The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery

them with a clean dry towel, and set them on the back of the fire until you are ready to use them. 218. =Apple Cake.=--Grate a small loaf of stale bread; pare and slice about a quart of apples; lightly butter a pudding mould, dust it well with flour, and then with sugar, and fill it with layers of bread crumbs, apples, and sugar, using a very little cinnamon to flavor it; let the top layer be of crumbs, and put a few bits of butter on it; bake the cake for one hour in a moderate oven; and serve it for dessert. 219. =Fruit Farina.=--Sprinkle three tablespoonfuls of farina into one quart of boiling milk, using a sauce-pan set into a kettle of boiling water, in order to prevent burning; flavor and sweeten to taste, and boil for half an hour, stirring occasionally; then add one pint of any ripe berries, or sliced apples, and boil until the fruit is cooked, about twenty minutes: the pudding may be boiled in a mould or a cloth after the fruit is added. It should be served with powdered sugar. 220. =Plain Cookies.=--Beat one egg with one cup of sugar to a cream, work two ounces of butter soft, and beat it with the egg and sugar, grate in quarter of a nutmeg, add one gill of milk, and prepared flour enough to make a sufficiently stiff paste to roll out about a pound. Roll an eighth of an inch thick, cut out with a biscuit cutter, or an inverted cup, and lay on a floured baking pan, and bake about twenty minutes in a moderate oven. 221. =Plain Gingerbread.=--Partly melt one ounce of butter, stir it into half a pint of molasses, with a tablespoonful of ground ginger, and half a pint of boiling water, stir in smoothly half a pound of prepared flour, and pour the batter into a buttered baking pan; bake it about half an hour in a quick oven, trying it with a broom straw, at the end of twenty minutes; as soon as the straw passes