USEFUL RECIPES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 34, 3 May 1927, Page 5

USEFUL RECIPES

STRAWBERRY AND CUSTARD PUDDING Take 4oz. of finely grated bread crumbs. Place 4 tablespoons of strawberry jam in a buttered pie- dish, cover this with the bread crumbs and add some nicely flavoured custard made with a pint of milk, 2 eggs and a little sugar. Stir the custard over the fire till it begins to thicken, pour it gradually upon the bread crumbs, and bake the pudding in a heated oven. Bake half an hour. FRUIT CAKE Cream, 1 cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar, then add 4 well-beaten eggs. Beat all well together, then add £lb. sultanas, 11b. seeded raisins, 41b. preserved cherries, 1 piece of peel. Stir in slowly 2\ cups of self-raising flour, that has been well sifted, with a pinch of salt. Then add a wine-glass of brandy. Bake for 2\ hours. RICH BROWN COFFEE CAKE 6oz. of self-raising flour, or plain flour and 2 teaspoon of baking powder and pinch of salt, 2 eggs, 41b. of castor sugar, 41b. of butter, 1 tablespoonful of coffee essence blended with 2 dessertspoons of milk. Beat butter and sugar to cream, add well-beaten eggs, then flour, and mix with coffee and' milk. Bake in moderate oven. Icing to be put on when cake is nearly cold: 1 large dessertspoonful of butter and coffee essence, 3 well-heaped tablespoons of rolled icing sugar, creamed well together. Spread roughly on cake and sprinkle with chopped nuts. This recipe makes very nice small cakes also. FROSTED CHERRIES Carefully choose unbruised cherries and wash them well. Dip the fruit into the beaten white of an egg, drain, then dip into powdered sugar. Place an absorbent paper on a dish and chill.

COCOANUT BUNS Half-pound flour, a dessertspoonful of baking powder, 3oz of castor sugar, 3oz of butter, 20oz of finely grated cocoanut, 2 eggs. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, add the wellbeaten eggs, cocoanut and flour mixed with the baking powder. Beat all the time. Bake in patty pans in a rather quick oven. If desired garnish each bun and sift a little castor sugar over. COLD FRUIT PUDDING \\ pints of milk, 1 packet of gelatine (l§oz), 3 dessertspoons of cocoa, 1 cupful of sugar, £lb. raisins, Jib. of currants, 41b. of dates, 41b. of mixed peel, a few almonds, pinch of salt, h teaspoonful brandy, 3 eggs. Dissolve gelatine in a little mill-. Place milk, cocoa, gelatine, sugar and salt on ihe fire and stir until quite hot; do not boil. Take pot off fire and add wellbeaten yolks of eggs, Put back on fire and stir one minute. Put the pot in cool place. When quite cold add the brandy and fruit and nuts. Stir well and then pour into a wet mould. When set turn out on a plate and place stiffly beaten whites of eggs around it. COLD MEAT MINCE Two beetroots or tomatoes, minced cold mutton or beef, cup hot water, and as much gelatine as required to set the quantity of meat; 2 tablespoons tomato sauce, 4 teaspoon mace, salt to taste. Cut beetroot or tomato thin, and place on the bottom of dish. Have cold meat in basin, and- add sauce, mace and salt; then mix all together with hot water, in which gelatine has been well dissolved. Put meat on the beetroot, set aside until quite cold and firm, then turn out on to dish. This cuts beautifully. FISH AU GRATIN For a dish for two you need a breakfast cup of some white cooked fish. This should be flaked and every par-

ticle of skin and bone carefully removed. Make the usual quantity of white sauce for two—about half a pint —remembering that it is long slow cooking which gives to white sauce that delicious creamy flavour it so often lacks. Make it with half fish stock and half milk. Grease the casserole in which the fish is to be actually served and coat it all round with breadcrumbs lightly browned in a frying pan. Now put in the fish and cover entirely with your sauce, which should have been thinned down a little with milk or stock if it had got too solid with standing. Sprinkle the top fairly thickly with more browned crumbs and scatter about a tablespoonful of grated cheese all over the surface. Tiny bits of butter should be distributed here and there on the top before the dish is put into a hot oven. Leave it in only long enough to heat thoroughly—not too long, or it will harden—and serve immediately it is ready. INSPIRATION FROM THE JUNGLE China shops of late seem to have gone to the jungle for inspiration. First of all there are porcelain parrots on the circular perches either to hang in the window and charm the passerby, or to be suspended from an archway or ceiling. Tall stands are sometimes used on which to pose a gaily coloured macaw or paraquet, and they look very alluring in front of a wall panel of Chinese cult. For an arch between two rooms there are little birdcages of light wood with a china canary or lovebird perched within. Ail sorts of birds and beasts provide subjects for the newest silkcovered wire shades for electric lights. Anything may hang illuminated in the air, from a fish to a crocodile. The silk is put on in some plain colour and afterwards tinted by hand in appropriate tones. Lamps in the form of a blinking owl or fire-eyed panther look well on a side table.