PLAIN GINGERBREAD.

Two cups of molasses; one of sour milk; half a cup of lard or drippings; four cups of flour; two teaspoonfuls of ginger, and one of cinnamon; half a teaspoonful of salt; one egg, and a teaspoonful of soda.

Mix molasses and shortening; add the spice and egg, then the milk, and last the flour, with soda sifted in it.  Bake at once in a sheet about an inch thick for half an hour.  Try with a broom-straw.  Good hot for lunch with chocolate.  A plain cooky is made by adding flour enough to roll out.  The egg may be omitted.

JUMBLES.

The richest jumbles are made from either the rule for Pound or Dover Cake, with flour enough added to roll out.  The Cup-Cake rule makes good but plainer ones.  Make rings, either by cutting in long strips and joining the ends, or by using a large and small cutter.  Sift sugar over the top, and bake a delicate brown.  By adding a large spoonful of yellow ginger, any of these rules become hard sugar-gingerbread, and all will keep for a long time.

DROP CAKES.

Any of the rules last mentioned become drop cakes by buttering muffin-tins or tin sheets, and dropping a teaspoonful of these mixtures into them.  If on sheets, let them be two inches apart.  Sift sugar over the top, and bake in a quick oven.  They are done as soon as brown.

CREAM CAKES.

One pint of boiling water in a saucepan.  Melt in it a piece of butter the size of an egg.  Add half a teaspoonful of salt.  While still boiling, stir in one large cup of flour, and cook for three minutes.  Take from the fire; cool ten minutes; then break in, one by one, six eggs, and beat till smooth.  Have muffin-pans buttered, or large baking-sheets.  Drop a spoonful of the mixture on them, allowing room to spread, and bake half an hour in a quick oven.  Cool on a sieve, and, when cool, fill with a cream made as below.

FILLING FOR CREAM CAKES.

One pint of milk, one cup of sugar, two eggs, half a cup of flour, and a piece of butter the size of a walnut.

Mix the sugar and flour, add the beaten eggs, and beat all till smooth.  Stir into the boiling milk with a teaspoonful of salt, and boil for fifteen minutes.  When cold, add a teaspoonful of vanilla or lemon.  Make a slit in each cake, and fill with the cream.  Corn-starch may be used instead of flour.  This makes a very nice filling for plain cup cake baked on jelly-cake tins.

MERINGUES, OR KISSES.

Whites of three eggs beaten to a stiff froth; quarter of a pound of sifted powdered sugar; a few drops of vanilla.