Graham Bread

Happy Sunday all!

Today's item is called Graham Bread submitted by the very ambitious home cook, Mrs. Jesse Anderson. This particular clipping is from the column titled "A Little Bit of Everything", a column Grandma seemed to enjoy for there are dozens pasted in the notebook. Mrs. Anderson evidently submitted everything within the entire column for the tag line reads "Our thanks to Mrs. Jesse Anderson for the entire column". With all of her likely chores, Mrs. Anderson still had time to sit down and prepare a submission? The first recipe listed is Graham Bread, then White Cake (Inexpensive), Caramels, and an epic tome titled "How to Preserve a Husband". More on that later.

Now that fall is in the air, I chose Graham Bread to accompany a hearty Sunday vegetable soup. I liked the recipe did not call for yeast (yes!) and I happened to have graham flour on hand. It was meant to be.

Graham Bread

(1 large loaf or two small)
1 pint sour milk ( or 1/2 cup sour cream and 1 1/2 cups sour milk)
1 teaspoon salt
2 level teaspoons soda
1 cup sugar (scant)
2 cups graham flour (level)
1 cup white flour (level)

Nuts and raisins can be added if desired but very good without. Bake in bread pan in slow oven until thoroughly done 30 to 40 minutes (350 oven)


Like many of the clipped recipes in Grandma's notebook it is understood the home cook has a working knowledge of the proper sequence for the ingredients listed plus the appropriate technique. I have a clue for the most part -- like dry ingredients in baked good are usually incorporated into the liquid ingredients -- so I hauled out the mixer and started gathering ingredients.

With everything lined up on the kitchen counter I noticed there was no egg in the recipe. Interesting. How would the bread rise with no egg or yeast? Then I remembered my mom's recipe for an Irish Soda Bread where the acidity of buttermilk (or clabbered milk) reacts with salt and baking soda to provide loft. I ran to my card file and pulled it out -- sure enough the recipes were practically identical. I now knew how to proceed. No mixer necessary!

First I adjusted my pan size. The Irish soda bread mom makes fills a two-quart casserole, certainly not a loaf pan. That's why Mrs. Anderson said her recipe makes two loaves -- two full-size bread pans that is! I combined first all of the dry ingredients and a cup of golden raisins (better for baking than traditional ones, in my opinion) but no nuts. I then dumped the entire pint of buttermilk over the whole thing and I folded the batter just enough to make a moist dough. Into a greased Pyrex casserole it went and into the oven for 30 minutes. After 30, the toothpick test failed. Still doughy. No prob. Back in for 7 more minutes and this time  = success. From the other room Max inquired about the smell and asked if he could have some. Yep -- as soon as it cooled! I turned the huge loaf onto a cooling rack and then we sliced off an end....warm, fragrant, and hearty.

Later, with the bread accompanying the veggie soup, we slathered it with butter and I personally polished off two more pieces. Mmmm....the three of us declared it a success!!

Soup Can Score -- Five out of Five Soup Cans

This recipe will be a permanent fixture in our repertoire. Homemade, fresh bread with no preservatives in under an hour? You bet!




In this salute to Mrs. Jesse Anderson I share with you her essay on how "preserve" a husband -- and a lucky guy he is indeed. Read on:

How to Preserve a Husband

Be careful in your selection, do not choose too young and take only such varieties as have been reared in a good moral atmosphere. When once decided upon and selected, let that part remain forever settled, and give your entire thought to preparation for domestic use. Some insist in keeping them in a pickle, while others are constantly getting them into hot water. Even poor varieties may be made sweet, tender and good by garnishing them with patience, well sweetened with smiles and flavored with kisses to taste; then wrap them well in a mantle of charity, keep warm in a steady file of devotion and serve with peaches and cream. When thus prepared, they will keep for years. 

Three Labor Day Meals

Happy Labor Day!

A time to reflect on the labors of the America Worker and the inherent struggles -- past, present, and future. My "labor" today is a different kind of work -- within the job description and apron of the 1950s   housewife.

Grandma's notebook includes several of the Daily News' Cooking School columns penned by the 1950s cooking expert, Mary Starr (see blog about sandwich spreads). Within these columns are printed menu suggestions for the day, presumably to give the woman of the house some ideas for the week. Menu suggestions are always entertaining to read but I personally have never cooked ANY preprinted menus (not even a Martha Stewart menu!) for a myriad of reasons....mainly time.

So how much TIME did a typical 50s woman spend in the kitchen each day? Around 20 hours a week.  Today's woman spends an average of 35 hours at her JOB in the 2000s....married women who don't work spend an average of two hours in the kitchen each day. Women who do work and women who are in higher income brackets spend from 45 to 30 minutes cooking each day. Let's see where my Labor Day stacks up.

The Daily News
Cooking School 
by Mary Starr

Menus for Thursday

BREAKFAST
Orange Juice
Crisp Rice Cereal
Poached egg on Tost
Frizzled Ham
Coffee, milk

LUNCHEON
Frankfurters with Sauerkraut
Green Bean Salad
Hard Rolls
Lemon Tarts
Milk, tea

DINNER
Rice meat balls
Tomato Sauce
Buttered Noodles
Broccoli with Hollandaise Sauce
Pumpernickle Bread
Date Whip
Coffee

7:00 a.m. Rise and shine. Coffee. Paper. Porch.
7:40 a.m. Putting away all of yesterday's dishes still in the drainer. Begin breakfast menu.

The first thing I notice is the absence of fresh fruit. Well, orange juice, but no fruit. Not sure from what season this menu might be. I fill the saucepan with water, bring it up to a simmer for the eggs. I have whole wheat bread of the toast, ham slices for the frizzled ham which, by the way, is just ham fried up in a pan until it kind of curls up around the edges. According to the internet, frizzled ham is usually made with lunch meat. I have ham slices on hand so no fried bologna here. Crisp Rice cereal? Yup. Plus Max gets the cocoa kind -- lucky guy. Poached eggs -- I remember the vinegar trick and I dump some in just before the eggs. I crack the eggs into a cup and roll them into the simmering water just like you see on TV. But they don't coagulate right away and the water looks more like egg-drop soup. Ick. Then as I let the pan simmer for a few minutes they take shape. I drain them on paper towels and plop them onto the buttered toast. Perfect! Whew!

8:00 a.m. Eating the breakfast. Quite good. And in only 20 minutes! Just imagine if I'd had to actually fix my hair and put on clothes and makeup beforehand....Would have had to get up at 6:00 a.m. on a holiday. No good.

Labor Day Breakfast

9:40 a.m. Begin lemon tarts for lunch in between laundry, a jigsaw puzzle, and locating the play-doh bin. I remember seeing a post on the web from a lady saying she remembers her own mother cooking one meal and then immediately beginning the next one. I understand the feeling.

The lemon tarts are a short-cut recipe I found online....pie crust rounds into mini-muffin pans, top with a lemon pudding mix with garnish on top. They had boxed lemon pudding back then so I figured why not? Max and I cut the pie crust dough into rounds, tamp the rounds into the greased muffin cups and bake at 450 for 7 min. We mix the 4-serving size box instant lemon pudding with one cup milk. Next, the zest on one lemon for good measure (thanks to Max for zesting). After the shells cool I fill them up with the lemon mixture and top each with a blueberry. Done! Max gets the leftover dough scraps to play with. It's a win-win. Into the fridge the tarts go until lunch.

Lemon Tarts

10:10 a.m. Wash kitchen floor with ammonia water. Long overdue -- had to be done.
10:30 a.m. Kitchen closed

12:00 p.m. Begin to prepare lunch. Yikes! John reminds me he has football today so lunch has to be served STAT, he wants to leave by 1:00. I whirl around the kitchen and start the green bean salad first. I have a pound of fresh garden green beans from our yard so this is an easy one. Steam them for 6 min, shock in cold water, add a pint of cherry tomatoes (also homegrown), a cucumber and slices of red onion. A few glugs of olive oil and juice of a lemon (Max juices it for me), salt and pepper. Done. Frankfurters and kraut? I throw them in all in a pan with a bit of water and let it simmer. The hard rolls are courtesy of the Target bakery and though the menu called for milk and tea I skip both. Water is nature's best hydrator.
12:35 p.m. EAT. John is lucky I can cook as quickly as I do. I feel like Rachael Ray with a 30-min meal! The recipes were all quite good though it feels funny to have a "hot" lunch, like I was at a cafeteria or something. The green bean salad is quite good and the lemon tarts are good but I would have preferred a lemon curd rather than a lemon pudding.

Labor Day Lunch

1:10 p.m. Finished cleaning up kitchen. Whew. Siesta? Not yet. I look at the dinner menu and remember to make the Date Whip. This recipe was a mystery to me but not the lady who collects the recipes from the backs of old, vintage packages -- including the back of a box of dates! Visit her at: http://recipecurio.com/date-whip-recipe/

Max strolls in as I am whipping egg whites and adding the allspice and vanilla. He crushes a cup of graham crackers for me and we combine all of it with a cup of freshly-whipped cream. We take a taste -- decidedly different but very good! Tastes like a spice cookie or gingerbread. VERY sweet. Yum! Into the fridge 'til later. 

1:36 p.m. Run the dishwasher with all the day's dishes in it. Sit to write this blog. 
2:45 p.m. Siesta
3:15 p.m. Outside to play
4:30 p.m. Lego. I build a campground for Harry Potter and a few of his friends.
5:00 p.m. Cook dinner. I start with the meatballs. I actually have a recipe in my personal box for a ground beef and rice meatball with a tomato sauce so why not? They are called Porcupine Meatballs and they have a sauce made with tomato soup that I remember as a child. Pretty good stuff! I grab an extra lean beef, mix it with garlic, onion, parboiled rice, 1/4 cup tomato soup and an egg. It made 16 meatballs that I browned in EVOO on the stove. They stick to the pan but eventually release as they cook longer. I add water, the rest of the soup and yellow mustard to make a simmering sauce. The meatballs simmered for 20 minutes. Next -- tackle the hollandaise sauce. 

On the web there are loads of hollandaise recipes. Most are loaded with egg yolks and butter. I only needed to make a small quantity so I decided to make modifications. One yolk, 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 teaspoon lemon juice and a squirt of Dijon mustard. I ignore Tyler Florence and his double boiler, I also ignore other suggestions to haul out food processors, blenders, and immersion blenders. Nope. Going commando here. I simply whip the yolk and lemon juice to emulsify and then I slowly add the butter and lastly the mustard. It doesn't break at the low temperature. Hot water thins it as it thickens too much. Authentic? Maybe not but it works. 

Buttered noodles? Easy. Pumpernickle bread? Pepperidge Farm, thank you. I even butcher a watermelon and Max and I call it dinner. John is not home from football so I make him a bento box of  homemade goodness for tomorrow. The menu calls for coffee. Nope, not me. When I've cooked like it's Thanksgiving I go for the Malbec. Yum. 

Max and I dine on the porch with the fading evening light glowing on our family table. Max says it's the best meal ever. I agree. I think Grandma would too. 

7:00 p.m. DONE

How much time did I spend in the kitchen today? Just a hair under 5 hours. Yikes. And our Grandmothers used to do this EVERY DAY? A sobering thought. However, the nice thing about today is I feel full all day long. No snacking for me, not even a thought of snacking. The meals are balanced (except fruit??), a bit carb-heavy with the starches and desserts but calorie wise, not too bad. John and I run the stats and breakfast clocks in around 550 calories, lunch also around 550. Dinner? Not quite sure but around 850 -- 900 calories. That puts me around 2000 for the day. Not exactly weight loss territory but not overreaching, either. I enjoy the challenge....and another bonus presents itself -- all the yummy comfort food with my family? Priceless.

Blueberry Butter Cake

Hello all!

Using up the bounty of the season? If you have blueberries -- fresh or frozen -- you will want to make this recipe for Blueberry Butter Cake. Fabulous!

I was flipping through the notebook the other day, paying particular attention to any seasonal recipes that might catch my fancy. After all, Grandma grew up on a very prosperous farm in north-central Illinois and when describing it to me she often said "we didn't want for anything". However, Grandma would also speak of her lack of kitchen experience in her youth -- Aunt Evelyn (age 101 this August 18) is several years older and was usually the one to help out in the kitchen. I don't think Grandma was ever one to grown her own garden or can food for the winter, at least that I know of, but she always had a deep appreciation for anything homegrown or locally produced. It was from her I learned what a "Farmer's Market" was. Her favorite purchases included fresh flowers, tomatoes and blueberries. I don't know if Grandma ever baked this recipe for Blueberry Butter Cake but I would have recommended it to her. This one's for you Grandma!

Blueberry Butter Cake -- submitted by Mrs. Earl Metz

2 cups blueberries
Juice 1/2 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
3 T butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup sifted flour
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

1 cup sugar
1 T cornstarch
1 cup boiling water

Line a well-greased 8x8x2 pan with berries and sprinkle with lemon juice. Cream sugar and butter together; add milk alternately with flour, baking powder, and salt which have been sifted together. Pour this batter evenly over blueberries. Combine sugar, cornstarch and salt. Sprinkle over top of cake. Pour boiling water over all and bake at 375 degrees for one hour. 6 servings.

Sugar Sugar

Darn! I'd made the shopping trip of the week and discovered I only had 3/4 sup sugar in the house -- including the opening and dumping of any sugar packets I had on hand. Ok, enough for the cake but not for the topping. I ran to the neighbors' house and she generously gave me what she had -- a cup and a half. I once heard that it is possible to cut up to one-half of the sugar listed in just about any recipe (baked goods included) and the recipe would maintain it's crumb, texture and browning capabilities. I put that theory to the test. I used the entire 3/4 cup for the cake portion as written and then only 1/2 cup for the topping -- exactly half. But would it work?

Boiling Water

Pour boiling water over all? Strange to me because the berries and the batter really resembled a shortcake-style cobbler in the pan. The sugar/cornstarch mixture, also a little different to me, resembled the makings of a crunchy topping. But it was all good as it was. Why ruin it by pouring a cup of boiling water all over?? But this being a true-to-the-recipe kind of blog, I poured on. With the addition of the water the cake looked like it was a loose, runny mess. I popped it into the 375 oven anyway. After 20 minutes the cake firmed up nicely. After 45 minutes the cake was a nice deep brown in places and the blueberries had erupted to the surface and resulted in a very cobbler-like dish.

However, the boiling water concept had me feeling curious -- a quick Google search revealed that these "self-saucing puddings" have a genre all their own, perhaps being better known as "pudding cakes". There were recipes out there for chocolate ones, date ones, and lo and behold -- the exact same recipe as I've written it above!! Some nice lady named Gertrude posted it to Cooks.com under the name "Gertrude's Blueberry Batter Cake". Not so strange after all I suppose!

The Verdict

Even after running out of sugar and reducing it to 1/2 cup the crust had a nice snap when I spooned out a serving. The blueberries had completely melted into a jelly-like goodness that held it's shape and texture. Didn't miss the extra 1/2 cup sugar. And the taste? Perfect. Like a blueberry pie only better, cake-like and homemade.



Soup Can Score -- Five cans out of Five
Get yourself some blueberries and make this! Serve with homemade vanilla ice cream....yum!

Chocolate Drop Cookies

I was tired of Jell-O for now so here's an interesting cookie. Interesting because of the sugar content and the type of batter. Remember the Filled Oatmeal Cookies? Just brown sugar, no white sugar. Well, in this cookie we repeat history.

There is no credit for this recipe, it's just written in pencil in Grandma's neat, thin hand.

Chocolate Drop Cookies

1 beaten egg
1 cup brown sugar
1 T vanilla
1/2 cup shortening
2 squares chocolate melted
1 2/3 cup cake flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t soda
1/2 cup sweet or sour milk
1/2 cup nuts

Beat egg until light, add sugar and mix well. Add vanilla then shortening which has been mixed with melted chocolate; blend well. Sift flour with salt and soda and add alternately with milk; add nuts. Drop small portions of greased baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake 350 10-12 minutes. While still warm, frost with butter cocoa frosting.


All purpose flour vs cake flour -- head to head


This recipe was a great choice for a busy day -- I had everything on hand including the leftover cake flour from the orange cake. However, I have been leery of that bag of cake flour every since the Orange Cake turned out funny in texture. Still, this was a chance to use some of it up.

According to the web, more protein exists in all purpose flour therefore giving more structure and density to the everyday baked goods -- think loaves of quick bread, etc. I wanted to be true to the recipe and have a structured cookie so I chose a moderate solution -- 1 cup all-purpose and 2/3 cup cake flour, sifted according to direction.

Baker's Chocolate?


2 squares chocolate, melted....Back in the day, Baker's chocolate (brand) would have been one of two options for a chocolate-based cookie. The other 1950s option was to use 3 Tablespoons cocoa powder and 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil to equal each one-ounce square of chocolate. I had squares so the recipe received squares -- but not Baker's brand. I keep either Ghirardelli or Lindt on hand, for cocoa powder it's Scharffenberger. Just my opinion but these brands are superior -- and all three brands of chocolate set off my spell-check and auto-correct. Sheesh! (Oh -- I cheated and microwaved the chocolate on half power for a minute....no riggin and dirtying a double-boiler here!)

Sweet and Sour

1/2 cup sweet or sour milk...I chose the "sweet" because it's all I had, though it was skim milk, though I bet buttermilk would be good in a chocolate cookie recipe. Sweet vs sour is funny because today we certainly don't call milk sweet or sour -- sour milk has a nose-wrinkling connotation that doesn't work with the senses. Call it buttermilk and we think mmmmm....scones, cakes, biscuits!

Nuts?


Not today...it's hard to get Max to eat a cookie with nuts...I opted for an equivalent measure of chocolate chips. Nestle manufactured the chips as early as 1939 so it's historically correct in my opinion. Plus -- this would make the cookie a double chocolate cookie....even better!

Mixing


The dough came together easily. The only oddity was the step combining the shortening and melted chocolate, though, it worked brilliantly as the warm liquid chocolate melted and softened the shortening somewhat allowing the mixture to be incorporated into the wet and dry ingredients without unsightly lumps. The dough also turned out to be as soft and silky as cake batter...interesting!

Super-Size Me

Ok, I know cookie sizes have changed dramatically in the past 60 years. There was no specific measurement in this one but MY cookie scoop is a 2-Tablespoon size. Gulp! This is probably double the size of a prim and proper 1950s cookie drop. I DID skip the buttercream frosting however, because there was no recipe for it that I could find in the notebook. Skipping the frosting alone saved calories, right??

The Ruling


After baking for exactly 10 minutes in a 350 oven the cookies came out soft, pillowy, and very light in texture -- almost like an angel-food brownie. They tasted very brownie-like but not at all fudgy. QUite good! The chocolate chips turned out to be a good addition -- they beefed up the texture a bit. Frosting? Yeah, would have been really good. If I fine the recipe. I'll let you know. Happy baking!

 Soup Can Score -- Four out of Five soup cans

Frozen Fruit Salad

More hot weather....inventing new and creative ways to stay cool in a town that has no public swimming pools...why not frozen treats? Move over Popsicle.....it's time for frozen fruit salad!

Frozen Fruit Salad is one of over a dozen Jell-O-based recipes in the notebook. It's a recipe I actually remember Grandma making for a special lunch in honor of our French foreign-exchange student Marion who visited for two consecutive summers while we were both in high school. Grandma had always served wonderful family dinners but this may have been one of the few "luncheons" I had the pleasure of enjoying. Now the word luncheon sounds a bit formal in this case (its connotation is usually bridge club, church circle, etc.) because on this occasion it was merely Marion, Grandma and me at the dining room table on a hot summer afternoon. Grandma made a corned-beef and noodle casserole, sliced some thick fresh tomatoes and presented this creamy lime frozen Jell-O salad on a lettuce leaf. Tres chic, non?

The salad appears three times in the notebook -- once as a recipe, again in a list of what I presume are favorites listed on the last page, and in a margin of a specific luncheon menu dated April 13. The April luncheon has a guest list of sixteen -- whittled down from 20, four ladies were "out of town" or  had "other plans" according to the notes. The menu of the day:

Salad Sandwich Loaf
Frozen Salad
Potato Chips
Broccoli with Creamed Celery
Relish Tray
Strawberry Angel Food Refrigerator Dessert

The recipe for the salad itself comes from a friend of Grandma's known simply as Peake. Not Mrs., just Peake. The recipe is actually written on the page with ink, not clipped from the paper. It's also above the recipe for the Salad Sandwich Loaf Anyway (blogging it another day), here it is:

Frozen Fruit Salad -- Peake

1.      1 pkg. lime Jell-O
         2 scant cups water      -- chill

2.      Add small can crushed pineapple
         1 pkg. cream cheese mixed with
         1 T salad dressing                          -- white cherries?

3.      Fold in 1 cup whipped cream
         Maraschino cherries
         1/2 cup pecans or almonds

Ok -- not a lot to go on here but it's Jell-O. What could go wrong? After all, Grandma put everything in steps. I checked out similar recipes online for guidance and they weren't that different so I forged ahead.

1. One MUST dissolve Jell-O in boiling water and then add the cold water. I could do that, so i did.  I used the small 3-oz size lime Jell-O and I cut back on the water a bit, like notated, presumably to concentrate the lime flavor. I chilled.

2. Well, I chilled too long. It was pretty set up and wiggly when I came back to the fridge but I forged ahead. I plopped in the pineapple first and then in a different bowl I whipped up a small brick of cream cheese (that's the size they had then, right? The square?) with a tablespoon of mayo. I was out of Miracle Whip. No white cherries, it looked like an afterthought in the margin anyway. I dumped the dairy mixture in. Oh no. Curds. Yep -- the cold Jell-O hitting the dairy of the cream cheese made curds and that's a different Jell-O recipe altogether. So I hauled out a whisk and beat the &@#$ out of it. That helped.

3. Cool Whip went in, cherries, NO NUTS. I didn't care for the almonds in the Cherry Jell-O recipe from May (see archive) and then I poured it into a square Pyrex pan and froze it solid -- full of promise.

Today was in the high 90s -- nothing more refreshing than some frozen lime Jell-O right? 

Unfortunately the salad tasted nothing like I remember. The lime flavor was barely noticeable, it was slushy (good) but the slush tasted like water (bad). I have no idea how I messed this one up...it looks good right?

 Possible answers -- larger Jell-O, larger cream cheese, more whipped cream. I plan on asking the family if they remember the dish and I will hopefully be able to reattempt. With a summer as hot as this we may still require creative refreshment.

Frozen Fruit Salad -- One out of Five Soup Cans

Uh-Oh Orange Cake

Happy Summer!

Summer celebrations call for summer treats especially light, citrus-y flavors to be enjoyed out-of-doors. The idea for this sweet post came from two neighborhood girls Jenna and Stephanie who are currently interested in the art of cake decorating. During a recent evening with our Bocce league we were planning the next week's treats and cake was the unanimous choice for celebrating the league's summer birthdays. Immediately the girls made a barter -- if I made the cake they would decorate it. Deal.

The first question was what kind of cakes could the notebook offer? Banana-walnut, date, vanilla ice-box, the list was endless. After all, Grandma always had a sweet tooth. I settled on two finalists -- classic chocolate (in Grandma's own handwriting with added notes in margin) or Mrs. Kenneth R. Johnson's Orange Cake. Stephanie said orange was refreshing and I agreed. Plus, Mrs. Kenneth R. Johnson was my Grandma's sister-in-law. Orange you glad?

"Our thanks to Mrs. K. R. Johnson for some of her Favorite Recipes" is how the column begins. I am assuming my great-aunt neatly jotted this recipe (along with another for Cranberry Ice), sealed them in an envelope and mailed it off to the newspaper for inclusion in the column. What a thrill it must have been at the time to see her name and recipes in the paper!

Orange Layer Cake -- submitted by Mrs. Kenneth R. Johnson


2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
Grated rind 1 lemon
Grated rind 1 orange
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs, unbeaten
2 T lemon juice
5 T orange juice
2 T water

Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder and salt, sift together 3 times. Add lemon and orange rind to butter, cream thoroughly; add sugar gradually and cream together until light. Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each. Add flour alternately with combined fruit juices and water, a small amount at a time. Beat after each addition until smooth. Bake in two greased 9-inch layer pans in moderate oven (375) 20 minutes or until done.

Filling for Orange Cake

2 oranges, juice and rind
1 T lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg lightly beaten
2 T flour
1 t butter
1 T water

Mix and cook over low flame until thick enough to spread. Use 7-minute icing on top.

The cake came together very nicely with no trouble. When I grease layer pans i normally reach for PAM cooking spray but I decided to be traditional and grab the butter wrapper instead. I liberally buttered the pans and poured in the batter. The cake batter easily could have fit in one layer pan but I figured two pans saved the trouble of sawing the layer in half and I went with it. 20 minutes in the oven and all was well -- until I tried to get the cakes out of the pans. One cake plopped out just fine but the other stuck like it had been glued to the pan. I scraped the remnants and rearranged them the best I could and I sentenced the ruined layer to the bottom of the cake. The filling would be the spackle.

The filling recipe also came together fast -- a boon to a busy mid-century housewife. It resembled and tasted like a standard orange curd but sweeter, thankfully, than say a marmalade. Sure enough the filling help that crumbling cake together like mortar and I was saved. As a good measure I popped the whole thing in the fridge to insure that the girls would be able to get frosting on the thing in the morning. They will also be having to spackle and mortar around the middle to achieve a smooth coat.

 So very cute! Well done girls!

Stephanie and Jenna, Aces of Cake.

And spackle they did. The cake held with the addition of the girls' buttercream and then fondant letters were a very nice touch indeed. The cake itself was pleasantly orang-y but surprisingly dense with a large-textured crumb. The recipe called for cake flour and I have not had an occasion to work with cake flour until now. Not sure if I was missing something. Perhaps to improve the moistness a single layer rather than two would be in order. The girls' vanilla buttercream was just right with the orange essence and on a warm night cake was just the thing to celebrate with friends.

A Mid-Century Picnic

Happy Independence Day!

Grab your Skotch cooler, hamper, or basket and head out to a grassy lawn somewhere and have yourself a 1950s style picnic! Straight from foodtimeline.org and other sources here's a quick rundown of the history of picnicking...

In medieval times picnics were for the wealthy feasting and fete-ing out on hunting trips (sounds like my dad's version of "shore lunch" while fishing in Canada) but picnicking today as we know it probably originates from the mid-1700s, minus the formal settings and servants. The menu, however, remains much the same -- hams, baked meats, pastries, etc. Fortunately for us middle class folk, "everything is relative: what was formal then made a trestle-table in the open countryside seem exhilaratingly abandoned. The general feeling of relief from normal constraints..."
---The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolutions, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners, Margaret Visser [Penguin:New York] 1991 (p. 150-1)


On to the 20th Century....What have folks served at picnics for the last one hundred years? Pre-refrigeration and mayo-scares?? (see the full text at http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpicnics.html)


An early 1900s account: "For the feast, forget not the napkins, forks, spoons and the luncheon-cloth. Also carry tumblers, plates, salt, pepper, sugar and a bottle of cream or can of condensed milk. Cups with handles, but no saucers, are desirable for tea and coffee...The following bill of are may be selected from, with such changes as suit the locality or general surroundings. Bill of fare for a spring picnic: Cold Roast Chicken. Sandwiches of Potted Rabbit. Bewitched Veal (potted veal). Small Rolls with Salad Filling. Cold Baked Ham. Egg Salad. Buttered Rolls. Hard Boiled Eggs. Crackers. Chow Chow. Bombay Toast (think savory French Toast). Pickles. Orange Marmalade. Quince Jelly. Sugared Strawberries. White Cake. Almond Cake. Cocoanut Jumbles. Lemonade. Tea Cakes. Raspberry Vinegar. Bill of fare for a summer picnic: Cold Boiled Chicken. Tongue Sandwiches. Spiced Beef. Sardines. Jellied Chicken. Pickled Salmon. Spanish Pickles. Sweet Peach Pickles. Boston Brown Bread. Beans. Fresh Fruits. Imperial Cake. Neapolitan Cake. Small Fancy Cakes."
---Queen of the Household, Mrs. M. W. Ellsworth [Ellsworth & Brey:Detroit MI] 1900 (p. 566-570)


1910s: A few cold fried chickens, some peanut sandwiches, a big paper sack full of Saratoga chips (a name-brand national potato chip), some potato salad in a fruit jar, two or three kinds of jelly and bread and butter, a couple of chocolate cakes and a cocoanut cake and a freeze of strawberry ice cream and a few accessories were practically all we expected at a picnic dinner in those days...

---"What Usually Happened on the Old-Fashioned Picnic," New York Times, May 26, 1912 (p. SM11)

Assorted picnic menus circa 1926: (not so unusual to us today)

Ham sandwiches with lettuce

Dill pickles, Stuffed eggs

Swiss cheese and buttered rye bread sandwiches

Lemonade in thermos, Sugar cookies

Fried chicken, Deviled eggs

Whole tomatoes, Potato salad

Dates stuffed with peanut butter

Caramel ice cream in vacuum container

Gold cake squares

Baked whole ham

Cabbage slaw, Olives

Asparagus (put in glass jar), Mayonnaise

Vanilla ice cream in vacuum container

Ice-box cookies

Hot dog sandwiches

Chicken salad sandwiches

Dill pickles, Stuffed olives

Potato chips

Iced tea or coffee in thermos, Buttermilk cookies

Hot beef steak sandwiches (prepared on charcoal furnace)

Whole tomatoes, Dill pickles

Stuffed eggs, Saratoga potatoes

Hot coffee (prepared on charcoal burner)

Small sponge cakes."

---Every Woman's Cook Book, Mrs. Chas. Moritz [Cupples & Leon:New York] 1926 (p. 691-2)

Fast-forward to the 1950s: [1953] "Picnic menus" from the Joy of Cooking

  1. Wieners or hamburgers rolled in pancakes, chilled tomatoes, rye crisp, cheddar cheese, gingerbread in cup cake pans, pears and grapes, coffee.

  2. Sauteed Canadian bacon on hard rolls, snap bean salad with lettuce, onions and French dressing or potato salad with lots of lettuce, deviled eggs with liver sausage, watermelon, poppy seed cake, coffee.

  3. Baked ham, Italian salad, bran muffins, Roquefort cheese balls rolled in chives, sour cream apple pie, berry pie, coffee.

  4. Broiled steak, canned French fried potatoes, picnic salad, soft buns spread with butter, pickles, white cake I or II with chocolate icing, salted nuts, coffee.

  5. Sauteed eggs with bacon or sausages, baked beans or jambolaya, olives, toasted buttered French bread loaf, apples, gold layer cake with caramel icing, coffee.

  6. Fried fish or chicken, baked potatoes, potato chips or green corn, cole slaw, dill pickles, beaten biscuits, banana chocolate cake, peaches, coffee."

---The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker [Bobbs-Merrill:Indianapolis] 1953 (p. 971-8)

In Grandma's notebook there is no mention of picnic cooking or any out-of-doors fare. Her clippings seem to gravitate toward family meals, desserts (lots!), potlucks, and ladies' luncheons. Similarly, recipes for the above picnic fare are also not pasted into the notebook. I assume two scenarios -- one being that the above recipes weren't necessarily recipes but cooking that was simply unwritten or memorized through repetition. The second scenario is if Grandma had written versions of popular picnic foods they were in another place -- the standard 3 by 5 recipe box. I

I know for a fact that Grandma could fry a chicken -- her future mother in law required it from her during a visit to the Nebergall farm along with a properly-baked apple pie. Great-Grandma Nebergall insisted that she be able to make the two dishes lest her son (my Grandpa) starve. Ha! 

Quiz time everyone! 

Check off the following modern American picnic scenarios that have applied to you:

   * "traditional American foods" prepared at home and served on a blanket in a local park

   * ethnic cuisine celebrated by an extended family in an urban riverfront location

   * an artfully presented basket of gourmet delights served on fine linen and china

   * box lunch obtained from a convenience store consumed at the beach

   * bread, cheese, and grapes shared by best friends in a canoe

   * a family passing peanut butter crackers and bottled water at a highway rest stop

   * a child serving imaginary cakes to stuffed animals beneath the protective branches of the family's    backyard tree.

Thanks foodtimeline.org for the above item...they also astutely mention,"It's the spirit, not the food, that makes this meal special". Yes, even the most devoted foodie shouldn't take themselves too seriously I think. Happy picnicking!