Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1917 — Candied Cranberries [ARTICLE]

Candied Cranberries

Candied cranberries make a delicious and inexpensive confection, much resembling candied cherries but having a distinct flavor of its own. This is a suggestion to housewives from the home economics experts of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who have been developing new uses for the cranberry. They have developed a method which if followed closely gives a bright, firm, plump, semitransparent candied fruit which can be eaten as i sweetmeat or used to give a touch of color to frosted cakes, whipped cream, or custards, or which can be used Ifke citron in cakfes or puddings or chopped up and added to "tutti-frutti" ice cream - The secret of candying cranberries Iler in handling the fruit so that it wll become saturated with sugar. This calls for slow cooking on the installment plan and the use of a dish large enough to permit all the berries to float at the top of the sirup during cooking. The skins are so touch that the/ must be pierced before cooking to let the sirup into the pulp or interior. To do this, three little slits, eacli long, should be made In each berry with the point of a psnknife. Use selected large, firm cranberries. -The directions for cooking are as follows: For LVaCups of berries, make a thin sirup by boiling together until clear 2 cups of sugar and 2% cups of water. When the sirup is cool, add the berries and bring very slowly to the boiling' point; it the berries;are heated too quickly, the skins wiil burst be--fore the sirup soaks into the pulp. As soon as the sirup boils, take the dish off the stove and let it stand over until U is reduced to about half its original volume. Put t.he berries into this medium-thick sirup and heal slowly; boil gently for 3 or 4 milkutes, and then allow to stand for 2 hi-urs or more. Then boil gently a third time for 5 minutes. A smaller dish probably will be needed for the third and last boiling. When thoroughly cold, or better still, on the following day, drain off the sirup- and spread the berries out on a lightly buttered plate or a sheet of dean, waxed or lightly buttered paper until the surface the berries dries. The berries, if directions have.been followed, will candy separately, and not into a sticky mass. T j make a delicious ice cream, add % to % of a cup of chopped berries to each quart of the cream mixture. They also can be combined with bits of candied orange or lemon peel, or other glace fruits to make "tuttifrutti” ice cream. The sirup left over after the berries are candied has a pleasant sweet-acid flavor and fine color and is excellent in pudding sauce or even, when diluted with water, for use on pancakes, waffles, etc.