Blue Ribbon cook book

Many mishaps occur from a lack of forethought. Do not begin to make a dish until you have carefully read over the recipe, collected all the ingredients, and fixed the fire. Do one thing at a time. Make haste without hurrying. Cakes, pastry and such delicate dishes, should be made when there is no other cooking going on inthe kitchen. Give them your whole time. _ Cornbreads are heavy when sweet milk is substituted for sour, and the soda is not changed to baking powder. Sponge cake has heavy streaks near the bottom when the stove has been jarred, or the door of the stove slammed soon after the cake has been put in the oven. When cakes are saggy in the middle they are not sufficiently baked. The centre of the cake is the last part to bake. Before removing a cake from the oven touch it lightly in the centre: if the finger makes an imprint the cake is not done; if it springs back and does not “tick” or “‘sing,’”’ it is done. A toothpick inserted in cake should have no dough adhering to it. Fruit cake is rather light in color when it has not been cooked sufficiently long, «r when it has been cooked too fast at first. It should either be steamed three hours and baked one or two hours, or be baked slowly for four hours. Common Mistakes in Cooking 15 Baking powder or soda biscuits, gems, articles containing baking powder, need a very hot oven, and should be baked on the bottom before they are browned on the top. Cakes split in the centre and burst open when they have been baked too quickly on top. Pop-overs depend for their lightness entirely upon the heat of the oven, and must be baked quickly with the greater heat underneath, to drive them up, as it were. Pop-overs are often sodden when the batter is too thick, or when they have not been sufficiently mixed. Batter puddings are soggy and heavy when they contain too little flour, or when the baking powder has been mixed with the flour, and this added to the milk and egg sometime before the pudding has been baked. Whole wheat bread should be as light as white bread; if it is not, too much flour has been added, or it has been kneaded a third time. Pies lose their juices in the oven when the upper and under crusts are not well fastened together. Use a wide-rimmed dish; brush the edge of the under crust with water or white of egg. before placing the upper crust. Then press the paste together on the inner edge of the rim, but loosen it from the outer edge of the dish. To be more explicit, if the undercrust fastens itself to the dish, the upper crust, in swelling, separates from it, and the juices escape. The meringue ona pie will usually remain fluffy, if it is left in the warm kitchen after taking from the oven; but if taken into the cold it will fall. All pastry should be baked in a hot oven. The hottest part of the oven. The question often arises as to which is the hottest part of the oven. ‘‘Where shall we bake pastry and cakes—on the grates, or on the floor of the oven?” This depends largely upon the stove. If it is a gas stove they should be baked on the grate, and, perhaps, one burner turned 16 Blue Ribbon Cook Book out after the oven has been thoroughly heated. In a coal oven the greatest heat is near the firebox, and on the floor of the oven at the opposite side. The middle of the oven, on the grate, is the choice baking place for cakes. Fried foods, as croquettes and oysters, are greasy because the fat has not been sufficiently hot to coagulate quickly the outside covering. All foods of this kind should be dipped in egg and bread crumbs before frying. To prevent doughnuts being greasy. When frying them have a kettle of boiling water on the stove, and as each doughnut is taken from the fat, plunge for an instant into the hot water water and drain. Cream will not whip unless it is very cold and at least twenty- four hours old.