The Housekeeper.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 40, 16 February 1907, Page 11

The Housekeeper.

HOME HINTS. Boiled Water to Drink. — To majce boiled water relished, fill the kettle with cool water to which a generous pinch of salt has been added, and boil rapidly. Pour it into glass quart jare and set aside to cool. When ready to go into the refrige-< rator, coyer them tightly until used. The result will be a- clear, palatable water, quite different from that usually -used. A Good Colour. — A little blue added to t.lio water in which things of a bad or yellowish tinge are boiled will do much to restore them to their proper colour. Pudding Cloths. -rPlum-pudding cloths should never be washed with soap. Wring them out of boiling water, and hang in the air.to dry. Pudding cloths should be made square, and of thick, soft linen. Uses of. the Potato. — The potato possesses great cleansing properties. Cold potatoes, when used instead of soap, clean the hands well and keep the skin soft. The water m which potatoes have been boiled is> excellent for sponging out the dirt from silk. ' To Avoid Stained Fingers. — To prevent fingers from turning black after paring potatoes or fruit and vegetables put your hands into tepid water and wash them well without soap, then whilst wet rub with pumice-stone until the stains have disappeared, and afterwards wash with eoap and warm water. VARIOUS RECIPES. Almond Chocolate Drops. — Melt a quar-ter-pound cake of chocolate, then pound it to a paste, and mix with it fouT ounces of sifted sugar. Blanch, slieo, and dry in a cool oven two ounces of Jordan almonds ; roll each piece of almond in a little of the chocolate paste, and put them on, sheets of white paper till cold. Takes about one hour. Scotch Bread. — Rub one pound of butter and half a pound of sifted sugar into two pounds of flour, beat up four eggs into it. Make all into a paste', 101 lit out a quarter of an inch thick, and cut it into oblong pieces. Mark the edge round and place comfits on the top. Bake on a tin. Scotch Cake. — Take two pounds flour, ono pound butter, hali a pound caster sugar, and chop the flour atid butter together; cream the butter firfit. then knead in the sugaT. Roll it into a sheet not quite half an inch thick. Cut in squares, and bako a licrht brown. Scotch Oat Cake. — Mix oatmeal and cold Water with a seasoning of salt into rather a stiff dough, which after being well kneaded should bo Tolled into a cake nearly as thin as a half-crown. Then put on a clean, dry, and moderat-ely hot griddle. Bako on orid side till" it 'is juet beginning to 'brown, but it 'must not bo browned. Then take the cake off ' the griddle and lay it on a clean board, baked side upp^most. After 1 the cake has dried and is almost cooled, lift caTefully and slowly toast the unbakfjl side before the fire. The meal should neither bo too coarse nor too fine. Barley Sugar. — Clarify on* pound of whito sugar, and boil it till, when a wooden stick is dipped- into it and then plunged into cold water, the sugar becomes crisp' and will' snap; flavout with lemon juice ; rub a little fresh butter on a marble flab, and pour' the. 'sugar along it in narrow strips ; twist it to a spiral snaps whilst warm ; and wh^n ii; becomes cold marks it a-cross with a knife, and it will break into lengths a's required. Angel Cake. — Sift together six ounces of the best flour and ono saltspoon of enream of tartar, whisk the whites of six opgs to a very stiff froth, tbsn stir with them lightly the flour and six ounces of cneter sugar, and lastly add about hnlf a teaspoonful of vanilla extract. Liiie a round cake- tin with three layers of buttered paper, put in the mixture, and bake, in a slow oven for about forty minutes. As 'this ia n,' very light cake, and would sink urfder tho influence of the slightest cool draught, care must be taken not to "bang the oven door" (which should not bo done at any time), as it has a tendency to cause tho "cinking" of any very light- cake. It is cooked when a skewer stuck into it comes out clean. Turn out on to a • sieve to cool. The top may be iced with an icing made with.tho following: One pound of icing, sugar, the white. of three eggs, two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice, and a pinch ' of cream .ef tartar. Sift the sugaT, put it, into a basin with the cream of tartar, whip the whites stiffly, stir them and the lemon juice smoothly into th<a su^ar till it will coat the back of a spoon Smoothly and thickly — if necessaTy add a little more white of egg or water.. Beat it thoroughly, then coat tho top of the qako and the sides also if necessary. Tho yolks of the nine eggs may' be used up in other diahes. i