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Buckwheat Cakes

2 pounds of buck wheat flour. 2 quarts of water. 1 cupful of yeast. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 large basting-spoonful of syrup. 1 large basting-spoonful of melted lard.

Make a sponge or batter, overnight, with the warm water, yeast and flour. In the morning add the enriching ingredients, beat up well and bake thin cakes on a griddle The great majority of people prefer buck wheat cakes with about a fifth part corn meal mixed with the buckwheat. And twice as much shortening as above will please them better. No eggs need ever be used with buckwheat. After the first mixing with yeast some of the batter may be saved and used instead of yeast for several succeeding days. A teaspoonful of carbonate of soda may then be needed to be mixed in the batter n the morning, but cakes made that way, for some reason, are more palatable than with sweet yeast-care being taken to proportion the soda to the degree of slight sourness. The neatest way to grease the cake griddle is with a piece of ham rind cut off large for the purpose, and the batter should be poured from a pitcher, or a can having a coffee pot spout.

Where the smoke and smell is an objection the cakes can be baked just as well without grease, not only on soapstone griddles but on iron ones as well, if they be rubbed with a cloth after every baking, to keep them polished. We do not insist on the adoption of the cleaner plan, because cakes half fried are eaten with a better relish than the others-and hotel cooks are not expected to be reformers.

Goffers are gaufres, and they are wafers, or thin cakes, whence waffles, which are, or used to be, called also soft wafers. But thin cakes were of more than one sort. Almond gaufres and some others are a king of candy cakes, thin and crisp. Flemish gaufres are our waffles, but made so rich that they are used as a pastry dish for dinner with jellies and marmalades. They are also used in all their richness for breakfast, where expense is no object, but can hardly come under the head of breakfast bread in ordinary. The next receipt is the happy mean which just suits.