CAKES AND BREAD

very good baking-powder is made by mixing an ounce of tar- taric acid with an ounce and a half of bicarbonate of soda, and an ounce and a half of arrowroot. The baking powdei should be kept very dry.

A very nice way of making home-made cakes is to use some dough, which can be procured from the baker's. Suppose you have a quartern of dough, put it in a basin, cover it over with a cloth^ and put it in front of the fire to rise, then spread it on a floured pastry-board, slice it up, and work in half a pound of fresh butter, half a pound of moist sugar, six eggs, a tea- spoonful of salt, and half an ounce of caraway seeds. When all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, place them in two or more well-buttered tins or hoops, and let them stand in front of the fire a little while before they are placed in the oven. Cakes can be flavoured with a variety of spices, such as cin- namon, mace, nutmeg, or powdered coriander seeds. These last are always used to give a special flavour to hot cross buns.

Bread. — Home-made bread is not so much used now as it was years back. Most housekeepers have found by experience that it is a waste both of time and money. There are very few houses among the middle classes which possess an oven capable of competing with any chance of success with a baker's oven. There are, however, many vegetarians who believe in what is called whole-meal bread. A good deal of the whole- meal bread sold as such has been found to be adulterated with substances very unwholesome to ordinary stomachs. We may mention saw-dust as one of the ingredients used for the pur- pose. Again, if you attempt to make whole-meal bread into loaves, you will find great difliculty in baking the loaves. This whole-meal is a very slow conductor of heat, and the result will probably be that the outside of the loaf will be very hard while the inside will be too underdone to be eaten. Conse- quently, should you wish to have home-made whole-meal bread, it is far best to bake it in the form of a tea-cake or flat-cake. We cannot do better, in conclusion, than quote what Sir Henry Thompson says on this subject: — ''The following recipe," he says, ''will be found successful, probably, after a trial or two, in producing excellent, light, friable, and most palatable bread : To two pounds of coarsely ground or crushed whole-meal, add half a pound of fine. flour and a suflicient quantity of

2g2 VEGETARIAN CCOKEEY.

baking powder and salt; when these are well mixed, rub in two o5n?es of butter, and make into dough with half milk and water, or with all milk if preferred. Make rapidly into flat cakes like 'tea-cakes,' and bake without delay in a quick oven leaving them afterwards to finish thoroughly at a lower temperature The butter and milk supply fatty matters, m which the wheat is somewhat deficient; all the saline and mineral matters of the husk are retained ; and thus a more nutritive form of bread cannot be made. Moreover, it retains the natural flavour of the wheat, in place of the insipidity which is characteristic of fine flour, although it is indisputable that bread produced from the latter, especially m Paris and Vienna, is unrivalled for delicacy, texture, and colour. Whole meal may be bought; but mills are now cheaply made for home use, and wheat may be ground to any degree of coarse- ness desired."