Stir the beaten yolks and sugar very light, add the suet and apples with the spice; then the raisins, well dredged with flour; next the flour, and when this is all in, the liquor; lastly the whites beaten very stiff. Bake in two buttered moulds, in a moderate oven, an hour and a half at least. Eat hot, with sauce.
You may boil this pudding if you like.
Apple and Tapioca Pudding. ✠
- 1 teacupful tapioca.
- 6 apples—juicy and well-flavored pippins—pared and cored.
- 1 quart water.
- 1 teaspoonful salt.
Cover the tapioca with three cups of lukewarm water, and set it in a tolerably warm place to soak five or six hours, stirring now and then. Pack your apples in a deep dish, adding a cup of lukewarm water; cover closely and steam in a moderate oven until soft all through, turning them as they cook at bottom. If the dish is more than a quarter full of liquid, turn some of it out before you pour the soaked tapioca over all. Unless your apples are very sweet fill the centre with sugar and stick a clove in each, just before you cover with the tapioca. Indeed, I always do this. It softens the hard acid of the fruit. Bake, after the tapioca goes in, one hour.
Eat warm, with sweet hard sauce.
Baked Apple Dumplings. ✠
- 1 quart flour.
- 2 tablespoonfuls lard—or half butter is better.
- 2 cups of milk.
- 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
- 2 teaspoonfuls cream-tartar sifted into the dry flour.
- 1 saltspoonful salt.
Chop the shortening into the flour after you have sifted this and the cream-tartar together; put in the soda and wet up quickly—just stiff enough to roll into a paste less than half an inch thick. Cut into squares, and lay in the centre of each a juicy, tart apple, pared and cored; bring the corners of the square neatly together and pinch them slightly. Lay in a buttered baking-pan, the joined edges downward, and bake to a fine brown. When done, brush over with beaten egg, and set back in the oven to glaze for two or three minutes. Sift powdered sugar over them, and eat hot with rich sweet sauce.
I greatly prefer the above simple crust for all kinds of dumplings, to the rich paste which becomes heavy so soon as it begins to cool. It is also more quickly and easily made, and far more wholesome than pastry.