e: mix the butter and lard well in
the flour; beat the eggs light in a pint bowl, and fill it up with
cold milk; then pour it gradually into the flour; add a teaspoonful of
salt; work it for eight or ten minutes only: cut the dough with a
knife to the size you wish it; roll them into cakes about the size of
a breakfast plate, and bake in a quick oven.

2117. To Make Gingerbread Cake.

Take one pound and a half of treacle; one and a half ounces of ground
ginger; half an ounce of caraway seeds; two ounces of allspice; four
ounces of orange peel, shred fine; half a pound of sweet butter; six
ounces of blanched almonds; one pound of honey; and one and a half
ounces of carbonate of soda; with as much fine flour as makes a dough
of moderate consistence.

_Directions for making._ Make a pit in five pounds of flour; then pour
in the treacle, and all the other ingredients, creaming the butter;
then mix them altogether into a dough; work it well; then put in three
quarters of an ounce of tartaric acid, and put the dough into a
buttered pan, and bake for two hours in a cool oven. To know when it
is ready, plunge a fork into it, and if it comes out sticky, put the
cake in the oven again; if not it is ready. This is a good and simple
test, which may be resorted to in baking bread and all kinds of cakes.

2118. Pic-Nic Biscuits.

Take two ounces of fresh butter, and well work it with a pound of
flour. Mix thoroughly with it half a saltspoonful of pure carbonate of
soda, two ounces of sugar; mingle thoroughly with the flour, make up
the paste with spoonfuls of milk; it will require scarcely a quarter
of a pint. Knead smooth, roll a quarter of an inch thick, cut in
rounds about the size of the top of a small wineglass; roll these out
thin, prick them well, lay them on lightly floured tins, and bake in a
gentle oven until crisp. When cold put into dry canisters. Thin cream
used instead of milk, in the mixture will enrich the biscuits. To
obtain variety caraway seeds or ginger can be added at pleasure.

[A DUEL IS FOLLY PLAYING AT MURDER.]

2119. Ginger Biscuits and Cakes.

Work into small crumbs three ounces of butter, two pounds of flour,
and three ounces of powdered sugar and two of ginger, in fine powder;
knead into a stiff paste, with new milk; roll thin, cut out with a
cutter: bake in a slow oven until crisp through;