The Golden (Brownie) Ratio

It has been awhile, I know, since we had any recipes or – well – kitchen-related retro, around this joint. I know, I know! It gives the blog title an ironic twist, which can be fun but it only goes so far. Whatever that means. Anyway, there will be kitchen kitsch and kitchen retro, sometimes. And look what we have here on Vintage Thingies Thursday (for that is what Thursday means around here, thanks to the Apron Queen, who reigns supreme over this weekly Retro-palooza) – why, I do declare! It’s an old advertisement AND a recipe!

Oh, and also we have a cutesy play on words. Golden-brown and golden-brownies. I get it. That’s mildly amusing!

The recipe is notable for its use of melted coconut candy bars which “are rich in natural shortening” (that would be the coconut – pardon me, cocoanut – but I think they might put in extra lard or Crisco or something in the bars, too).

The actual bar looks more fun than the brownies, which pale quite literally in contrast to the dark chocolate bar. I prefer dark chocolate myself. I can imagine setting out to make this and then just saying the hell with it and serving the Welch’s Cocoanut Bars as they are.

This is a “kitchen-tested recipe” – why are they so proud of this? I guess we should be glad they didn’t try to make the golden-brownies over a campfire or in a hotpot or something. I once tried to make Kraft Dinner in a hotpot (I was living in a dorm, don’t ask). It didn’t work out, let’s just leave it at that. The hotpot was never the same again. (And this is why this is not a straight cooking blog, folks!)

Finally, we also get a Happy Hint. Who doesn’t love a Happy Hint! The Hint being that the Welch’s people would be really Happy if you bought a lot of their candy bars and forced them on your friends and relations pretty much ’round the clock.

No, you know what, I want to see an All Right Hint: “This product is – well, it’s all right. There’s probably better candy bars out there, but ours are OK and they’re pretty cheap, really.  Just buy a couple of bars. Please. If you feel like it.”

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.

All This And Toll House Too!

This is for Vintage Thingies Thursday. The thingies from me are pretty much going to be vintage ads (from my vintage magazines and ephemera collection) and cookbook stuff, that’s mostly what I have got for you. Anything else will be the exception that proves the rule, and all that.

Oh, and this is also for National Chocolate Chip Day. I couldn’t miss National Chocolate Chip Day! You see, I was looking up all the food holidays ever since I found out about Fruit Cocktail Day, and lo and behold, I was right on time for the chocolate chips.

This is the original recipe, as found in Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes (orig. pub. 1936, this is the 1940 reprint), a lovely book that is extra-special to me because it was my grandmother’s and has her pencilled annotations. She didn’t write anything about these, though:

TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH COOKIES

Cream 1 cup butter,
Add 3/4 cup brown sugar,
3/4 cup granulated sugar and
2 eggs beaten whole. Dissolve
1 tsp soda in 1 tsp hot water, and mix alternatively with
2 1/4 cups flour sifted with 1 tsp salt.

Lastly add 1 cup chopped nuts and
2 bars (7-oz._ Nestles yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea.

Flavor with 1 tsp vanilla and drop half teaspoons on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes in 375 degree oven. makes 100 cookies.

 

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.

Ice Cream Innovation

This is a handy tip if you want leftovers: make sure your guests won’t be able to get all the dessert out of the bowl! That’ll impress them plenty. Another nugget of wisdom from McCalls’ Show-Off Cookbook (1972 edition of the 1965 classic).

Serve the ice cream in brandy snifters, but that’s just the beginning. here’s another amazing tip : “Notice we say ice creams (plural) meaning, of course, that you depart from the norm and serve a variety of ice creams…”  More than one flavor! That’ll blow some minds. It’ll be just like Howard johnson’s!

The picture seems to show three strawberry and three vanilla ice cream snifters. That’s some variety!

I like this sauce they have on the next page though:

Cinnamon-Chocolate Sauce

3 squares unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 6 oz can evaporated milk, undiluted
1 tsp vanilla extract

In small saucepan, combine chocolate, 1/4 cup water, sugar, corn syrup, salt, cinnamon, and evaporated milk. Cook, stirring, over low heat until chocolate is melted and mixture is thickened – about 8 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla, mixing until well-blended and smooth. Serve warm or cold, over peppermint ice cream. Makes about 1 3/4 cups.

It would be good on coffee or vanilla ice cream, too. 

Waffles De La Nuit

When is cake not just cake? When you aim a spritz of fake whipped stuff out of the shaving cream can, that’s when. It’s ready when you are, it is even called Reddi-Wip. (Not suitable for spelling bee receptions, however).

How I love these ads, they are such fun. I love the hyperbole. This is not just fake whipped cream, it is “America’s Favorite Dessert Glamorizer.” It does to the chocolate cake what Maybelline does for your face. It glamorizes it, since “they’ve been taking your chocolate cake for granted.” Yeah, that’s what’s been bothering me. Not the extreme drudgery, the cleaning, the incredibly stupid yellow frilly aprons. It’s that they don’t give the stupid dessert a standing ovation.

Reddi-Wip’s going to change all that. What the hell, it’ll probably change my whole life! The same can will also transform leftover cake and waffles. I don’t know if you can see the amazing recipes at the bottom of the ad but never fear, I can let you in on what is going on down there.

Chocolate Surprise = chunks of stale cake with chocolate pudding dumped on it, topped with you-know-what.

Strawberry Shortcake = biscuit dough spread with butter and brown sugar, rolled up and sliced in 1-inch slices. Bake “as usual” and add strawberries and – some of the stuff in that can of excitement right above the shortcake recipe, yellow like that terrible apron, you do see it don’t you!

And in the middle is my absolute favorite Reddi-Wip masterpiece. Here is Waffles De La Nuit. Waffles De La Nuit! What a fabulous name. Just take a frozen waffle. And – defrost that thing. And slop on some chocolate syrup, maybe some fruit, maybe not. Depends on what you have got on hand that nuit. And finish it off with – that stuff.

That stuff is very modern too, which means it is streamlined and automated and really easy to use. And it “is whipped automatically” – maybe they have a little Mixmaster in the can. Put it on anything – cake, gelatin, pudding, salad – yes, they say salad. Why not on the main course too, because heaven knows that’s probably being taken for granted too.

Believe me, no one will take anything for granted at the table ever again if you lather it with Reddi-Wip.

Mayonnaise Cakes And Victory Mops

It was surprisingly hard to find a mayonnaise cake. I was quite sure I had come across this oddity several times. When you have a lot of old cookbooks you start forgetting where you saw a certain weird thing. I am going to start writing interesting things on notecards so that I can access them for posts – a Rolodex of the Absurd.

Anyway, I found some brownies and date nut cupcakes in a Miracle Whip booklet entitled “Who’d a thunk it!”  Not me, looking at some of the other things in here, like Fruit Filled Lettuce and Frosted Pears (how they loved to frost things back in the day, didn’t they!).

Date Nut Cupcakes

1 cup Miracle Whip Salad Dressing
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups sifted pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 cup chopped pitted dates
1/2 cup chopped nuts
2 Tbs grated orange rind

Combine Miracle Whip, sugar and vanilla. Sift together flour, soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg; add alternately with water, mixing well after each addition. Stir in dates, nuts and orange rind. Place paper bake cups in muffin pans; fill 2/3 full. Bake at 375 degrees, 35-40 minutes. Frost if desired. [Makes] 18 cupcakes.

The brownies are a standard recipes substituting mayonnaise for eggs and oil – so I guess it is perfectly reasonable, if you look at it that way. And if you didn’t have eggs or oil, you could probably get away with a little mayonnaise in their place. It’s just that it sounds so – salady. Jessie DeBoth doesn’t care about that though – she’s going to call it like she sees it. And what she sees is a mayonnaise cake, that’s what.

The recipe for “Mayonnaise Cake” in  Jessie Marie DeBoth’s 1942 opus,  Jessie Marie DeBoth’s Cut dollars from your food bill Cookbook.Ms. DeBoth was the Director of the Toronto Star’s Cooking and Home-Maker’s School. The photo of her is from a handout from one of her cooking demonstrations, that I found tucked inside the cookbook. It took place at Toronto’s Massey Hall in March 1942. One of the many corporate sponsors was O-Cedar of Canada, makers of the O-Cedar Victory Mop. How wonderful is that – naming a mop a Victory Mop?

Almost as wonderful as a mayonnaise cake!

Jessie Marie DeBoth’s Mayonnaise Cake

1 cup sugar
1 1/2 oz. chocolate, melted
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten with 3/4 cup salad oil to make mayonnaise
1 3/4 cup sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup coarsely chopped nutmeats
1 tsp soda
1 cup boiling water
1 cup seedless raisins
1 tsp vanilla

METHOD: Combine sugar, melted chocolate, cinnamon and salt with the egg and oil mayonnaise. Mix and sift the dry ingredients, pour the boiling water over the nuts and raisins and let stand [a] few minutes. Add the dry ingredients to the sugar and mayonnaise mixture, then stir in the drained fruit and nuts with the flavoring, mix well but do not beat. Bake in greased baking pan about 60 minutes in moderate oven, 350 degrees. Frost with seven-minute double-boiler frosting.

She suggested that you serve this in December with Mutton Cutlets, Brown Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, Canned Peas, and Fig and Cream Cheese Salad. (There were menus for all twelve months, with and without meat, because of war rationing).

I find it curious that she did not use prepared mayonnaise but homemade – in which case, what was the point? Why not use eggs and oil as separate components in the cake? Hellmann’s was the first commercial mayonnaise and it was first sold widely in 1912; by the 1930s there were several brands available (although maybe not in Canada). So it seems that she is going out of her way to make it known that this cake was a mayonnaise one.

Her cookbook and the handout are terrific, full of things I want to write about later on. But for now let me draw your attention to her spectacular blouse, complete with her initials, and yin-yang like star-burst pattern. She looks like she would have been a lot of fun. I would have gone to her cooking demonstrations. Oh, and I also wish I could get a Victory Mop – we need more victorious cleaning implements around our house.

What Every Candymaker Wants To Know

Well, where the sugar is, for one thing. Only that is not what the Culinary Arts Encyclopedic Cookbook (1971) means, precisely. They mean that you want to know how to jazz up your boring old candy with food colorings, nuts, coconut (yay, coconut work!), glacé syrup all over it. And also “making fascinating designs with pulled sugar or gossamer nests of spun sugar [which] lift a candymaker from the mediocre class.”

What if you made boring designs with the pulled sugar, or your spun-sugar nests were a little – twiggy looking? You’ll be held back to repeat the medoicre class, that’s what. But to tell you the truth, the Skuse’s Complete Confectioner from yesterday is really for the professionals. I was going to give you some more of those recipes, but you sort of need a starch machine and a Cream or Bonbon Warmer and, well, all sorts of things. And even though a Bonbon Warmer sounds fun, I don’t think I can get one at Wal-Mart or even Williams-Sonoma.

So today we will be making some candy with Ruth Berolzheimer & Co. I love the photo above, by the way. I’ll bet “the results are a joy forever” – if you like cleaning your kitchen again and again and never quite getting all the sugar off. Or if you plan to keep the spun sugar under glass on the mantelpiece.

Jam Sandwiches

Cut fondant into small squares, putting two squares together with a little strawberry or raspberry jam. Dip in melted chocolate.

Baked Fruit Fudge

2 Tbs butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated
2 squares chocolate, melted
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp orange extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup dates, raisins, figs, candied pineapple or cherries, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the beaten egg yolks, melted chocolate, and extracts; beat well. Thoroughly bend in the flour and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites Pour over the fruit arranged in a buttered baking pan and bake for avbout 30 minutes in a  slow oven (300 degrees). When cool, cut in squares.

I can’t resist this final recipe, since I always like recipes with strange names. I understand why it is called this, technically (sort of like the Krunchy Goo – it’s crunchy and it’s gooey) – it will stick to your teeth and by inference, to your jaw. But why would you put the lockjaw imagery into people’s minds in the first place?

Stick-Jaw

3 cups granulated sugar
3 cups brown sugar
6 Tbs glucose
4 cups water
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups shredded coconut

Place the sugars, glucose and water in a large saucepan and cook to 312 degrees. Add the extracts and coconut. Pour into an oiled platter and when cold, cut into squares.

This actually sounds rather good – I would rename it if I was passing a plate of it around. Coconut Praline Fudge would be a good name.

Ultimately what every candymaker wants to know is: why can’t we just buy some candy for once. It’s hot and sticky in there with the pots and the sugar and the candy thermometer. Believe me, I know about all that. Stick-Jaw nothing, how about Stick-Fingers, Stick-Pots and Stick-Countertops!

French Vanilla Jellies and Viennese Chocolate Bonbons, But No Coconut Work

What I need around here is a good candy recipe. Because we do not have any Easter candy in the house. We are going to get some but I didn’t want to buy loads of malted milk eggs and chocolate eggs in foil wrappers and have it all lying around whispering sweet nothings to me. But now I would like some! So I will just read a recipe or two and pretend. Which is much less fattening, right? Right.

So here I am with Skuse’s Complete Confectioner, written by anonymous people at the W.J. Bush & Co. Ltd. ”olde essence distillers” flavoring factory at Ash Grove Works, Hackney, London (England, not Ontario!) in 1921. It will be just the ticket as it tells us how to make “A.B. goods, Boiled Goods, Caramels, Chocolates, Coco-nut Work, Creams, Drops, Fondants, Fudges, Gelatines, Gums, Nougats, Pralines; and to the art of sugar boiling in all its branches, based on the results of practical work.”

Sounds perfect. I would love a little Coco-nut work. Am not sure what A.B. goods are though. Have just had a look and guess what! They don’t either: they say that A.B. goods are very popular in the US, and “We have endeavored, but without success, to ascertain the derivation and meaning of the title ‘A.B. Goods.’” And Culinary Masterdoes not know either. It says that the term refers to jellied, gum or marshmallow candy but they don’t know why.

Sounds like we have got a mystery on our hands, Scooby Doo! (Or Krunchy Goo, I suppose. Could that work? Krunchy Goo, Culinary Detective. A cat, possibly. I like cats and i think that they would make good spies. And they are discriminating diners, if our own cats are anything to go by).

These recipes were meant for professional candy makers, and they all sound quite delicious. Many of them I have never heard of before. So when the time machine is invented, I definitely want to make a stop at fancy confectioner’s shop – preferably one that used this handbook.

Vanilla French Jellies or Jelliettes

Sugar……18 lb.
Water……6 pints.
Best Gelatin……18 oz.
Cream of Tartar……1/2 oz.
Vanillin, “W.J.B.”……15 grains. [pushing the house brand - W.J. Bush!]
Blue, A.G…….a trace.

Dissolve the sugar and water in a pan over the fire. Stir until it boils. Thenplace a cover over the pan to steam down the sides. Care should be taken that no sugar adheres to the sides of the pan, otherwise the jellies will soon grain. Boil to 236 F. Remove the pan from the fire, then add the gelatin, previously soaked in another vessel until quite soft, and melted. Pour this in small quantities into the sugar batch, stirring gently, otherwise the mixture will rise and overflow. Add the essence and colour; then run into starch impressions. Sift starch over them, and place in the drying-room for ten or twelve hours. A crust will form over the jelly similar to a liqueur. Finish by crystallizing in a cold syrup, 34 degrees Beaume. Allow to stand in the crystal syrup for about twelve hours; then drain for three hours; after which knock the jellies out of the tins onto wire trays. When quite dry, they are ready to pack.

Vienna Chocolate Bonbons

Crystallized fondants of suitable shape, flavored with any desired flavor or blend of essences and colored with any appropriate shade, are so dipped that only half the centre is covered with sweet chocolate covering. The other half of the fondant thus forms a pleasing contrast to the color of the covering, and produces a very attractive form of sweetmeat for inclusion in boxes of mixed chocolates.

 Tomorrow: more candy, even stranger and more anachronistic!

Rawleigh’s Coconut Cream Pie

The W.T.Rawleigh Co. Ltd. was based in Montreal and Winnipeg and made a wide range of cooking and household products, roughly similar to the Watkins Company in Minnesota. They made medicines, spices, dessert mixes, artifical sweetener, food coloring, makeup – you anme it, they probably made it or something close.

The ad and recipe are from their 1959 almanac, which has lots of terrific full-page color ads for their products. In fact the almanac is mostly ads, which is great because I love old advertisements. I especially like the product packaging. Rawleigh’s give their medicines brilliant names like “Pleasant Relief” and Anti-Pain Oil.” Who wouldn’t line up to buy some of that? Just what I need after a long day!

And here’s another thing you and I might need: dessert mix. That’s right. Because you never know when hungry guests and ravenous school children are going to come marauding around, looking for pie! (Hopefully not at the same time, of course).

In the ad above, Rawleigh’s is pushing their pie-fillings-slash-puddings. They want you to serve them after meals and also as an after school snack (not the healthiest thing, but I guess it is 1959 and sugar= good energy).  I love how they urge you to keep a few on hand all the time “for regular and emergency use” – as if there was going to be some kind of pudding emergency cropping up, maybe after school. Or maybe you forgot to make something for your guests. And that will make them cranky. Low blood sugar is like that. So keep everyone happy with Rawleigh’s dessert mixes. And not to worry; this pie won’t take long to whip up.

Coconut Cream Pie

Vanilla wafers, crushed…..30

Brown sugar…..3 Tbs

Butter, melted…..1/3 cup

Semi-sweet chocolate pieces…..1 pkg

Rawleigh’s Coconut Pie Filling…..1 pkg

Rawleigh’s Vanilla…..1 tsp

Whipping cream, whipped

To make crust, mix wafer crumbs, brown sugar and butter together. Shape and press into a 9-inch pie plate. Place one half of chocolate pieces over sides and bottom of crust. Bake in 325 F oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool. make coconut filling according to directions on container, add 1 tsp. vanilla. Cool. Pour into crust. Cover top with sweetened whipped cream, flavored with vanilla. Sprinkle remaining chocolate pieces over top. Chill until ready to serve. Serves 6.

This sounds a lot like a Mounds bar, which is a great idea. The Mounds bar was created in 1920 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut, which you can read about here.