaf.