Page:The White House Cook Book.djvu/357

 PASTRY, PIES AND TARTS. 325

TO MAKE PIE CRUST FLAKY.

IN MAKING a pie, after you have rolled out your top crust, cut it about the right size, spread it over with butter, then shake sifted flour over the butter, enough to cover it well. Cut a slit in the middle, place it over the top of your pie, and fasten the edges as any pie. Now take the pie on your left hand and a dipper of cold water in your right hand; tip the pie slanting a little, pour over the water suffi- ciently to rinse off the flour. Enough flour will stick to the butter to fry into the crust, to give it a fine, blistered, flaky look, which many cooks think is much better than rolling the butter into the crust.

TARTLETS. No. 1.

TARTS of strawberry or any other kind of preserves are generally made of the trimmings of puff paste rolled a little thicker than the or- dinary pies; then cut out with a round cutter, first dipped in hot water, to make the edges smooth, and placed in small tart-pans, first pricking a few holes at the bottom with a fork before placing them in the oven. Bake from ten to fifteen minutes. Let the paste cool a little ; then fill it with preserve. By this manner, both the flavor and color of the jam are preserved, which would be lost were it baked in the oven on the paste; and, besides, so much jam is not required.

TARTLETS. No. 2.

TARTLETS are nice made in this manner: Roll some good puff paste out thin, and cut it into two and a half inch squares ; brush each square over with the white of an egg, then fold down the corners, so that they all meet in the middle of each piece of paste ; slightly press the two pieces together, brush them over with the egg, sift over sugar and bake in a nice quick oven for about a quarter of an hour. When they are done, make a little hole in the middle of the paste and fill it up with apricot jam, marmalade, or red currant jelly. Pile them high in the centre of a dish on a napkin and garnish with the same pre- serves the tartlets are filled with.

PATTIES, OR SHELLS FOR TARTS.

EOLL out a nice puff paste thin ; cut out with a glass or cookie-cut- ter and with a wine-glass or smaller cutter, cut out the centre of two out of three ; lay the rings thus made on the third, and bake at once.

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