Saturday Night Gingerbread

Here’s an ad with the backstory already firmly in place – the marital doldrums of one Jack and Alice, saved by…well, I’ll just bet you can’t guess what brought these two brilliantined-and-Marcelled dopes back together. I’ll let the suspense build a little.

Alice, you see, has noticed that “Jack was getting tired of domesticity and just her…his eyes wandered all too often in the direction of pink and white Betty Thornton, a recent arrival in town.”

Ah, ’twas it ever thus! Those pink and white new gals, the ones who use Dorothy Gray creams and slink around the country club batting their eyelashes.

Well, Alice springs into action. She buys a black satin dress “which made her figure look like a movie star’s.” Presumably she also hides the bill, because if Jack is anything like, say, Ricky Ricardo, he ain’t gonna like the look of that. And then she cooks up a meal, the high point of which is gingerbread made with Brer Rabbit molasses. I trust that Alice did not whip it up while wearing the black satin.

And then, as Jack is stuffing down dessert, he says the magic words. To wit: “There’s something about this dinner, darling, that makes me feel like a pampered prince! Everything is so perfect – and you look like a princess.”

Alice is happy with that (personally, I would be excusing myself to hunt down a spare air-sickness bag, but to each her own). She thinks “it’s the gingerbread that did the trick…” Maybe it did, Alice, maybe it did. Maybe that molasses will slow Jack down a little. In which case, aren’t you going to have to pony up the gingerbread 24/7? That’s quite a little baking precedent that’s being set, don’t you think?

I’d still keep an eye on Jack and Betty, that’s all I’m saying.

Cheap and Unreliable

That’s right, poke that fellow right in the eyes. That’ll teach him to complain about your cakes. Six months of cheap and unreliable, indeed – and she doesn’t really mean the baking powder, does she.

It’s not just the “getting married on $20 a week” that takes courage – you want to try fixing meals for Mr. Blackburn. Try and economize on baking powder and there’ll be a quarrel: “my husband said he’d rather have some bread and butter.”

If he was having dinner here, that’s what he’d get all right. And he can go hunt it down himself, too.

At least he didn’t bring home a bunch of important clients. And I guess threatening to eat bread and butter is not going to cause a complete marital disconnect. Or is it? Is this Blackburn’s special code for serving papers? (There’s another meal option that must be occurring to Mrs. B. about now).

This 1930s ad is from the Ladies’ Home Journal, which is the home of “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” That was my favorite part of LHJ when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s. It was my mother’s LHJ, but i made sure I kept up. They still run this feature, a lot of people like it, but to me it’s not the same. I really wish I had saved them all. But I was in grade school, I didn’t know!

Maybe I’ll revisit some of the old Can This Marriage Etc., in future posts.

The Blackburns are happy now, though, thanks to Royal Baking Powder. Why, look at the smile on Mrs. B. up at the top left there! I’ll bet she’s making him a really special cake, don’t you? That’ll teach him to whine about “poor-flavored and dry” cake!

What kind of cake do you think she’s whipping up, anyway?

Between the Devil’s Food Cake and the Deep Blue Sea

The holiday excitement never ends! If you didn’t get enough cake with the Victoria Sponge – and if you aren’t celebrating Victoria Day like we are in Canada, you may not have had any cake yet! – here you go: it’s also National Devil’s Food Cake Day.

According to John Mariani”s The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (1983), the first printed devil’s food cake recipe appeared in 1905. The name seems to come from the dark fudgy decadence of the cake, as opposed to light and airy angel’s food cake. That’s cute, I suppose. To a point. And putting red food coloring in the former, to create Red Devil’s Food Cake? Not so cute. Really, just skip the food coloring. It’s not necessary, not when you have dark chocolate in a starring role.

I know there are a lot of recipes out there – you know, out there – for devil’s food cake, so I thought I’d try and give you a slightly different sort of recipe. The difference here is how much cake you are going to end up with. This is from the Sexton Cook Book (1950), which solicited recipes from the institutional cooks and dieticians that Sexton supplied big cans of beans and pudding and other things to.

So this makes a LOT of cake. But say you were going to have an entire zip code for dinner. Or the gang down at the salt mines. They’d be hungry for sure.

This recipe is attributed to Ruth Custer. She was the Cafeteria manager at West View High School in Pittsburgh in 1950. She notes that it makes 300 servings. I worked that into the title, as you see. I think it’s important.

DEVIL’S FOOD CAKE FOR 300

11 lbs sugar
4 oz. salt
4 3/4 lbs shortening
4 3/4 lbs eggs
2 3/4 lbs cocoa
6 7/8 lbs sifted flour
3 1/2 oz. soda
1 1/4 gallons hot water
4 oz. vanilla

Cream sugar, salt and shortening. Blend in eggs. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with water and vanilla. Bake in a moiderate oven, 350 degrees, 20 minutes.

Note: This is a moist and delicious cake, ideal for school lunch program or hospitals. 4 sheet pans (17″ x 25″) will yield 240 servings. 9″ cake pans will yield 320 servings.

Note: I don’t understand how 240 servings or 320 servings equals 300 servings, which is what Ms. Custer claims it makes. Well, whatever. It’s not like you or I will be blending in almost 5 pounds of eggs into anything. It makes a whole lot of cake, in any case.

Just watch out for the ceramic parrot-quail who is guarding the dessert table – he’s going to make sure you don’t take too much. No matter how many pounds of cake you made.

Cupcakes and the City

I noticed the cupcakes immediately. Though I’m a native New Yorker, I have never watched a single episode of Sex and the City. But I am aware that the movie has just come out and there are premieres going on seemingly everywhere BUT New York City.

I have learned that Sarah Jessica Parker’s character Carrie ate a cupcake at Magnolia Bakery,  to get over romantic disappointment.  Well, now we’re talking! I can relate to this somewhat. I once ate some stale Archway cookies in my college dorm room when I was depressed about my love life back in the 1980s. That’s sort of similar, right? Not as glam, but there’s a certain connection.

Oh, fine. Never mind then. Back to the cupcakes!

I found a couple of genuine retro,  New-York-City-bred cupcake recipes that would console anyone. They are from the 1929 Any One Can Bake, from the Royal Baking Powder Co. of 100 East 42nd Street. Damn tootin’ any one can bake! And anyone can eat an orange or a chocolate cupcake, too. Or a strawberry puff cupcake. And chase the whole lot down with an anise stick, why not? Perfect with a cup of tea and a good chat with someone who will listen to you whine and maybe recite your latest poem about romantic angst. Good times, I tell you. Beats those Archway sprinkle cookies by a mile!

Crunchy Fruit Baskets and Fruit Cocktail Cake

First of all, tremendous thanks to Tarrant at Retro Food, for alerting us all to the fact that it was National Fruit Cocktail Day yesterday! I am not sure if we are celebrating this in Canada (which I plan to use as my excuse for not knowing this), but I would like to mark the occasion with a couple of recipes that pay cakey tribute to the wonder that is canned fruit cocktail. [I am a day late, I have just realized, and in fact today, the 14th, is National Buttermilk Biscuit Day - but no matter!]

The classic rendition is from The Hospitality Cookbook: Favorite Recipes From Ministers’ Wives (1960, reprinted 1969). And if Fruit Cocktail Cake is not hospitable, I just don’t know what is (I rephrased the end of the recipe, which was replete with remarks about how good this is the second day, etc.):

FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE

1 egg – beat in mixing bowl
1 medium sized (#2) can of fruit cocktail – pour juice and all into bowl with egg

Add to the above:

! cup each flour and sugar
1/2 tsp soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Stir together well. Pour into greased baking pan (or glass) about 8″ by 12″ size.

Mix together 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup nuts; sprinkle over top of cake. (You can use more brown sugar and nuts). Bake at 325 degrees about 45 minutes. Good warm with ice cream.

Ida Bailey Allen is a little more daring and artistic in her Money-Saving Cook Book (1947). She says to whip up a 3 egg sponge cake (I reckon any sponge cake or plain cake will work here) and bake it in 2 layers. Then put the layers together with any kind of jam.

“Then with a kitchen fork prick down through the cake on top 10 times to make small holes. Pour in 3/4 cup pineapple juice or use equal parts orange juice and Tokay wine. Chill at least one hour. Then decorate the top with sections of canned pineapple and cherries; or instead, make small insertions and in each stick half a blanched almond nut meat cut in halves lengthwise. To serve, place on a good-sized platter and surround with slightly sweetened, well-chilled fresh fruit cocktail.”

I don’t know about that last bit. it sounds potentially rather soggy.

Slashfood has an article on National Fruit Cocktail Day, too, and apparently the big name here is Libby’s – how fortuitous that I had a Libby’s ad in the previous post! But I would like to point out that Del Monte is also a big, big name in the Fruit Cocktail World, witness the above ad – which suggests another exciting idea for dessert, Crunchy Fruit Baskets. Something bothers me about it, I am not sure what. The name, possibly, or the resemblance to birds’ nests, or the implication that the canned fruit is going to be the high point of the meal.

London Cake From South Africa

A selection from a Girl Scouts’ cookbook, Be Prepared (1968), from South Africa. It is really more like a confection than a cake.

MARIE’S LONDON CAKE

1 packet or 8 oz. digestive biscuits
2 oz. butter or Maypole margarine
2 Tb golden syrup
4 1/2 oz. slab chocolate
1 Tb each of finely chopped nuts and glace cherries and angelica
Half an orange or lemon

1. Crumble biscuits finely.
2. Melt butter or margarine, syrup and chocolate together.
3. Mix biscuit crumbs, chopped fruit and nuts with melted mixture.
4. Line a cake tin, 7 inches diameter, with greased sandwich paper base.
5. Pack cake mixture into tin, and pat smooth with cut side of lemon or orange.
6. Refrigerate till firm.
7. Top with coffee flavored cream or coffee icing.

You can also do this in a square tin (they suggest a 6 1/2 inches square tin), and each square can be “topped with a suitable decoration.” A candied cherry would be suitable, wouldn’t it? Or a chocolate coffee bean, those are really good.

The ad is from the cookbook. I guess you’d be prepared all right – that is one enormous fridge.

Mrs. Moody’s Wonder Cake

…And some Afternoon Tea Cakes, too. Both dainty, yet substantial. Just like Mrs. Moody, no doubt. The pictures and recipes are from Any One Can Bake (1929), “Compiled by the Educational Department of the Royal Baking Powder Co., 100 East 42nd St., New York City.”

AFTERNOON TEA CAKES
Baked in frilled paper cases

1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tb butter, melted
1 1/2 squares chocolate, melted
1 cup pastry flour
1 tsp Royal Baking Powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk

Separate egg.  Beat yolk well; add sugar slowly, continuing to beat. Add melted butter and chocolate. Sift flour, baking powder and salt and add alternately with milk. Fold in stiffly beaten egg white.

Partly fill the paper cups, set each in muffin tin and bake in moderate oven at 34 degrees for fifteen minutes. Decorate with nuts or cherries in white frosting.

Very nice for parties and when used for children’s party, decorate each cake with a teaspoon of confectioner’s sugar frosting, the sugar being moistened with hot milk, teaspoon butter, flavored and pushed out of spoon with forefinger to make a little mound. On each mound stand an animal cracker.

Makes 32 very small cakes.

MRS. MOODY’S WONDER CAKE

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 cups pastry flour
2 tsp Royal Baking Powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 egg whites

Cream butter with powdered sugar; add alternately a little at a time, milk and pastry flour which has been sifted with baking powder. Add vanilla and fold in beaten egg whites. Bake in three buttered layer tins in moderate oven at 325 degrees F, twenty minutes. Increase to 350 F last half of making.

Fruit Filling and Frosting

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
3 egg whites, beaten
1/2 cup muscatel raisins (cut in pieces)
1/2 cup shaved pecans
1/2 cup chopped figs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Boil sugar wirh water until syrup spins a thread at 238 degrees F. Add slowly to egg whites, beating continually until cool. Add raisins, pecans, figs and vanilla. Spread between layers and on top and sides of cake.

Makes three 8-inch layers.

I’ll tell you something that I wonder – i wonder if Mrs. Moody stole her recipe from Mrs. Lane of Lane Cake fame, which John Mariani describes in A Dictionary of American Food (1983) as “a layer cake with a fluffy frosting and containing coconut, chopped fruits and nuts in the filling.” The original recipe was first printed in 1898, and the book that I used came out in 1929. Although Mrs. Moody did omit the coconut – so it is a little bit different.

Still, let’s hope that Mrs. Lane has other plans for afternoon tea.

Gingerbread Jewels

Even spicy Betty Crocker, she of the gingerbread mix, must know that really – honestly – this does not require “easy directions on the package.” I think we just need to look at the picture. Dab on some whipped cream (or Cool Whip, really – that would fit in with the general scheme nicely), and then dab on the strawberry jam. I could do that!

And such a fancy name, too. The jewel part being the jam. And the gingerbread being the, um, gingerbread. Got it.

Marshmallow Dénouement: Dachshund and Giraffe

The final marshmallow critters – Fritz the Dachshund and my personal favorite, George the Giraffe.

GLUE FOR MARSHMALLOW FAVORS

1 1/2 cups unsifted confectioner’s sugar
1 egg white, unbeaten

In small bowl of electric mixer on medium, beat sugar with egg white until mixture is thick enough to hold a definite shape. Keep glue covered with damp cloth until ready to use. Makes about half a cup. When using on favors, let glue dry completely on each part before going on to next part.

FRITZ THE DACHSHUND

1. For body, string 5 large marshmallows on a wooden skewer.
2. Make each leg with 2 mini marshmallows on half of a wooden pick. Insert 2 legs into each end of body; then insert into inverted paper plate, for support.
3. Make head: Cut ears and nose from brown paper. Make slits with wet knife in a large marshmallow: insert ears and nose. Glue small piece of licorice candy to nose; add 2 pieces of licorice string to head, for eyes. Att ach head to body with wooden pick.

GEORGE THE GIRAFFE

1. For neck, insert a wooden skewer through centers of 7 mini marshmallows. Insert into apple, for support, while making head.
2. Make head add another mini marshmallow to neck, inserting skewer through side. Glue a mini marshmallow to last marshmallow on neck, flat ends together. Add pieces of licorice string, for eyes. Cut ears from white paper. make slits in head with wet knife; insert ears.
3. Use large marshmallow for body. Insert neck into body. Insert 4 wooden picks on underside of body, for legs; insert legs into inverted paper plate, for support.

And there you have it! For the rest of the marshmallow series:

The whole kit and caboodle: group photo!

Part 1: Lamb and Piglet

Part 2: Snowman and Turtle

Part 3: Poodle and Hippo

Part 4: Elephant and Lion

Part 5: Three Little Seagulls

Still Life With Bundt Cake and Brooding 1970s Waiter

This is a nice recipe, but the photo is strange. If you want to see gorgeous photos of the best Bundt cakes ever, I refer you to the incomparable T.W. Barritt at Culinary Types.

The weird waiter is in several photos in this book, jealously guarding a Bundt cake in a dark, moody setting. I don’t know who he is or why he is so obsessed.

WALNUT-BOURBON POUND CAKE

2 cups finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup bourbon
3 q/2 cups sifted flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
8 eggs
2 cups butter or margarine, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup bourbon

In small bowl, combine walnuts and 1/2 cup bourbon, mix well. Let stand. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and spices. Set aside. In small bowl, beat eggs until they are thick and light. In large bowl, cream butter with sugar until light; beat in vanilla. Add beaten eggs, beating at low speed, then at high speed until mixture is thick ad fluffy. Gradually beat in flour mixture just until combined. Stir in bourbon-walnut mixture. Turn batter into greased and floured 12-cup Bundt Pan; spread with rubber scraper s that batter is slightly higher at side and against tube. Place a 12″ square of brown paper over pan. Bake 55-60 minutes at 350. Cool in pan 10-15 minutes; turn out on wire rack to complete cooling. Soak 18-inch square of cheesecloth in 1/2 cup bourbon. Wrap cake completely in cheesecloth then in foil. Store several days in an airtight container. Just before serving glaze with Coffee Glaze and garnish with nuts or sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

COFFEE GLAZE

2 tsp instant coffee
scant 3 Tb hot milk
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 Tb soft butter

Dissolve instant coffee in hot milk. In small bowl, combine sugar and butter. Gradually add milk to achieve desired consistency and stir until smooth.\

This recipe is from Over 300 Ways To Use Your Bundt Pans(1973) brought to you by the Nordic Ware Kitchen/Northland Aluminum Products folks in Minneapolis, Minnesota.