Both recipes use baking powder, which means as few strokes as possible to mix the ingredients, then quickly into their pans and into the oven. The shortcake should go into a greased and floured pan; the muffins into, well, muffin tins, either greased and floured or lined with cupcake papers.
Recipes were simpler in those days a hundred years ago: just the ingredients, and the woman with experience in the kitchen knew how hot the oven should be for whatever she was baking. There were no thermostats or temperature gauges on ovens in those days. These should bake just fine in a 350-degree oven. Start with about 20 minutes for the shortcake, 15 for the muffins. Test for doneness with a wooden toothpick. If it comes out clean or with baked crumbs, they're done. If there's batter on the toothpick, bake a little longer and retest.
And about the carpet cleaning.... Perhaps this "recipe" was copied before there were vacuum cleaners, or before my grandmother's home had a vacuum cleaner. In humid Ohio summers, I wouldn't want to add any more moisture to our already sticky environment but you might like to try this if you live in a dryer climate.
Short Cake
2 cups flour.
1/2 teaspoon Salt
4 teaspoon B. Powder
2 tablespoon Sugar.
3/4 cup Milk.
3 tablespoon
Shortening.
Muffins
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups flour.
2 tablespoon Sugar.
2 teaspoon baking P.
2 eggs.
1/2 teaspoon Salt.
1 cup Milk.
To Brighten Carpet
A carpet is
freshened & improved
by brushing it
with a cloth
wrung out of a
mixture of Vinegar
and water.
Unaltered photo of strawberries courtesy of Darwin Bell : Darwin Bell via photopin cc at Creative Commons.
--Nancy.
© 2014 Copyright by Nancy Messier
.
How fun it is to see old family recipes! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteIt is fun, Jana. I just need to get busy and try these recipes -- and then I could post photos and accurate baking details.
DeleteThis could be one my grandmother's recipes scrawled on scraps of paper or pages from some random notebook. And about that "hot oven," my mother-in-law gave me a copy of her favorite cookbook that has a section of definitions like "hot oven" with corresponding temperatures.
ReplyDeleteI don't think recipe cards were regularly used during the time when my grandmother copied these recipes. In those time paper may not have been as prevalent, inexpensive, and as easily obtained as it is today so they probably used whatever was available. We take paper for granted these days, don't you think?
DeleteI think I have an older cookbook of my mother's where there's an explanation or chart of oven temperatures and terms. The thing is, if they didn't have thermometers, how would they have been able to know the temperature of the oven?
Nancy,
ReplyDeleteI want to let you know that two of your blog posts are listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/06/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-june-13-2014.html
Have a wonderful weekend!
Thank you so much, Jana. I appreciate my posts being included in your Fab Finds.
DeleteNancy, I'm a little late in telling you how much I enjoyed this post. Got a nice chuckle out of it, and I'm glad Jana selected it as one of her Fab Finds for June 13th. Oh, and we are still waiting for the local strawberries to be ripe...maybe in August, as it's now 59 and cold today!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Barbara. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Our weather's cold here in Ohio, too. After such a cold weather I expected a hot summer -- but maybe not.
Delete