One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed by C. A. Bogardus (popular e readers txt) 📖

To lighten the color and aid the flavor of rank, dark molasses, do the same as above. To allow molasses to cool slowly makes it dark. It should be stirred lively until cool.

Also to improve sour, rank molasses, take the molasses, for instance, ten gallons; take five pounds dry C sugar, five pounds glucose, water two quarts. Boil the sugar and glucose until thoroughly dissolved; add the molasses, boil five minutes. You can make fine syrup this way.

TO MAKE A CANDY HOUSE.—House for a show window. Take any design you fancy, of card board. Cut out the windows; place this on your candy slab. Now with a lead pencil mark out your design, and as many of each piece as you need (it is a good idea to make an extra piece so if you break one you can go ahead). Now take of the icing sugar and fill your paper funnel as if for cake icing, and overline the pencil marks you made on the stone. When done you find you have a frame that will hold hot candy. Boil a batch of Barley Square goods (mentioned in this book), and pour on some in a dipper; take this and pour in your icing sugar frame or patterns you made on the stone, when half cold, so as not to run; run a thin knife under them carefully, lift them and lay them in a different place on the stone; when you have moulded all cut off the icing sugar that sticks to the candy. Then put your candy house together, sides first, and take pieces of lemon stick candy, dip them in the hot candy, and stick in the bottom and top corners of your house; hold them a few seconds to cool, then finish likewise. When done, take your icing sugar and funnel paper and on the outside corners of the candy house put icing sugar and the windows finish the same. Candies, if desired, can be stuck on with the icing sugar, etc. The icing sugar should be stiff for a nice job, and will hide the corners.

Candy pyramids can be made this way also.

TO MAKE A DELICIOUS CANDY COCOANUT CAKE.—Have your cake layers cold. Place in your rice steamer one-half grated cocoanut and a chunk of hand-made cream the size of your fist; stir until mixed and you can spread it; do not melt it more than necessary. This cake will not dry out if made with factory cream. I gave this recipe to two London practical cake bakers; they said it beat any cake recipe they had ever received.

Put your mind to work and with a little practice you will get up candies of your own invention, from the knowledge you derive here in this book.

ICE CREAM.—I will give only the best recipe, my own improvement, as workmen will find all my private recipes in this book to be different from others, as well as first-class. Two quarts thick cream, one pound A sugar, one-fourth ounce French gelatine, yolks of three eggs; add one quart of the cream and gelatine, set on the fire; stir; do not let boil; melt; set off, add the eggs and sugar stirred up together with a little of the cream, stirring all the time; set on, let get hot; set off, add the other quart of cream; stir, strain, freeze. Break your ice fine; use salt from one pint to one quart. Flavor after it is frozen.

FAIR GROUND LEMONADE.—Take one barrel water; dissolve in one quart of warm water twenty-five cents worth citric acid; dissolve two dollars' worth A sugar in one gallon water. Stir all together. A few cut up pieces of lemon can be added for appearance sake.

JAP COCOANUT.—One pound XXX confectioner's sugar, dampened a little; one and one-half pounds glucose; stir when cooked to a soft ball; add all the grated cocoanut it will stick together; boil, stir to the lightest crack.

LEMON ICE.—Seven lemons, the juice only, juice of three oranges. Take one pint water, dissolve in one-half ounce of French sheet gelatine; then add whites of two eggs, one and one-fourth pounds A sugar, dissolved; add all together with three pints cold water; freeze as for ice cream. Keep machine running briskly until finished.

ORANGE ICE.—The same by changing the fruit proportionately.

THE ADULTERATIONS USED BY CERTAIN FACTORIES.—(Please never try to make use of the following, for I never would print it for that purpose, only to expose the stuff.)

Grape sugar, which looks like cheap suet melted, and is so hard as to be chopped with an ax, though it dissolves readily. Terra alba, white clay, which is fine as sugar, and is sieved into cream work or on candy, and worked into it. Rice flour, ground rice mixed into cocoanut goods; cerealine, ground, prepared corn mixed into cocoanut. Glucose has the name of being an adulteration, though I fail, from seventeen years' experience, to find it such; it contains nothing outside of the acid to make it so, and that is in so small a portion as to be harmless. It is an article that is of greater value to man than the inexperienced give it credit for. If I had time I could argue this question satisfactorily to any unprejudiced person. Gamboge is a bad article for candy, yellow, cheap, hurtful color. Ground cocoanut shells are used mostly in adulterating pepper, etc. "Who is to blame for adulterating goods?" I claim three parties—first, the proprietor; next, candy makers; and next, the ignorant class of people that want sixteen cents' worth of boiled sugar for eight cents, when they do not stop to think it could not possibly be made for less than eight cents, all told.

Germany and France have strong laws against all adulterations. Soon America will prohibit the same, and bless God when the day and law we so much need will come.

HOW TO ORNAMENT CAKES.—You need four cups of confectioners' finest sugar, whites of two eggs. Beat the eggs just a little, add the sugar gradually, juice one lemon; beat this stiff, until the sugar will bend when you hold the paddle up. Now take a sheet of thick writing paper, fold it into a funnel shape, hold it in your left hand; fill this with the icing, prepared as above, about two-thirds full, fold in the top and place both thumbs on it, cut off a little of the small end of the funnel to allow the icing to come out when you press with your thumbs. Next, with a knife, cover your cake with icing sugar smoothly; if it sticks to the knife, wet it a little. Let dry half hour; then with a lead pencil make leaves or designs, and with your paper funnel ice your pencil designs. Colored icing looks well.

TAKING LEAF PHOTOGRAPHS—A very pretty amusement, especially for those who have just completed the study of botany, is the taking of leaf photographs. One very simple process is this: At any druggist's get an ounce of Bichromate of Potassium. Put this into a pint bottle of water. When the solution becomes saturated—that is, the water is dissolved as much as it will—pour off some of the clear liquid into a shallow dish; on this float a piece of ordinary writing paper till it is thoroughly moistened, let it dry in the dark. It should be a bright yellow. On this put the leaf, under a piece of black soft cloth and several sheets of newspaper. Put these between two pieces of glass (all the pieces should be of the same size) and with spring clothespins fasten them together. Expose to a bright sun, placing the leaf so that the rays will fall upon it as nearly perpendicular as possible. In a few moments it will begin to turn brown; but it requires from half an hour to several hours to produce a perfect print. When it has become dark enough, take it from the frame, and put it into clear water, which must be changed every few minutes until the yellow part becomes white. Sometimes the leaf veinings will be quite distinct. By following these directions it is scarcely possible to fail, and a little practice will make perfect.

CURIOUS THINGS.—1. To apparently burn water, fill a glass lamp with water, and put into it for a wick a piece of Gum Camphor. The lamp should not be quite full, and the camphor may be left to float upon the surface of the water. On touching a lighted match to the Camphor, up shoots a clear, steady flame, and seems to sink below the surface of the water, so that the flame is surrounded by the liquid. It will burn a long time. If the Camphor be ignited in a large dish of water it will commonly float about while burning.

2. To change the faces of a group to a livid, deathly whiteness, and to destroy colors, wet a half teacupful of common salt in Alcohol and burn it on a plate in a dark room. Let the salt soak a few minutes before igniting. The flame will deaden the brightest colors in the room, and the dresses of the company will seem to be changed. Let each one put his face behind the flame, and it will present a most ghastly spectacle to those who stand before it. This is serviceable in tableau where terror of death is to be represented. The change wrought by the flame, when the materials are properly prepared, is very surprising.

3. Wet a piece of thick wrapping paper, then dry near the stove. While dry, lay it down upon a varnished table or dry woolen cloth, and rub it briskly with a piece of India rubber. It will soon become electrified, and if tossed against the wall or the looking glass will stick some time. Tear tissue-paper into bits, one-eighth of an inch square, and this piece of electrified paper will draw them. Or take a tea-tray and put it on three tumblers. Lay the electric paper on it, and on touching the tray you will get a little spark. Let the paper lay on the tray, and on touching the tray again you will get another spark, but of the opposite kind of electricity. Replace the paper and you will get another, and so on.

4. To produce a spectrum, burn magnesium wire in a dark room, and as soon as the flame is extinguished, let each one try to look into the other's faces. The spectrum of the extinguished light is clearly seen.

MURIATE OF TIN. TIN LIQUOR.—If druggists keep it, it is best to purchase of them already made, but if you prefer, proceed as follows: Get at a tinner's shop block tin, put it into a shovel and melt it. After it is melted, pour it from the height of four or five feet into a pail of clear water. The object of this is to have the tin in small particles, so that the Acid can dissolve it. Take it out of the water and dry it; then put it in a strong brass bottle. Pour over it Muriatic Acid twelve ounces, then slowly add sulphuric acid eight ounces. The Acid should be added about a tablespoonful at a time, at intervals of five or eight minutes, for if you add it too rapidly you run the risk of breaking the bottle by heat. After you have all the Acid in, let the bottle stand until the ebullition subsides; then stop it up with beeswax or glass stopper, and set it away; and it will keep good for a year or more, or it will be fit for use in twenty-four hours.

THE CENTENNIAL ILLUMINATING OIL.—Recipe for Making One Gallon.—Take seven-eighths gallon Benzine or crude Petroleum, add to it one-half ounce Gum Camphor, one-half ounce Alcohol, one-half pint common Salt, one-half ounce