Put the soda in the molasses and beat it well in a good-sized bowl,
then put in the melted butter, ginger, salt, and flour, and beat
again, and add last the water, very hot indeed. Have a buttered
tin ready, and put it at once in the oven; when half-baked, it is
well to put a piece of paper over it, as all gingerbread burns easily.

You can add cloves and cinnamon to this rule, and sometimes you
can make it and serve it hot as a pudding, with a sauce of sugar
and water, thickened and flavored.


Ginger Cookies

1/2 cup butter.
1 cup molasses.
1/2 cup brown sugar.
1 teaspoonful ginger.
1 tablespoonful mixed cinnamon and cloves.
1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful of water.
Flour enough to make it so stiff you cannot stir it with a spoon.

Melt the molasses and butter together on the stove, and then take
the saucepan off and add the rest of the things in the recipe,
and turn the dough out on a floured board and roll it very thin,
and cut in circles with a biscuit-cutter. Put a little flour on the
bottom of four shallow pans, lift the cookies with the cake-turner
and lay them in, and put them in the oven. They will bake very
quickly, so you must watch them. When you want these to be extra
nice, put a teaspoonful of mixed cinnamon and cloves in them and
sprinkle the tops with sugar.