COLD DESSERTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 91, 21 March 1941, Page 45

COLD DESSERTS

VERY sensible subject for this week’s article, don’t you think? In hot weather one should have a salad for luncheon -a mixed fruit and vegetable salad with mayonnaise, wholemeal bread and butter, and cheese, and a cup of good coffee-but when the day’s work is over, and dinner time is here, one needs a nice tasty and hot first courseperhaps roasted or grilled meat, or curried fresh mutton, and two or three carefully steamed vegetables, and then a cold delicious dessert. Lucky owners of refrigerators have the best chance, of course; but we can all manage pretty well with a cool safe, and by making up the dish twentyfour hours ahead. With a Packet of Jelly Crystals The possibilities in a packet of jelly crystals are endless. One does not merely dissolve them in hot water and set the jelly-though that is quite nice if one is pushed for time, and can be served chopped up and put into pretty little individual serving dishes or glasses, with a spoonful of flavoured custard on top, and a sprinkling of nutmeg-very nice, too. But various fruits can be added to the jelly, and condensed milk and so on. Try some of these ideas. Banana Sparkles This is original, being devised by an Aucklander. Make a pint of good, thick custard, and also make up one packet of strawberry jelly, and one of lime jelly. Put all away to set-in fact, these may all be made overnight; and the custard may be made with custard powder if eggs are scare, as they generally are at Christmas time. Next day, cut up six bananas, and sprinkle well with lemon juice and castor sugar. Beat each jelly with a fork until it is like sparkling crystals. Put into a deep glass bowl first a layer of the strawberry jelly, then a thick layer of bananas, then a layer of the cold custard. Next comes a layer of the lime "sparkles," the rest of the bananas, the rest of the custard, and then the remainder of the strawberry, with the lime "sparkles" all over the tip. You will be surprised what a pretty and delicious dish this makes. Melrose Cream Make about a pint of custard, fairly stiff, also a red jelly and a yellow onean orange and a cherry (or red currant) jelly are suitable. When it is just beginning to set, take a glass dish and put alternate layers of cold custard and red and yellow jellies until the dish is full. Decorate with fruit and put aside to set. This can be cut in slices when set.

Raspberry Flan Make and cook your flan. Here is a good recipe for it: 8 ozs. flour, 6 ozs. butter, 1 tablespoon castor sugar, 1 egg yolk, and just half a teaspoon of baking powder. Rub the butter into the flour, baking powder and sugar, and mix with the egg yolk and a very little water. Bake in a sandwich tin-put some uncooked rice in to keep it flat-and prick the pastry a little, too. Remove the rice about ten minutes before it is quite cooked, and put the pastry back in the oven to finish. Then leave it to get cold. Now prepare your raspberries. Make up a packet of raspberry jelly crystals, and when it is a little cool, stand the raspberries in it, to get the flavour of the jelly right through them. After a few minutes, lay the raspberries on the flan, and pour over as much jelly (nearly cold) as it will hold. Serve with cream or almond flavoured custard. If using tinned raspberries, use the liquid from the tin to make the jelly, filling up to the required amount with water. Any tinned fruit may be usedpeaches make a lovely flan. Summer Fruit Tart Cook any fruit in season in a very little water, with sugar to taste. When cool, pour into a glass dish. Cover with a round sponge cake which fits the dish as nearly as may be. Make up a packet of jelly-any flavour which suits the fruit you are using-and when just lukewarm, pour it over the sponge and leave it to set. Have ready a good custard made with custard powder, and when cold, pour it over the top of the jelly. Sprinkle with coloured coconut, or hundreds and thousands. This makes a very nice summer dish and a change from fruit pie. Individual Jellies These are always most popular, especially with children; and the varieties one can make are almost unlimited. If you have custard glasses, you can put a piece of orange, or apricot, or peach at the bottom, pour in some pretty coloured jelly, and leave it to set; and afterwards put a spoonful of custard and a grating of nutmeg, or some chopped nuts, on top. Whipped cream is also nice instead of custard. Or you can set the fruit and jelly in egg cups, or teacups, and then turn them out on individual pretty dishes, and pour custard or cream around, Children like hundred and thousands sprinkled over the custard, too." Peach Trifle This is really " super." Have the necessary number of small round sponge cakes, and a tin of peaches, in halves, not slices. Scoop out the middle of each sponge cake so that half a peach will fit in. The pieces of sponge scooped out are to be crumbled into a deep glass bow]; mix in with them two tablespoons of

ground almonds, and pour over all enough liquid from the peaches ‘to moisten the crumbs. Make a good custard next, flavoured with vanilla, pour over and leave to cool. Then place the hollowed sponge cakes over the top of the custard, and place in each hollow a peach half, with the rounded side up. Dissolve a packet of peach jelly according to directions, using any peach juice remaining. When cold, but not set, pour over the peaches in the dish, and put away to set. Serve decorated with whipped cream. Peach Delicious You need four cups of peaches and syrup-strain the syrup from the peaches when you have measured the amount. Place about a tablespoon of crushed or grated pineapple in pretty individual glass dishes. Place the peaches on top. Bring to the boil the syrup, and thicken it slightly with about a tablespoon of artrowroot moistened. Pour this over the

peaches. When it is cold, decorate with whipped cream, nuts, and cherries, Three-minute Spanish Cream Dissolve two packets of jelly crystals in 2 cups of boiling water. Heat 2 cups of milk, add 2 beaten eggs and a little sugar. Blend both together, and set overnight, Tapioca Spanish Cream Soak 2 tablespoons of tapioca in water all night. Pour off the water, add about 14% cups of milk, a little sugar, and 2 beaten egg yolks. Bake till cooked. Then take out of the oven, fold in the egg whites beaten stiff, flavour with vanilla, and put away to set. When cold, it tastes like Spanish Cream. Watermelon Slices These are quite pretty, and not really much trouble. They make quite a party dish. First make two jellies-one green (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous tage) and one pink, to be used in representing the pink centre and the greenish surrounding part of a slice of watermelon. You may use plain gelatine and colour it to suit, which is perhaps more satisfactory than using jelly crystals; although if you use milk instead of water with jelly crystals, you will get a very soft colouring and, of course, the pudding is more nourishing. The lime jelly is a pretty green, and red currant, or peach or raspberry are suitable for the pink part. When the jellies are cooling, pour them into canisters or tins to set-baking powder tins are very useful for this, one large size and one small size. The green jelly must be set in the large tin, the pink in the smaller one. When the pink jelly is half set, stir into it some seeded raisins dusted with icing sugar, to look like the seeds of the melon. The green jelly should be flavoured with fresh lemon juice, to give it sharpness. When quite set, slice both the jellies up into rounds of equal thickness. Use the tin in which the pink jelly was set, to cut out rounds or centres from the green slices, and slip into their places the slices of pink jelly; and there are your slices of watermelon. Serve with sweetened whipped cream flavoured with lemon or pineapple. The green centres which were cut out can be served as a separate dish, with a piece of fruit on each piece, and some custard or whipped cream, Chocolate Jelly Sponge Dissolve 1 packet of jelly crystals (any flavour) in one breakfast cup of hot but not boiling water. Beat two egg yolks till creamy, and mix well with 14 pint of milk and I dessertspoon of cocoa, Heat this very slowly until slightly thickened. It must not boil. Allow both jelly mixture and egg and milk mixture to cool. Then add the stiffly beaten egg whites into the milk mixture, and slowly stir all into the jelly mixture. Whip all lightly together, and set in a mould. Serve with cream or custard.