Rolls
Birk Hall Rolls. (Mrs. Evans' quick way.) This is for a breakfast party.
Ingredients required: 2 lbs. of finest flour to 1 oz. of fresh German yeast, a little pinch of salt, 1 oz. fresh butter melted into 1 pt. of warm, but not hot, milk. The dough should be much softer and slacker for rolls than for bread. Take 1 oz. of German yeast and put it into 2 tablespoonfuls of cold water, leave it till dissolved. If the yeast is not fresh, add to it ½ a teaspoonful of sugar, but not if you can do without. Then strain it into a hole in the flour which you have ready in a basin, and pour over it about ¼ of a pt. of lukewarm milk. With a spoon give a stir round in the hole, and some flour will fall in. Stand it uncovered to rise 20 minutes before the fire, then add a pinch of salt and the rest of the pint of milk with the 1 oz. fresh butter melted in it. Add the milk gradually to the dough and mix all well. Let it again rise 10 minutes before shaping for the baking sheet, when it must be put to rise for a third time for 20 minutes or 1½ an hour. (The rising takes about 1 hour altogether. First, 20 minutes; 2nd, 10 minutes; 3rd, 30 minutes.) Bake in not too quick an oven. N.B. - Should you use common yeast 2 tablespoonfuls will be enough, but it must be allowed 3 hours to rise instead of 1 hour. Time of baking varies according to the state of the oven and the size of the rolls. * For "Farine de poment" (sic), read "Farine de pommes en première qualité," (?) meaning potato flour, which is often used for grissini, though Vienna flour is generally used. This is also the mixture for Yorkshire cakes (see Tea Cakes, under Cakes). Also for grissini rolled out ¼ yard long and thin as a pen (see Grissini); and for Breakfast Buns (see Cakes, &c. - Buns).
Brown Rolls. (Dr. Jephson, Auchentorlie. 1876.) To 1 lb. of wheaten flour allow 60 grains of carbonate of soda, 42 grains of tartaric acid, and a little salt. Rub in a small bit of butter the size of a walnut; sift all through a colander. Mix quickly, with sweet milk and well - beaten egg, into a light dough. Cut out or shape according to taste, and bake in a quick oven. Dr. Taylor's Rolls. 1 lb. flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of Lady Wensleydale's baking powder, 1 small teaspoonful salt.
Mix well, then make into a dough with milk or with water; work out, shape into long finger rolls, and when on the baking sheet let them rise in the screen a few minutes, lightly covered by a cloth. Then bake.
Emslie's Breakfast Rolls. (1892.) Made in tins and look like halfpenny French rolls. 1½ lb. flour, 1 oz. butter worked in, and ½ teaspoonful of sugar. Do this the night before, and also same time dissolve 1 oz. German yeast with a dessertspoonful of flour in ½ teacupful of warm (not hot) water.
Next morning, add enough hot water to make it lukewarm, about another ½ teacupful; strain this yeast into the buttered flour, and mix into a dough. Let it rise in the meat screen in a basin, under a cloth, 1½ hours; then beat up again, and put it in buttered roll tins to rise again another 1½ hour, in the meat screen. This dough is also used for Grissini, No. 1.
Our French Rolls.
Prepare the tins by warming, buttering, &c.; use the finest flour only; 1½ lbs. with 1 oz. of German yeast will make three rolls.
Half fill the tins and allow them half an hour to rise. Bake a nice brown. To Refresh Rolls. (Ruth Camp.) Turn and re-turn the rolls in warm milk and water (half and half) for a minute or two before crisping in the oven.
Water Rolls.
These are the shape of two French rolls united. 1 lb. flour, 1 pinch salt, ½ oz. German yeast dissolved in warm water and strained. Sift the flour into a basin, make a hole in it, and put in the yeast; give one stir round. Cover the basin with a cloth, and put it for the dough to rise in the meat screen 1 hour. Then mix the dough, and shape it and put into tins to rise again uncovered 20 minutes. Bake 3/4 hour.
Rolls. See also Mrs. Thomas's Bread.
Apple Ginger, for Dessert.
Take 8 lbs. of fine sugar and 2 pts. of water, in which you have boiled ½ lb. of white ginger* till the strength is extracted, and with this water dissolve the sugar. If the flavour of the ginger should not be strong enough, add as much essence of ginger as is liked. Great care must be taken whilst dissolving the sugar to keep it from burning. Boil the syrup 15 minutes, then add 8 lbs. of apples, American apples are the best to use, carefully pared, and cut in 4 or 8 pieces, according to the size of the apples. Be sure that they are all covered with the syrup, which should be pretty cool when the apples are put in.
They must simmer 40 or 50 minutes till they become perfectly transparent, before they are ready.
This dish improves by keeping.
Another copy says: Make a rich syrup of 3 lbs. of white sugar to 4 ozs. of tincture of ginger for two lbs. of Ribstone or other hard apples. Brandy Snaps. No. 1. (Isa. Emslie. 1888.) Both the recipes for Brandy Snaps are excellent.
Weigh out ¼ lb. butter and put it on to melt; weigh out 2 ozs. of treacle and 2 ozs. of golden syrup; add to butter and mix. Next, add 2 ozs. flour and 3 ozs. pounded sugar; last of all, 1 oz. ground ginger, and mix all well.
It should stand 1 hour to stiffen, then drop it from a tablespoon, about a teaspoonful at a time for each "snap", on to a buttered baking sheet, and bake the "snaps" a gold colour, which will take 7 or 8 minutes probably. Take them out of the oven, let them cool, then twist them up.
Serve on a napkin.
Brandy Snaps. No. 2. Mrs. Husthwaite's and Mrs. Hooper's "Honeycomb," for Dessert.
Mrs. Husthwaite used ¼ lb. each of butter, sugar, and flour, ginger to taste, from ½ to 1½ ozs., mixed with treacle; put in thin cakes on a baking sheet, not too stiffly mixed; watch in oven, for they catch easily and get bitter. They should be light brown, thin and crisp, and honeycomb from lightness; roll them into cornucopias before they stiffen. - Mrs. Hooper's way: 1½ lb. fresh butter, ½ lb. treacle, melted together, ¼ lb. flour, 1½ oz. ginger, 2 ozs. sugar; work all well together; take up ½ teaspoonful at a time and place each small quantity separate on baking sheet. It will run into shape in the oven. Bake snaps a light brown about 5 minutes. Let them cool a little, then twist into cornucopia shape. This is the curly "snap" kind. If made very thin, they are good filled with whipped cream, as a Sweet Dish. * White ginger is more pungent and better flavoured, also more expensive (Commercial Dictionary). Chestnuts - "Marrons Glacés à la Vanille." (Cataldi.) Get 100 chestnuts. Take off the outer (that is, the thick mahogany-coloured) shell. Be very careful in so doing not to break the chestnut. Throw each chestnut as it is shelled into a stewpan of cold water, in which is a single bay-leaf. Boil them, but not too much.
Take the pan off and take the chestnuts out one at a time, as you put them in. Take off all the second or inner (white) skin of each in turn, but do not break the chestnut. Put each as it is skinned into a deep basin; those you break you must throw away or use for something else.
Make a syrup of sugar boiled to candy height; flavour it by having a stick of vanilla in it. Pour it gently over the chestnuts as they lie in the basin and add the stick of vanilla also; let all stand till next day.
In 24 hours strain off the syrup and boil it again to candy height, boiling the vanilla also in it, then pour it again on the chestnuts. Repeat this every day for a week. On the last day strain off syrup and boil it a little more. Dip a wooden spoon first in water, then in powdered sugar, and pass it once or twice round the inside edge of the bottom of the pan. This is to whiten the syrup. Now take it off the fire; with a fork dip each of the chestnuts, which should have been draining some hours previously on a sieve, into the syrup and replace them on a sieve to dry. Dates - Stuffed "à l'Africaine." (Cataldi.) First blanch some pistachio nuts and stone some dates. Pound the pistachio nuts with white sugar into a stiff paste. Stuff the dates with this paste and glaze them with caramel mixture (mere sugar amd water). Use for dessert. "Noisettes." (Cataldi.) ¼ lb. blanched almonds pounded with 5 ozs. sugar; pass them through a sieve; put them again into the mortar; add 1 yolk of egg; flavour with pounded stick vanilla as essence, being liquid, will not answer.
Pound all together to a paste, work it up well with the pestle, then put it on the pastry board; let is stand there 15 minutes; then roll it out as thin as a shilling; cut it with a pastry cutter; roll into filbert shapes, one whole almond in each piece. Stick the fruit together into bunches with a little yolk of egg. Put them on a piece of kitchen paper on the baking sheet, and let them dry an hour in a warm place; then bake them, and let them get quite cold.
Melt a little isinglass and paint the stalks below the almond with it, sprinkling it with coloured sugar. "Orange Wafers" - Lady Wensleydale's. (Mrs. Thomas.) Best Seville oranges to be cut in quarters and the pulp taken out and well cleared from the white skin. The peel to be then boiled to the same softness as for orange marmalade, and when done, to be well pounded with the pulp in a mortar and rubbed through a fine sieve.
To 1 lb. of the orange add 2 lbs. of castor sugar; mix them well together, and add a little of the juice of the oranges to make it into a paste, and spread this orange paste as thin as you can over the back of a large dish that has been previously rubbed with a piece of butter wrapped up in a muslin bag.
Then place the dish at a moderate distance from the fire so as to dry the paste gradually; whilst tough, and before it is dry, cut it into shape with a pastry cutter, and put the pieces so cut into a sieve, and keep them continually turning for about a week, by which time they are usually dry.
They are then ready for use, and should be kept in tin boxes in a perfectly dry place. There will be some juice over for orange marmalade if you wisely make it at the same time.
Spun Sugar - To make.
Put 1lb. of sugar into a clean pan, with 1½ pt. of water. Set it over a very clear, slow fire, take off the scum as it rises. Boil it till it looks firm and clear and of an amber colour. Then take out a little with a silver spoon when cool; if it can be drawn out like a thread from the spoon, it is boiled enough and should be spun over the oiled handle of a wooden spoon into a mass of sugar threads to ornament any sweet dish.
To do this properly, you must stand on a chair, to give height, hold the oiled wooden spoon in the left hand, and in your right hand hold another spoon with a little of the caramel in it; toss the caramel across the oiled handle of the wooden spoon, so that it falls in long threads over it and hangs from it. Place paper on the ground to protect the floor. In frosty or dry weather you can make the spun sugar some time before it is wanted, but in damp weather make it only just before sending it to table, or it will melt. Sugar - To Clarify (Candy height). (Lady Clark.) 1½ pt. of water to each lb. of broken-up lump sugar. Pour the water (cold) over the lump sugar, and let it stand till dissolved. Then beat up some whites of egg, and add them and stir well in. Put all on the fire, and stir on gently till it begins to simmer.
Do not skim, but if you think it cooks too fast, draw the pan to the side of the fire. If still cooking too fast, add from time to time a little cold water at any point where there is least scum. Still do not skim, but when nearly done, in about 1 hour, it clears itself. Let it go on for a few minutes, then take it off very gently. Let it stand 15 minutes, and strain with a skimmer, and it will be ready for the finest preserves. Apricots Preserved Whole.