Fruits are, as a rule, more digestible raw, and when served fresh and cool are the best of desserts, particularly in the summer-time when they are in season. The sweet and sub-acid fruits are best quite cold. The sour fruits are spoiled by over chilling—they should be cool, but not cold.
In the early spring, when fruits are expensive, a smaller quantity may be made to do full duty when mixed with light doughs and such starchy materials as tapioca, or with whipped cream and gelatine as in the Bavarian creams. Sugar cooked with fruits is apt to change into new forms, which combine to make the fruit much sweeter than raw fruit with sugar sprinkled over it.
Do not cook fruit unless you are obliged to do so. Small fruits may be served with cream, but not milk. All fruits are, however, more wholesome when eaten without either sugar or cream.
- Oatmeal Bouches
- Dutch Apple Cake
- Almond Custard
- Pan Pudding
- Cannelons
- Prune Souffle
- Cream Apple Pudding
- Apple Dowdy
- -Fruit Gelatine
1. Oatmeal Bouches
Pour left-over breakfast porridge in small coffee cups ; stand them aside to cool. At serving time turn them out, scoop out the centre of each, leaving a wall and a bottom half an inch thick; fill this with berries or sliced peaches, dust with powdered sugar, and serve with cream, or a carefully-made soft custard.
This dessert may be served either at luncheon or dinner, and also for supper when dinner is eaten in the middle of the day.
2. Dutch Apple Cake
Separate two eggs; add to the yolks a cupful and a half of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, melted, and half a teaspoonful of salt; mix and add two cupfuls of flour that have been sifted with three level teaspoonfuls of baking powder; beat quickly, fold in the well-beaten whites of the eggs, and turn in a greased shallow baking-pan.
Cover the top thickly with apples that have been pared, cored and quartered, putting the rounding sides up, and dust over half a cupful of sugar. Bake in a moderately quick oven for half an hour, or until the apples are tender. Serve with cream. Peaches, huckleberries, blackberries or elderberries may be substituted for the apples.
3. Almond Custard
Pare and slice two large peaches, put them in the bottom of a serving-dish. Put a pint of milk in a double boiler; separate two eggs, beat the yolks with half a cupful of sugar, add a little hot milk, turn in the boiler, cook for a moment, take from the fire, and stir in half a cupful of stale, fine breadcrumbs, ten drops of bitter almond, and twenty-four almonds, blanched and chopped fine.
Cool and pour over the peaches in the serving dish. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, and beat again. Drop by teaspoonfuls in a saucepan of hot water; cook for an instant; lift with a skimmer, drain, and slide them at once on top of the pudding. Dust with a tablespoonful of fine breadcrumbs and stand aside to cool. Serve cold.
Stale pieces of cake or rusk may be used in the place of bread.
4. Pan Pudding
Add sufficient milk to a pint of flour to make a stiff dough ; knead and pound it for at least fifteen minutes. Cut it in quarters, roll each piece in a thin sheet not thicker than letter-paper and the size and shape of an ordinary roasting-pan. Brush the bottom of the pan with melted suet, put in a sheet of the paste, brush it lightly with melted suet.
Have ready a quarter of a pound of Jordan almonds, blanched, chopped fine, and mixed with a cupful of chopped raisins, half a pound of chopped apples, and a cupful of brown sugar. Put this mixture on the sheet in the pan, cover with another sheet, brush with suet, then another, and so continue, until all the sheets of paste are used.
Brush the top with melted suet, dust with sugar, and bake in a quick oven for three-quarters of an hour. Remove very carefully from the pan to a fiat dish and send at once to the table. If properly made this is one of the most delicate of all puddings.
5. Cannelons
Rub a rounding tablespoonful of butter in a quart of flour; add two rounding teaspoonfuls of baking powder and half a teaspoonful of salt; mix thoroughly, and stir in quickly a cupful and a half of milk.
The dough must be moist, but not wet. Knead quickly, roll out in a sheet half an inch thick, cut in strips one inch wide and twelve inches long; roll each strip around a cannelon-mould; place in a baking-pan, brush the tops with the yolk of an egg beaten with a tablespoonful of milk, dust thickly with granulated sugar, and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes.
When done take out of the moulds, fill the spaces with sugared fruit. Arrange the cannelons neatly upon a pretty dish and send to the table with a pitcher of cream.
6. Prune Souffle
Remove the stones from half a pound of stewed prunes ; press the prunes through a sieve, add to them the yolks of three eggs slightly beaten, with four tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
Fold in the well-beaten whites of six eggs; turn at once in a baking-dish, dust the top with powdered sugar, bake in a quick oven for five or six minutes, then send immediately to the table in the dish in which it was baked.
7. Cream Apple Pudding
Pare, core and quarter six tart apples. Dissolve a teaspoonful of soda in two tablespoonfuls of warm water; add it to one pint of thick, sour milk and sour cream mixed, stir in two cupfuls and a half of pastry flour, beat for a moment; pour in a greased baking-pan, the bottom of which has been covered with the apple; sprinkle half a cupful of granulated sugar and a teaspoonful of cinnamon over the top.
Bake in a moderately quick oven for one hour, and serve hot with a carefully made hard sauce, or cream.
8. Apple Dowdy
Line a baking-dish with thin slices of brown bread, buttered; fill in the spaces with apples that have been pared, cored and chopped; mix a teaspoonful of cinnamon with half a cupful of brown sugar; sprinkle this over the apples; add half a cupful of water, and cover with another layer of brown bread, buttered—with the buttered side up.
Bake slowly for one hour, and serve with cider sauce.
9. Fruit Gelatine
This attractive and dainty dessert has been burdened with a number of very inappropriate names, such as “Heavenly Hash,” “Angels’ Hash,” etc.
Stone and chop a quarter of a pcmnd of dates ; mix with an equal amount of figs, chopped fine; add chopped candied cherries or pineapple, or the pulp of an orange, or a sliced banana.
The mixture must be sufficient to fill a quart and a pint mould. Cover a box of gelatine with half a pint of cold water and let it soak for half an hour. Add to it a cupful of sugar and a quart of boiling water; stir until the sugar is dissolved; add the juice of two lemons and one orange, and two teaspoonfuls of caramel.
Strain in the mould over the fruit and stand it aside to harden. When cold and quite firm turn it out upon a glass dish and send to the table with or without whipped cream. The fruit must be put loosely in the mould or the jelly will not penetrate.
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