Velvet Cream. (Miss Ward.)

½ box gelatine.1

1 ½ cup sherry wine.

1 lemon (grated rind and juice).

1 ½ cup sugar. 1 ½ pint cream.

Soak the gelatine in the wine, add the lemon and sugar, and heat all together till the gelatine is dissolved. Then strain and set it away to cool. When nearly cold, but before it begins to stiffen, add the cream. Beat till nearly stiff enough to drop, then pour it into moulds and set it on ice until stiff as blanc-mange.

Imperial Cream

Make the rule for Lemon Jelly (page 350), and color part of it pink with cochineal or cranberry juice. Harden it in a shallow pan. Make Snow Pudding (page 347), and when nearly stiff enough to drop, stir in small squares of the pink and lemon jelly. Mould, and when ready to serve, turn out on a dish, garnish the base and top with macaroons soaked in wine. Pour rich boiled custard round the dish, and put macaroons and cubes of the jellies in the custard.

Whipped Cream

Many wholesome, delicious, and attractive dishes may be made with whipped cream. To those who can obtain plenty of cream, these dishes afford a cheaper, more easily prepared, and far more satisfactory course than pie and many forms of hot puddings. Many of them are equally suitable for tea. Very rich cream should be diluted and well mixed with an equal quantity of milk. The best quality of cream obtained from the milkman is usually of the proper consistency. Thin cream will become liquid after whipping, and thick cream will turn to butter. The cream should always be icy cold; when it is to be served as a garnish, or for cream whips, it should be sweetened and flavored before it is whipped.

A whip churn is the best utensil for whipping cream. This is a tin cylinder, perforated at the bottom and sides, and having a perforated dasher. When the churn is placed in a bowl of cream, and the dasher worked up and down, the air is forced from the cylinder into the cream, causing it to become light and frothy. A Dover egg-beater will make the cream light, but it has a different consistency from that obtained by churning.

How To Whip Cream

Place a bowl half filled with cream in a pan of broken ice. When very cold, put the churn into the cream, hold the cylinder firmly, and keep the cover in place with the left hand. Tip the churn slightly, that the cream may flow out at the bottom. Work the dasher with a light short stroke up, and a hard, pushing stroke down. When the froth appears, stir it down once or twice, as the first bubbles are too large; and when the bowl is full of froth, skim it off into a granite pan placed on ice. Take off the froth only, and do not take it off below the holes in the cylinder, as it whips better when they are covered. For this reason never whip a pint of cream in a three-quart bowl, and do not try to whip it all, as usually a little is left in the bowl which is too thin to whip.

One pint of cream should treble in whipping. If for a garnish, drain the whipped cream on a hair sieve placed over a pan, and keep it on ice till stiff enough to keep it shape. Creams that are to be moulded are made stiffer by the addition of gelatine.