COOKERY NOTES

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 18, 14 November 1930, Unnumbered Page

COOKERY NOTES

Original Recipes

By

Frank

Hilton

Js broadcast from 2YA, Wellington

4 , Yorkshire Pudding. Now, although it 4s called Yorkshire pudding, I am doubtful as to whether it has any more relation to Yorkshire than, say Irish stew has to Ireland, or German sausage to Germany, or Bambury cakes to Bambury, or Swis¢ tarts to Switzerland. 'The use of all these articles with local place names is now practically universal. In this Yorkshire pudding recipe we now come to the first article aerated or leavened by eggs only; this means that our pudding is made light and digestible by eggs only, no baking powders being used. . The Ingredients are: lb. flour, 2 whole eggs, a pinch of salt and milk. Method: Put the flour and salt into a mixing bowl or basin, crack in the eggs, and add a little milk to make into a smooth paste until all the flour is incorporated and there are no lumps. ‘Then gradually add more milk until the mixture is as thick as good cream. ‘Then give the mixture a good beat up, just a stir is no good; don’t be afraid of beating it up, the more you beat the mixture the lighter your pudding will be. If you are not ready to cook it at once it does not harm to let it stand. Next have a good greased tin ready, using beef dripping for greasing and plenty of it. Pour mixture into the tin and bake in'a hot oven. Yorkshire pudding requires about the same heat as scones. If you wish you can also put sultanas or sliced apples in the mixture; either of these makes a nice change. Your pudding should be served hot and straight from the oven, as it spoils if it stands too long after baking. Now, don’t forget, plenty of beating and a good hot oven, and you have a perfect pudding. . Fairy Cakes. ANY readers may not know just what a fairy cake is. Well, the kind I am going to deal with is a small cake weighing about an ounce, baked in favcy tins of all shapes, but all about the same size and holding about the same quantity of mixture. They can be procured cheaply from any hardware store. They consist of hearts, diamonds, half-moous, round and oblorg ones, and many other different shapes, but not tins with crinkled edges, as they are difficult to grease and almost always cause sticking. If you vannot get the proper fairy cake tins as I describe them, you had better use small patty pans; these will do quite nicely, but they haven’t the variety of shapes and they can never look quite so nice on the table. Another thing Y would advise listeners to avoid is paper or soufle cases. A fairy cake baked in paper can never be as good as one baked in a tin for this reason: during the process of cooking, a large amount of the butter is absorbed in the paper case and must take the texture and quality from the tiny cake. Remember, we have only about an ounce of mixture, and a fourth of that is butter, so you will see we can’t spare any of that to soak into paper cases, sagit is tins we want every time. , ‘ Prepare your tins (as many as possible) the same way I told you for sponge sandwiches last week. Grease with a brush and use hot beef dripping. The grease must not contain any salt, or the cakes will stick to the tins. Brush the grease well into the tiny corners, not too much, or you will find the bottoms what we call "filling"; this means that the cake turns out with a rough edge when the tins are used a second time. They must be quite cold before refilling. . We will now deal with the recipe. Ingredients : 11b. butter, 11b. sugar, 1b. flour, 3lb. currants, 8 whole eggs, and a pinch of powder. This I know is rather a lot for a small family-it makes about 70 or 80 tiny cakes. Put them in a tin and they will keep for wecks, providing they are not dried in the oven. If the mixture is too much, try half. | Method: Put the butter and sugar into a mixing-bowl and cream both _tegether. I wonder how many listeners know what this creaming up really means. Lots of people have read about this creaming process in books and luaye come to me asking what it really means. It is absolutely impossible to make a first-class cake without creaming the butter, sugar and eggs, 80 I will explain before we ‘get to the really difficult recipes. Slightly warm the butter and sugar (do not turn the butter to oil). Then with your right hand beat them together until the mixture turns to @ cream colour, or until the grains in the sugar are softened. When you

have the mixture nice and creamy add your eggs-one at a time-giving the mixture a good beat up between each egg added until the whole eight are in, and then the battle is over. All you have to do is gently stir in the sifted flour and powder and add the currants. ’ The mixture will, of course, stick to your hand, but keep your left hand free for the adding of the eggs; these should all be cracked into the vessel unbeaten, and, with care, they can be dropped into the mixture one at a time. The flour should be sifted on a piece of strong paper, the two sides can then be taken hold of with the free hand, and the flour can be transferred to the mixing-bowl quite easily. A word here about currants. All currants must be washed in a colander under the high pressure tap, not soaked in water, as they take too long to dry and lose their flavour. A good plan is to put them in the sun on a cloth after washing. Small Vostiza currants are preferable to the Sumatra or Patras varieties. Remember, the smaller the currants the -better the flavour, and they should not be put into good quality cake unless dried out properly. ; We now have our fairy cakes, mixed; the next job is the baking. To fill our tiny tins we need a palette knife-quite a necessary article, and we will need it for icing and decorating later; also it is handy for scraping out mwixing-bowls, one about 8 inches long will do. Now, with the end of the palette knife we lift a little of the mixture and put it in the tin, forcing the mixture into the corners and roughly scraping it about three-parts full. A little practice and you will get them all uniform quite easily. If you have not a palette knife, try a large table knife. You will find this method of filling much easier than a spoon. After you have filled all the tins you have, the balance of the mixture can stand until the first batch is cooked, and it will get no harm, providing you do not beat it up again. For the baking you require an oven about sponge cake heat, . Put the fairy cakes on the shelf, or on tins if there is too much bottom heat. Do not let them touch in the oven. Keep them nicely spread out so as to brown their sides. Remove them from the tins while warm, and when cool put them into a biscuit tin, and they will keep fresh for weeks.