The Rural cook book

cut into round pieces. Dust each piece of apple with a little sugar and cinnamon and place four sections on each round of paste. Gather up the edges and pinch Ihem together over the apple. When all the dumplings are made, drop them into a kettle of boiling water and let them boil gently for an hour. Take them up on a hot dish and serve with plain, sweetened cream. If you want to serve the dumplings "just as grandmother did,'" sweeten the cream with "treacle." KenilwortI) Ranch Dumplings. — Take a quart of flour, one cup of good lard and half-cup of butter; rub this into the flour after it is sifted with one teaspoonful of baking powder; add enough milk to make ■ soft dough. This is rolled cut quickly into a sheet an inch thick and then cut in squares. Into each square is laid a half apple, peeled and cored, and the crust tucked around if. Have ready in a dripping pan a syrup made of one cupful of sugar to one of water; lay the dumplings in; bake in quick oven 30 to 40 minutes. Serve with an old-fashioned molasses sauce. Farmhouse Apples. — Peel and core tart apples, fill the space from which the cores were taken with seeded raisins, bits of shredded citron, sugar and a little lemon peel ; stand them in a baking pan, pour over them half a cup of water and dust with about two tablespoon fuls of granulated sugar. Bake in a slow oven until perfectly tender, then sprinkle bread crumbs over the top ; dust again with sugar, and leave ihem in the oven for 10 minutes. While they are baking mix a tablespoonful of flour with a half cup sugar; pour over half a pint of boiling water, and boil a moment; take from the fire, and pour slowly over one well-beaten egg; add the juice of half a lemon. Pour over the apples Apple Fool. — Peel, core and quarter six large apples, cook them until tender with three or four cloves, a small piece of lemon peel, half a cupful of sugar and a teacupful of water. Remove the cloves and lemon peel, beat well with a fork and stir in one-fourth pint of thick, sweet cream. Cut any kind of delicate cake into rather thin slices and place a layer in the bottom of a glass dish. Pour over it diluted red currant jelly, then cover with a thick layer of the apple fool, then another layer of cake and currant jelly, and heap the remainder of the apple fool over the top. With each helping serve a large spoonful of whipped cream flavored with almond. Hidden Apples, — Butter a deep tin pan, cover the bottom with a layer of pared and quartered apples. In another dish beat an egg well, put in enough sugar to sweeten the apples, add a little water, thicken with powdered bread crumbs, flavor highly with lemon. Pour this mixture over apples and bake until the apples are done, which will take about 30 minutes in a hot oven. Apple Johnny Calce. — Mix two cupfuli of commeal, a tablespoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of cream of tartar, a scant half-cupful of sugar, half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little warm water and milk to make a thin batter. Stir in three sour apples that have been peeled and cut into thin slices. Bake in a shallow tin in a moderate oven for 35 minutes. Apple Kisses, — Select six small, smooth apples. Pare, cut in half and remove the core. Mix one-half a cupful of sugar with one-third cupful of butter. Place this mixture between the halves of the apples. Place in a baking dish with a little water and a teaspoonful of vanilla extract Bake till apples are soft. Serve with their own juice for sauce.