Latin American Cookies Pt. 2

    "The Perils of Vintage Cooking"
    There, I did it! Caption not wasted. As I mentioned yesterday I made cookies when I got home from work Tuesday night. This recipe comes from the "Nestle's Chocolate Kitchen Recipes" cookbook by Jane Fulton, published in 1951. This 33 page booklet includes recipes for cookies, cakes and breads, desserts, and candies. Also, if you care to know a thing or two about the history of The Toll House cookie or Nestle's Quik, this is the book for you. As a side note I would like to state my displeasure at the bastardization of Nestle's Quik to Nesquik. What's next? Are we going to call Armour Hot Dogs "Armdogs"? Geez!
    From the book: "Tucked away in historic Oswego Valley, in the heart of New York State's beautiful dairyland, is Fulton- home of The Nestle Company's chocolate plant- locally known as the "Chocolate Works." How idyllic-sounding. I wonder if it's still there.  
    Do you know the history of the Toll House cookie? Would you like to? Here it is...
        "A cookie is born and a dream comes true"
    "Just as the introduction of pressure cookers and frozen food made radical changes in our cooking techniques, so did the creation of a cookie- the Toll House Cookie.
    It all started as an ingenious experiment on the part of Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn when she chopped up Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate for use in her favorite cookie recipe. To her surprise, her favorite crispy cookie not only became more delicious in flavor but had, in addition, a delightful surprise element- whole pieces of chocolate that did not melt during baking. Almost overnight Toll House Cookies became a sensational success."
    Hmm, that wasn't a very exciting tale. I expected a bit more. Possibly some political intrigue, a smidgen of spy involvement, rabid squirrels, parachuting milkmaids, anything! Oh well.

        Latin American Cookies

Sift together and set aside

    1 1/2 c. sifted flour

    1/2 tsp. salt

    1 tsp. baking powder

    1/2 tsp. soda

    1 tsp. cinnamon

    1/2 tsp. nutmeg

    1/4 tsp. ginger

Blend

    1/3 c. butter

    1/4 c. sugar

Combine

    1/3 c. light molasses

    1/3 c. double strength coffee (cold)

Add alternately to butter-sugar

        mixture, sifted dry in-

        gredients and molasses

Add

    1 pkg. Nestle's Semi-Sweet

        Chocolate Morsels

Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased

cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees  Time: 15 min.

        Yield: 3 dozen

If desired, frost with powdered

sugar frosting.

    It was as i was mixing in the chocolate chips that I realized something was wrong. There were so many chocolate chips you could barely see the batter. Oh no! Just then it occurred to me: perhaps the package sizing was different back in the 1950s! There wasn't anything I could do about it at this juncture, so I just measured out the batter onto the cookie sheets and set the timer.
    While the cookies were baking I hopped on the internet and did some investigating. I found several references to a six ounce package. Well, that was it! I had just put double the amount of chocolate chips into the cookies! Oh man! I don't even particularly care for chocolate! 
    The cookies turned out even with the extra chips. I brought them into work and they disappeared. My friend, Jackie said they were "Awsome!". It's hard to beat awesome, so even if they weren't my favorites this is apparently a fine recipe.
    Oh, by the way, I didn't label them "Latin American Cookies" I called them "molasses double chocolate chip cookies". People are too frightened by the unknown where food is concerned.

Graham Cracker Cake

    Happy Friday! I am going to take a look at the new camera this weekend and see if I can get it all set up. In the meantime, how about a recipe?
    There are so many to choose from and I know what you're thinking, "Why don't you ever bake a cake?" Well, okay, you've twisted my arm. A cake it is!
    The cake: Graham Cracker Cake. The cookbook: 15 pages of typed recipes that I suspect somebody took from one of those community cookbooks and stapled together. That's what it looks like anyway. I would date it from sometime in the 1970's. The sections include: Breads, Cakes and Frostings, Candies, and Cookies. Why these were removed from the original book I cannot guess. Nevertheless, it intrigued me so last night I gave it a whirl.
        

        Graham Cracker Cake

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

3 beaten egg yolks

1/2 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

24 graham crackers (2 1/4 cups crushed)

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup walnuts

3 stiffly beaten egg whites

    Soften shortening, add sugar, cream together

until fluffy. Add vanilla and egg yolks, beat well.

Add dry ingredients and cream. Add alternately

crushed graham crackers and milk. Beat after each

is added until smooth. Add nuts, then fold in egg

whites. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes.

        Frosting for Graham Cracker Cake

1 cup milk

4 Tbs. flour

Cook until pasty; let set until cool. Mix the

following in bowl:

1/2 cup butter

pinch of salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup sugar

Add milk sauce and beat until fluffy.

    I know, I know, the frosting sounds kind of gross. In fact I found that it really didn't suit me at all. I am pretty much a die-hard buttercream frosting gal. The cake on the other hand, I loved. It had a great flavor. I almost left out the nuts because Auntie doesn't like them but when trying out a recipe for the first time I generally like to have it as it is meant to be. I'm glad I did, because the combination of the graham cracker batter and the nuts was so good, especially near the edges. Mmmm. 

    Now, the problem with the frosting for me was the consistancy. It uses granulated sugar and is whipped up into a light airy spread. I am not a fan of whippy airy frostings. Auntie preferred the frosting to the cake (sacrilege!). She doesn't care for nuts in things, as I mentioned previously, and she said the frosting reminded her of the "Dream Whip" her grandmother used to make.
    Oh, by the way, this recipe comes from a lady named Donna Mayo and a quote on the bottom of the page tells us that "Manners are the happy way of doing things." That's all for now; enjoy your Friday!       

Upside-Down Cake

    It's cake time again! I gave the remainder of my "eggless cake" to the birds. I am sure the little beggars enjoyed it, and especially the raisins and dates. 
    How about a vintage upside-down cake? I've never made one before! I turned to "Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cook Book: 157 Recipes and Ideas" from "Betty Crocker of General Mills", dated 1956.

    Says Betty:

"You do so many nice special
things for the family more
often, because you start
so far ahead with Bisquick!"

(I guess Betty's better with cooking than words!)

    Bisquick, like Spam, is a much maligned product, I find. I once made a really delicious banana bread using a Bisquick recipe and brought it into work with me. One of my coworkers asked me for the recipe. He wanted to give it to his sister, but once he found out it was a Bisquick recipe he told me to just forget it. "My sister would never make anything with 'Bisquick' in it". I suppose there are plenty of people too snooty to use Bisquick, but I say if it tastes good, why not?! And it did (does) taste good...

For your consideration:

        Upside-Down Cake  

"Velvet Crumb is a favorite right side up 

and a double favorite upside down."  

Heat oven to 350 degrees (mod.). Melt 2

tbsp. butter in 8" square pan or 9"

round layer pan. Sprinkle with 1/4 

cup brown sugar. Arrange over sugar

mixture fresh or well drained canned

fruit (peach slices, pineapple slices

or chunks, or apricot halves). Make 

Velvet Crumb Cake batter (see below).

Pour over fruit. Bake 35 to 40 min.,

until toothpick stuck in center comes

out clean. Invert at once on serving

plate. Leave pan over cake a minute.

Serve warm with plain or whipped 

cream. 

Neat Trick: Dazzle the family with 

different designs on your upside-

down cakes.  

        Velvet Crumb Cake batter

    1 1/3 cups Bisquick

     3/4 cup sugar

    3 tbsp. soft shortening

    1 egg

    3/4 cup milk

    1 tsp. vanilla

Mix Bisquick, sugar. Add

shortening, egg, 1/4 cup of milk. Beat

vigorously 1 min. Stir in gradually 

remaining milk, vanilla. Beat 1/2 

min. 

    Verdict: Yummy yummy yummy, I've got love in my tummy! And, it was simple to make. I was traditional and used pineapple rings, but peaches sound good too. It makes a nice little cake. Sorry birdies! I don't see any leftovers forthcoming! 

    Stay tuned for another Bisquick recipe! 

Eggless Cake Pt. 2: Success!

    Yesterday I wrote of my kitchen disaster with an eggless cake recipe from the "land before time". Okay, just kidding, but I did some further investigating and found out that my honey cook book was put out in 1919! Even earlier than I thought.

    As to the cake nightmare, the cards were stacked against me. I actually found this notation in the cook book: "Practically all of the recipes in this booklet have been thoroughly tested." Well, heck! It would be just my luck to pick a recipe that had been only slightly tested!

    Well, as you know I intended to do everything I did on the first tryout, only use a Bundt pan instead of a loaf pan. This I did. I threw everything together like an old pro and popped it in the oven.  Twenty minutes passed, not even close. Thirty minutes passed, nope, now I'm starting to worry. At forty minutes time I took the cake out. It looked beautiful: a deep golden color. It smelled good:  But, the toothpick did not come out completely clean. My hopes sank to the floor. Nevertheless, I put the pan on the rack to cool and went to watch my t.v. show (I Spy, again). 

    When the cake had cooled enough to remove it from the pan it was a beautiful sight to behold. Just the right color and texture. After a bit I cut a slice for myself and my aunt. It was good! The inside was not raw, but moist and the outside was perfect. I let out the breath I was holding and cut myself another slim slice!

Victory is mine! Guess what I am having as an afternoon snack? No guesswork.

    Now I feel I can move on with my head held high. 

    If you are interested in some more honey info, here are some more notes from the booklet:

• Honey is "nature's sweet" and "is as pure and wholesome as mountain air and a real food that any stomach will welcome".
• "Baked goods, and, in fact, foods of any kind prepared with honey, keep better than if prepared with sugar. It is well known by scientists that honey, in a sense, is a preservative.Fruit put up with honey not only keeps better, but the color is brighter, and cakes and cookies are less likely to grow musty." (I do hate having to brush the must off my cookies).
• Honey is pure, "without an untruth hidden in it". (Unlike those lying sacks of sugar!)
• Honey "imparts that waxy quality to cakes that makes them so delicious" Waxy? Really?
• "It's flavor will take your memory back to shady lanes and clover-studded fields- to June and the drone of bees"... (and the fleeing and the stinging and the screaming).
• Honey is "immediately absorbed into the blood". (How is this a bonus? I don't want to imagine my blood thickly infused with honey. I figure my blood is just barely chugging along on a good day.)

    Lastly, I know I have complained about the lack of specifics listed in the recipe; oven temp, cooking time, etc. but as I was perusing the other recipes I saw ingredient quantities listed as: one coffee cupful of this, or two coffee cupfuls of that. How much is that? Did everybody have standard-sized coffee cups back then? At least I didn't pick one of those! In some cases the editors did give you an idea of required oven temp by stating "put cake in quick oven". I couldn't remember, myself just how hot that was supposed to be so I looked it up online. It is a 400 degree oven. While I was looking this up I came upon an inquiry from some poor fool who had an old cookbook she wanted to use and she wanted to know where she could purchase a "Quick Oven"! So sad. Well, at least there's one dingleberry out there who knows less about cooking than I do!

Eggless Cake Pt. 1: Disaster!

    Ugh! Yesterday was kind of a crummy day all-around. I woke up to the sound of a cat coughing up a hairball and it went downhill from there: work was hectic, the man at the grocery meat counter ignored me and tried to wait on two men that had just arrived (tried!), and the electricity went off with 10 minutes left in my t.v. program (I Spy). Oh, and then there was the cake.
     I had a hunch I was in trouble from the start. The recipe booklet was so old that it only listed ingredients. As a knowledgeable cook of the past I would have known the right oven temperature, the cooking time, the size of the pan, etc. As a hapless cook of the present I turned to the internet to give me some clues. I figured out what I thought was the right timing and temperature. Where I screwed up (I think) was the pan...but I digress, let me tell you about my recipe choice.
     The recipe booklet of choice is called "Airline Honey Cook Book". This booklet is put out by The A. I. Root Company of Medina, Ohio "The Home of the Honeybees". While I could find no date on the booklet I think it might be from the 1920s. It references a study done in 1913 to emphasize a point. According to the booklet "Eighty-five pounds of sugar on the average is annually consumed by every man, woman, and child in the United States. According to that 1913 study the consumption of cane sugar by the average American is nearly five times that of the average European." To stress the perils of cane sugars and the goodness of honey, the booklet quotes Prof. A.J. Cook, of Claremont, Cal. "If cane sugar is absorbed without change, it will be removed by the kidneys and may result in their breakdown." Therefore, "There can be no doubt but that in eating honey our digestive machinery is saved work that it would have to perform if we ate cane sugar. We all know how children long for candy. Children should be given all the honey at each meal that they will eat"!
    Some more tidbits:

• What is  honey? "Honey is the nectar of flowers modified and evaporated by the bees."
• Different kinds of honey: Honey may have a good heavy body or it may be quite thin. It ranges in color from almost water-white to as dark as the darkest molasses. The flavor varies according to the flower from which it is obtained- the lighter-colored honeys being milder in flavor, as a rule.  White-clover honey, sage, sweet clover, alfalfa, willow-herb, raspberry, etc. are quite mild,each, however, having its own distinct flavor. Goldenrod, aster, heartsease, buckwheat, etc. are darker and stronger in flavor, especially the latter which is very strong and practically the darkest honey sold.
• Honey is placed on the market in four forms: comb honey, extracted honey, bulk comb honey, and granulated honey.

Now, I can't put it off any longer. I must describe the disaster.

         Eggless Cake
    One cupful sugar, 1/2 cup honey, one cupful sour milk, 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, one cupful chopped raisins, one cup chopped dates, one teaspoonful soda, 2 1/2 cupfuls flour. Spices may be added to taste.

Well that's the whole recipe. My research told me I should bake the cake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. Now as you can see this is not your standard white cake with buttercream frosting (mmm...buttercream frosting). This is more like what I would call a tea cake or a tea loaf. So, because I thought of it that way I put it in a loaf pan. BIG MISTAKE! Oh man, what a disaster!
     It baked and baked and baked and baked. 20 minutes passed, 30 minutes passed, still totally soupy in center. 35 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes...finally I could take it no more! I took it out after 50 minutes! It was burnt on the outside, but I told myself, that, surely, the inside parts would be edible. Dear reader, after the brick, er...cake, had cooled on the rack I cut into it. Oh the humanity! Burnt on the outside, raw on the inside! In total disgust I heaved it into the trash.
My aunt was bothered that I didn't save it for the birds. I asked her which part she thought the birds would want, the burnt or the raw and she answered without batting an eye, "the burnt".  I'm not sure, but I think that would qualify as animal cruelty.
So here's the deal...I'm making it again tonight. This time in a bundt pan. Wish me luck! I'm sure going to need it!!