Useful Cooking Hints

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20731, 19 May 1937, Page 10

Useful Cooking Hints

Recommended Recipes

Mashed potatoes will be greatly improved if a small piece of butter and a little hot milk be added. Cold milk will tend to make the potatoes heavy.

Fat for frying should be “boiling”— that is, perfectly still, with a faint blue smoke arising from it, before food is put in. If bubbling, it indicates that there is moisture present, and this will spoil the flavour and crispness of the food fried.

When beating up whites of eggs, stand in a cool place and add a pinch of salt to the whites —this makes them stiffen more quickly.

Before turning out boiled or steamed puddings, let them stand a minute or two so that the mixture will shrink slightly from the sides of the basin.

If the mould containing a jelly be plunged into hot water for a minute or two, the jelly will turn out easily. # # w • Save all the lemon and grange peel, dry in a warm oven, then grate and bottle. It will make excellent flavouring for puddings and cakes. All the pith (the white substance immediately beneath the rind) must be removed, as it is very bitter. * * * * Always sieve bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar before using it, as it is apt to get lumpy when stored. This Sponge Stays Fresh. Three eggs, one and a-quarter breakfast cups flour, two and a-half ounces butter, half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, one teaspoon cream of tartar, one breakfast cup sugar, half breakfast cup boiling water. Beat the eggs and sugar till the sugar dissolves add the flour and rising and lastly the butter dissolved in boiling water and while still boiling. Bake for 17 minutes in a moderately hot oven. This recipe is but a foundation. For orange sponge, substitute some of the liquid for orange juice and add the grated rind of an orange. Lemon sponges can be made in the same way. Chocolate or cocoa cakes can be made also in the same way by cooking the cocoa or chocolate in the boiling water—one tablespoon of cocoa is a good measure. This recipe makes two good-sized round and these can be split and filled separately, or used in the usual way with filling in between, icing on top, and decorations if you want it to look “nobby.” The decorations need not take more than a few minutes and can be very effective. Suggestions are: Cherries either green, red or golden; coloured crystallised pineapple; nuts chopped or whole; roasted blanched almonds, pistachio nuts, angelica or flower petals. • • • • Wholemeal Scones. The scones I like to offer are the ones with wholemeal, and really they are ever so much nicer and have a fuller flavour. One breakfast cup flour, one breakfast cup wholemeal, one dessertspoon brown sugar, one teacup dates or raisins, two teaspoons baking powder, two ounces butter, pinch of salt, sufficient milk to mix to a fairly stiff dough. Sift the flour; mix all the dry ingredients together and rub in the butter. Add the dates. Mix to a fairly stiff dough with the milk. Roll out, cut into shapes, place on a cold oven tray and bake in a hot oven for ten minutes.