Just What She Wanted

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 39, 21 March 1940, Page 45

Just What She Wanted

Dear Aunt Daisy, I had been wondering all the summer about a good way to preserve butter for

winter, and on opening a Listener a few weeks ago was more than pleased to find your method so fully explained. I should like to ask you if a kerosene tin would be suitable for storing the butter in the brine, and if not, what could be used, and where could I get the necessary utensil? I had intended, too, to ask you what to do about streaky butter, but once again some very kind person has anticipated my question in The Listener, and by following the instructions I have been able to make my butter without a streak. I have been making my own soap and cannot understand why, after it has been kept a short time, a white powdery crust forms on the outside, and why sometimes the centre goes a blackish colour. I thought you may be able to help me with these problems. And still one more request. I now have a wood range with a thermometer in the oven. Could you please tell me the correct temperature I should have the oven to cook the following — meat, bread, Christmas cake, sponge cake, small cakes such as rock cakes. Beside the ways for making and storing butter I have found many useful ideas on your page in The Listener for which I wish to thank you.-* Inexperienced" (Pohuenui). How very nice of you to let us know that our kindly correspondents had solved your buttery problems for you! It is encouraging, isn’t it, to find that one’s efforts have been worth while. Yes, I think a kerosene tin would be quite all right to keep the brine in. If one has a "crock" so much the better, but in the old pioneering days the kerosene tin did yeoman service in innumerable ways and no one seemed any the worse. You can buy crocks in most hardware stores, and sometimes a small wooden keg can be got hold of. Someone may write and confirm our recommendation of the kerosene tin. As regards the soap, I should think the trouble is due to wrong balance in the ingredients, or perhaps to overboiling. If you will send your recipe some of our experienced and successful home soap-makers will be sure to " spot" your mistake. I have never made soap myself, but I’ve seen lots of splendid home-made soap all over the country districts, quite equal to the bought article. How very convenient to have a thermometer fitted to your wood range. For roasting meat you need a temperature of 450° when you put it in, and for the first quarter hour or twenty minutes after; then reduce the heat to 350° and even a little less. Bread also needs 450°, and a two-pound loaf will take about an hour or perhaps fifty minutes. If the loaf is browning too much reduce the heat to 420° or 400°. You will get to know your oven’s " little ways"-we all have to find out by experience, just how to. work our own stoves, and all directions are more or less approximate. Some ovens are in a draughty place, some in a more sheltered one; and if we are cooking at a friend’s house we often find that we do not get quite the same results as we do at home. Still, these directions . are broadly correct. Christmas cakes should be put into an oven at 320°, and cooked for about four or five hours according to size and depth of the cake. Sponge cakes need a 370° oven, and take 20 to 25 minutes, or even half an hour. The flour we use nowadays takes much longer to cook than that of

a few years ago, when the same sized sponge would be cooked in 15 minutes. Small cakes are put in at about 400° or 395°, and will take about fifteen minutes to cook.