Awhile back I made suet cakes for the birds using deer tallow. Miserable failure. The birds thought it was disgusting. After a year, the rain and sun did more damage to it than any birds.
So, I re-thought the whole process and here is my new, improved version of suet cakes for your feathered friends in the dead o' winter.
I'm using pork tallow, which should be a lot tastier than the dead deer rind. The preferable tallow would be beef. But pork is what I have.
Suet Cakes II
I decided to mold the cake right in the cage I would be hanging in the tree. I'm using a commercial suet cage, but you could make your own out of 1" chicken wire. I formed the mold with foil inside the cage.
I started out putting the pork fat in double boiler, but I had to transfer it to a pot on a diffuser plate because steam isn't hot enough. I use a diffuser plate for things like this (especially melting wax) to keep stuff from burning on the bottom or catching fire.
After letting the fat cool so it wouldn't deep fry the seeds, I removed most of the cracklin's from the fat and filled the foil mold half way with seeds, then poured in the fat.
I added more seeds to fill the mold and stirred the seeds around as the fat thickened so they would be suspended equally throughout.
I folded the foil up just enough to prevent spills.
The cage and mix went into the freezer for about 30 minutes to firm it up. After removing the cake from the cage, removing the foil, and putting the finished block of suet back in the cage, it's ready to present to the hungry horde outside.
Thanks for checking it out....
