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Puddings Made from Stale Bread and Cake

'THE variety of puddings into which stale bread enters is endless. It begins with the old-fashioned, economical pandowdy and ends with the queen of puddings, rich in jam and lovely in merinque. For puddings, use only stale bread or crumbs, rejecting crusts. Do not add the ovendried crumbs, or you will have a pudding as tough as a door mat. Leftovers of fruit, fresh berries, peaches, plums, gooseberries, apples, prunes, apricots, almost anything can enrich a bread pudauing. A cupful canned or stewed fruit or a few spoonfuls jam or marmalade give a morsel of delicious flavoring. The good cook uses common sense and the material she has at hand. If the recipe calls for red raspberries and she has nothing but dried apples, she can season them with spices, and the dessert will be a success. The base of any bread pudding light as a soufflé and large enough for a family of 4 consists of 1 cupful stale-bread crumbs, 2 cupfuls milk, and 1 egg. This may be enriched by almonds, chocolate, nut meats, raisins, currants, and peel or fruit of any description.

Stale cake, especially sponge cake or lady's fingers, may be converted into delicious puddings.

Where the pudding is to be steamed or baked, cut the cake in fingers or break it into crumbs. If the pudding is to be soaked with wine, have a custard, fruit juice, or cream poured over it, after cutting it in slices. Reject icing; it generally makes a pudding sweeter than is desirable. A good plain pudding is made by putting slices of stale cake in a steamer and, when moist, serving with a spoonful strawberry or marmalade sauce. It may be covered when cold with hot stewed berries and served with cream. Stale sponge cake serves as a foundation for charlotte russe and cabinet pudding, or, if steamed, may be covered with strawberries and whipped cream, when it makes an excellent imitation of strawberry shortcake. Bread-Plum Pudding. 1 cupful suet, 1 cupful raisins, 1 cupful currants, cupful citron and candied orange peel, 1 cupful sugar, 3 cupfuls stale-bread crumbs, n eggs, cupful milk, teaspoonful cinnamon, teaspoonful each allspice, cloves, and nutmeg, Grated rind 1 lemon.

Chop the suet fine. Seed the raisins. Slice the citron and orange peel, mix with the currants, sugar, and bread crumbs, moisten with eggs well beaten, and milk, then add the seasonings. Pour into a buttered mold. Steam four hours, and serve with hard sauce.