Baking with Baking Powder...Cookbook Reviews

If you like to bake from scratch I found these excellent, well-written old cook booklets you can download from Michigan State University’s "little" cookbook collection.  They include most of the recipes that Mom and Grandma made, and that you see in other cookbooks.  They give clear directions, black and white how-to photos, and lots of variations of basic recipes.
These recipes are all for baking using baking powder, and were put out the Calumet…the baking powder Myrna and I still use.  They also have recipes to use your cake flour.
It’s interesting that all the cake recipes indicate right under the title how many eggs are needed…they’re from an era when many housewives had chickens in the back yard, like our Mom and Grandma.  Many of the cooks of these eras made their reputation on wonderful cakes.

You can either view these booklets online or download it free to keep.

The Calumet Treasury Of Home Baking: A Collection Of Plain And Fancy Recipes You'll Want To Bake Again And Again [1979]    
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This is a 23 page booklet that includes everything you can bake with baking powder…biscuits in 10 variations, muffins, pancakes and waffles including crepes and chocolate waffles, shortcakes and coffeecakes, cornbread recipes including cornbread shortcake, and cakes and frostings including Blitz Torte.  If you want to bake from scratch, this is your book!

The Perfect Baking Combination-Calumet Baking Powder And Swans Down Cake Flour  1936 

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This 12 page booklet has recipes for 1, 2 and 3 egg cakes, including appropriate frostings.  At the end of the booklet they recommend the next booklet.

The Calumet Book Of Oven Triumphs!  (1934)  
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If you want to make those favorite recipes Grandma and Mom made they are in this booklet from Calumet.
This 32 page book has some good ideas…I especially liked the idea that you can make your cake or muffin batter and keep it in the refrigerator until ready to bake…they explain how to do it.  The idea is used in their “Miracle Cake” (on page 11) which make 3 different cakes from the same batch of batter…a cupcake recipe, jam squares and an orange layer cake.  The idea is to make the batter, divide it into pans for storing and baking in all 3 ways.  You can bake a new dessert for 3 days in a row!  Great when you have company for the weekend.
The booklet has favorite recipes for butter cakes, sponge cakes and roll cakes, cookies, frostings and fillings, biscuits of all kinds, coffee cakes, cornbreads, muffins, waffles and pancakes.  There are at least several versions in each category…it’s a keeper!