A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl Part 16

Sometimes you can put a cup of washed raisins into the bread-crumbs and milk, and mix in the other things; sometimes you can put in a cup of chopped almonds, or a little preserved ginger. Orange marmalade is especially nice on bread pudding.

Orange Pudding

Make just like Lemon Pudding, but use three oranges instead of two lemons.

Cabinet Pudding

1 pint of milk.

Yolks of three eggs.

3 tablespoonfuls of sugar.

1 saltspoonful of salt.

Beat the eggs, add the sugar, and stir them into the milk, which must be very hot but not boiling; stir till it thickens, and then take it from the fire. Put a layer of washed raisins in the bottom of a mould, then a layer of slices of stale cake or lady-fingers, then more raisins around the edge of the mould, and more cake, till the mould is full. Pour the custard over very slowly, so the cake will soak well, and bake in a pan of water in the oven for an hour. This pudding is to be eaten hot, with any sauce you like, such as Foamy Sauce.

Cut-up figs are nice to use with the raisins, and chopped nuts are a delicious addition, dropped between the layers of the cake.

Cottage Pudding

1 egg.

1/2 cup of sugar.

1/2 cup of milk.

1 1/2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

1 cup of flour.

1 tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter.

Beat the yolk of the egg light, add the sugar and b.u.t.ter mixed, then put in the milk, the flour, the whites of the eggs beaten stiff, and last of all the baking-powder, and stir it up well. Put in a greased pan and bake nearly half an hour. If you want this very nice, put in half a cup of chopped figs, mixed with part of the flour.

Serve with Foamy Sauce.

Prune Whips

This was a cooking-school rule which the Pretty Aunt put in, because she said it was the best sort of pudding for little girls to make.

1 tablespoonful of powdered sugar.

2 tablespoonfuls stewed prunes.

White of one egg.

Cook the prunes till soft, take out the stones, and mash the prunes fine. Beat the white of the egg very stiff, mix in the sugar and prunes, and bake in small b.u.t.tered dishes. Serve hot or cold, with cream.

Junket

1 junket tablet.

1 quart milk.

1/2 cup sugar.

1 teaspoonful vanilla.

Break up the junket tablet into small pieces, and put them into a tablespoonful of water to dissolve. Put the sugar into the milk with the vanilla, and stir till it is dissolved. Warm the milk a little, but only till it is as warm as your finger, so that if you try it by touching it with the tip, you do not feel it at all as colder or warmer. Then quickly turn in the water with the tablet melted in it, stirring it only once, and pour immediately into small cups on the table. These must stand for half and hour without being moved, and then the junket will be stiff, and the cups can be put in the ice-box. In winter you must warm the cups till they are like the milk. This is very nice with a spoonful of whipped cream on each cup, and bits of preserved ginger or of jelly on it.

Strawberry Shortcake

Margaret's mother called this the Thousand Mile Shortcake, because she sent so far for the recipe to the place where she had once eaten it, when she thought it the best she had ever tasted.

1 pint flour.

1/2 cup b.u.t.ter.

1 egg.

1 teaspoonful baking-powder.

1/2 cup milk.

1 saltspoonful of salt.

Mix the baking-powder and salt with the flour and sift all together.

The b.u.t.ter should stand on the kitchen table till it is warm and ready to melt, when it may be mixed in with a spoon, and then the egg, well beaten, and the milk.

Divide the dough into halves; put one in a round biscuit-tin, b.u.t.ter it, and lay the other half on top, evenly. Bake a light brown; when you take it out of the oven, let it cool, and then lift the layer apart. Mash the berries, keeping out some of the biggest ones for the top of the cake, and put on the bottom layer; put a small half-cup of powdered sugar on them, and put the top layer on.

Dust this over with sugar till it is white, and set the large berries about on it, or cover the top with whipped cream and put the berries on this.

Cake Shortcake

1 small cup sugar.

1/2 cup b.u.t.ter.

1 cup cold water.

1 egg.

2 cups flour.

3 teaspoonfuls baking-powder.

Rub the b.u.t.ter and sugar to a cream; sift the flour and baking-powder together; beat the egg stiff without separating; put the egg with the sugar and b.u.t.ter, add the water and flour in turn, a little at a time, stirring steadily; bake in two layer-tins. Put crushed berries between, and whole berries on top.

Tiny field strawberries make the most delicious shortcake of all.

Peach Shortcake

Make either of the rules above, and put mashed and sweetened peaches between the layers. Slice evenly about four more, and arrange these on top, making a ring of them overlapping all around the edge, and laying them inside in the same way. Sugar well, and serve with whipped cream or a pitcher of plain cream.

Lemon Jelly

1/2 box gelatine.

1/2 cup cold water.

2 cups boiling water.

1 cup sugar.

Juice of three lemons, and three sc.r.a.pings of the yellow rind.