The Fun of Cooking: A Story for Girls and Boys

2 lemons.

2 sticks of cinnamon.

1 dozen cloves.

Put the spices in a piece of thin cloth and tie this up like a bag; put it in a saucepan with the grape-juice, sugar, and water, and let it slowly heat till it steams; stir well and let it stand on the back of the fire for ten minutes. Add the juice of the lemons and the thin yellow rind of one (you can peel this off in a strip and drop it in); bring it all to the boiling-point, take out the lemon-peel, taste it, and, if not sweet enough, add more sugar. Serve very hot.

The next evening, just as it grew dark, Mildred and Jack hung a sheet before the double doors of the library, and they, with some of the cousins, gave a funny shadow-play, "Young Lochinvar," with a rocking-horse for the "steed," and a clothes-basket for a boat, and their father read the poem as they acted it. When everybody had stopped laughing at it, the junior Blairs brought in the supper (the oysters had been quietly cooking while they played), and arranged it on the library table. Everything was hot and delicious, or cold and delicious, and the mulled grape-juice was almost the best of all. After everything had been eaten up, they all gathered around the fire and told stories. At last, when the visitors had gone and bedtime had come for the Blairs, Mildred said impressively:

"Now that was what I call a Thanksgiving Day without a flaw!"

CHAPTER XVI

CANDY FOR THE FAIR

The Alcott School, which Mildred and Brownie attended, was going to give a Christmas fair. That is, they were going to have a big, beautiful fair to which everybody in town was to go and buy their Christmas presents, and afterward the money was to be given to the children's ward in the new hospital. Mildred and Brownie were on the candy committee, and, of course, they were much excited. They had to have so much candy for a whole town of people that they did not know where it was to come from.

"We could go around and ask for contributions," said Mildred to her mother; "but the trouble is that everybody in the school is doing that very thing, asking and asking and asking!"

"You might make a good deal of candy yourselves, and perhaps other people who would not care to buy quantities to give you, would make some too. Home-made candy always sells well."

"Miss Betty makes the loveliest pinoche!" said Brownie, thoughtfully.

"So she does. Suppose we ask her about planning to make candy at home."

Miss Betty had just come in from a meeting of her own committee on the fair, and was as interested as could be in the candy table.

"I'll tell you what to do," she said. "Get as many people as you can to give you just a little money, fifty cents, or even twenty-five, in place of giving you any candy – they will be glad to do that, you see, because it would save them ever so much which they can spend on the fair in other ways. Then we will buy sugar, and nuts, and such things with the money, and get all the girls on your committee to help on the candy-making, either in their own homes – "

"Oh, at our house, Miss Betty," begged Brownie; "that will be a party!"

"Very well, if your mother doesn't mind," laughed Miss Betty. "Then, when we see how much we can make in two afternoons, we will beg enough for the rest that we need. And I'll help you. I make awfully good candy!"

When the girls told their mother the plan, she said, "That's a bright idea!" and told the girls to ask the eight others on the committee to go to work at once and get the money for materials.

The next days were busy ones, and when, three days before the fair, the committee met, they were astonished to see how much money they had collected, enough to buy all the materials and have a good sum over. The girls all promised to help make the candy, and said they would surely be at the Blairs' for two whole afternoons, from two o'clock till dark, beginning the next day.

Jack went down-town and bought everything on the list Miss Betty gave him. White sugar and brown, flavoring, chocolate and nuts, citron and little rose-leaves, pink and green coloring, paraffin paper, and all kinds of boxes, little and big, covered with holly paper, or plain red paper, or just white paper. When he got home; he cracked nuts and picked them out beautifully, nearly all in perfect halves. Miss Betty said he was a regular trump.

The next day, the Blairs had an early lunch, and then Norah put the dining-room and kitchen in order, and got out saucepans, spoons, and egg-beaters. Mildred and Brownie laid lunch-cloths over two small tables in the dining-room, and found scissors and anything else they could think of that would be needed. On the dining-room table, across one end, Jack laid a white marble table-top from an old-fashioned table in the attic, and this they washed off and made very clean. Mother Blair said she was sure some kinds of candy were made on marble, and she meant to be prepared.

When the girls had come and their hands and aprons were ready, Miss Betty said she would take four or five girls into the kitchen to start the candy, and the rest could blanch almonds and get them ready to salt; and when the candy was ready for the finishing touches, she would bring it in and show them what to do with it. So she went off with Mildred and three other girls, and Mother Blair and Brownie went to work with the rest on the almonds. They wanted to have quantities of these because they always sold so well at fairs. This was the rule she used:

SALTED ALMONDS

1 pound of Jordan almonds.

White of one egg.

½ teaspoonful of salt.

Put a cupful of shelled almonds into a saucepan of boiling water, enough to well cover them. Put on a cover and let them stand two minutes; take out one and see if the skin slips off easily in your hand; if not, pour off the water, pour on more that is boiling, and let them stand again. When they are ready, dip out a few at a time and keep the rest under water; slip off the skins and put them in bowls till all are done. Beat the white of the egg till half light, mix with the nuts, and spread them on shallow tins; sprinkle with salt and put them in the oven; stir them every few minutes till they become an even, light brown; then take them out.

Instead of having one pound of almonds, they had ten pounds, so the girls had plenty to do to keep them busy till the candy came in. Meanwhile, Miss Betty was showing them how to make:

COFFEE CANDY

3 tablespoonfuls of ground coffee.

1 small cup of boiling water.

2 cups of sugar.

1 cup of chopped nuts.

Boil the coffee in the water for two minutes; then strain through a very fine sieve. Measure one-half a cupful and mix with the sugar; boil without stirring, till it spins a thread when you hold up a little on a spoon. Then stand the saucepan in another, half full of very cold water, and beat rapidly till it becomes a cream; stir in the nuts, pour into a shallow pan and cool, cut in squares.

Miss Betty had to show the girls how to see candy "spin a thread," because those words, she said, came in so often in all rules for candy. She just lifted a little up on the spoon and tipped it; at first the candy just dropped off, but as it grew thick it fell more slowly, and at last a tiny thread floated off in the air as the syrup dropped.

Of course, they made a great deal of this candy, as it was easy. And when it was cool, they took the pans to the girls in the dining-room. Two of them left the almonds, and cut it up and packed it carefully in boxes which they lined with paraffin paper, tied each one up with narrow ribbon, labeled them with the name, and then put them aside. Meanwhile the girls in the kitchen made:

FONDANT

1 cup of granulated sugar.

½ cup of milk.

Put this on the stove to heat, and stir till the sugar is dissolved, but, until then, do not let it boil. When there is no sugar left on the edges or bottom of the saucepan, let it boil without stirring; have ready a cup of cold water, and after three minutes drop in a little bit and see if you can make it into a ball in your fingers; if not, boil again till you can. Shake the saucepan occasionally so the sugar will not burn. When you can make a firm but not a hard ball, take it off, and set it in a pan of cold water till it is cool enough to put your finger in without burning. Then stir and beat, and, when it begins to get hard, knead it with your hands. Add flavoring while still rather soft.

"This," Miss Betty said to the girls, "is the one thing, above all others, that you must learn to make, because it is the beginning of all sorts of cream candies. In part of it we can put almond flavoring and make it into balls and put a half-almond on top; or use vanilla flavoring, and bits of citron on top. Or we can add chopped nuts to it, or roll pieces of Brazil nuts in, and so on. And of course some of it we will color green, to put green pistachio-nuts on, and pink, to put bits of rose-leaves on. And we can take it while it is still pretty soft, and make little balls of it and dip each one in melted chocolate with the tip of a fork, and make lovely chocolate creams."

"Oh, Miss Betty, let me make those!" begged Mildred; and "Oh, Miss Betty, let me make pistachio creams!"; and "Oh, please, dear Miss Betty, let me make the nut creams!" begged the girls. Miss Betty laughed, and shook her head at them all. "The dining-room girls will finish these, all but the chocolate creams – those we will make to-morrow." So she took all the pans of fondant into the dining-room, and Mother Blair showed the girls there how to turn this plain white candy into colored bonbons, working on the marble slab; they were lovely when they were finished, and packed in boxes like the rest. Meanwhile, Miss Betty said they would make:

CHOCOLATE COCOANUT CAKES

1 cup of sugar.

¼ cup of water.

White of 1 egg.

1 cup of grated cocoanut from a package.

2 squares of chocolate, melted.

Let the sugar and water boil till it spins a thread. Beat the egg white stiff, and very slowly pour in the syrup while beating all the time; add the cocoanut, and then the melted chocolate. Drop on sheets of buttered paper in spoonfuls.

"If you want to have these like little biscuits, do not put in the chocolate; just put them on the paper after spreading it in shallow tins, and bake them till they are brown on top. I think it would be nice to make some of each."