Buckeye cookery

Perfectly fresh sweet cream makes the most delicious ice-cream. A substitute is a preparation of boiled new milk, etc., made late in the evening if for dinner, in the morning if for tea, and placed on ice. One mixture is acustard made as follows: Take two quarts new milk, put on three pints to boil in a custard-kettle, or a pail set within a kettle of boiling water, beat yolks and whites of eight eggs sepa- ~ rately, mix the yolks with the remaining pint and stir slowly into the boiling milk, boil two minutes, remove from the stove, immediately add one and a half pounds sugar, let it dissolve, strain while hot through a crash towel, cool, add one quart rich cream and two tablespoons vanilla (or season to taste, remembering that the strength of the flavoring and also the sweetness is very much diminished by the freezing). Set the custard and also the whites (not beaten) in a cool place until needed, and about three hours before serving begin the preparations for freezing. Put the ice in a coarse coffee-sack, pound with an ax or mallet. until the lumps are no larger than a small hickory-nut; see that the freezer is properly set in the tub, the beater in and the cover secure ; place around it a layer of ice about three inches thick, then a layer of coarse salt—rock salt is | best—then ice again, then salt, and so on until packed full, with a layer of ice last. The proportion should be about three-fourths ice and one-fourth salt. Pack very solid, pounding with a broom-handle or stick, then remove the cover and pour the custard to which you | _have just added the well-whipped whites into the freezer, filling twothirds full to give room for expansion ; replace the cover and begin - turning the freezer; after ten minutes pack the ice down again, . drain off most of the water, add more ice and turn again, repeat : i a7) ‘ ICES AND ICE-CREAM. 175. ing this operation several times until the cream is well frozen, and you can no longer turn the beater. (The above quantity ought to freeze in half an hour, but the more pure cream used the longer it takes to freeze.) Brush the ice and salt from and remove the cover, take out the beater, scrape the cream down from the sides of freezer, beat well several minutes with a wooden paddle, replace the cover, fill the hole with a cork, pour off all the water, pack again with ice (using salt at the bottom, but none at the top of tub), heap the ice on the cover, spread over it a piece of carpet or a thick woolen blanket, and set away in a cool place until needed; or, if molds are used, fill them when you remove the beater, packing the cream in very tightly, and place in ice and salt for two hours. To remove the cream, dip the molds for an instant in warm water. When cream is used in making ice-cream, it is better to whip a part of it, and add just as the cream is beginning to set. Coffee ice-cream should be thickened with arrowroot; the flavoring for almond cream should be prepared by pounding the kernels to a paste with rose-water, using arrowroot for thickening. For cocoa-nut cream, grate cocoa-nut and add to the cream and sugar just before freezing. The milk should never be heated for pineapple, strawberry, or raspberry cream. Berry flavors are made best by allowing whole berries to stand for awhile well sprinkled with sugar, mashing, straining the juice, adding sugar to it, and stirring — it into the cream. or a quart of cream, allow a quart of fruit and a pound of sugar. In addition to this, add whipped cream and sweetened whole berries, just as the cream is beginning to set, in the proportion of a cup of berries and a pint of whipped cream to three pints of the frozen mixture. Canned berries may be used in the same way. <A pint of berries or peaches, cut fine, added to a quart of ordinary ice-cream, while in process of freezing, makes a delicious fruit ice-cream. |