Marmalade Cake

This fantastic little cookbook was published in 1925 by Proctor & Gamble. The beginning of the book has cooking hints and recipes and the second half has the promised calendar of dinners, a complete dinner menu, including dessert, for everyday of the year. I would not have been able to sleep at all. Every meal ends in coffee.

 It also has some beautiful art nouveau style illustrations!

 After a long search I settled on Marmalade Cake...unfortunately I did not read it as carefully as I should have...

Simple ingredients. Simple directions. Except for the fact that it does not tell you what to do with the sugar.

I decided that mixed in with the crust was probably my safest bet. The crust turned out very crumbly and did not come together easily so I used a pie plate to keep everything together.

 It actually baked up pretty nicely. I was surprised.

Ta Da!

Marmalade made quite a nice instant filling! All in all very tasty. I would definitely look at adding a little bit of water to the crust next time, perhaps even try another type of jam for the filling. The cake stayed together better after it had cooled completely.

My Rating: Yummy! Bake again with slight adjustments.

Friends and Family Rating:"Nice. Not a fan of orange but I think it would be good with another flavor."

Seed Cookies

I like to choose recipes that intrigue me and use interesting ingredients. The 'seed' in these cookies are caraway seeds, something not normally used in sweets, so I had to try it!
I found it in the Rumford Complete Cook Book, 1947 edition.

Seems simple enough.

I only had to buy the caraway seeds. I hope I can find another use for them...

Even though I chilled the dough 3 hours it stayed very soft and sticky making it difficult to roll out and cut out. I gave up trying to use an old cookie cutter.

 Baked up nice and pretty!

Unfortunatley...not delicious. Caraway is not a good flavor for cookies. Even if you picked out the seeds, the cookies themselves were quite bland and tasteless. I only baked 25 cookies instead of the 5 dozen the recipe promised. The rest of the dough ended up in the trash. They were not worth the effort!

My Rating: Not disgusting but never again

Family and Friends Rating: "I hate caraway" "They are not that bad, kind of."

Hot Buttered Rum

I am not a fan of cold weather. I hate it. So what is better on a cold day than a hot drink!

Hot buttered rum is one of those drinks I had heard of but didn't really think people actually drank. I found recipe for it in this gem. Stouffer's Restaurant published this handy dandy book in 1950.

 I had bought a bottle of fancy artisanal rum for another recipe and this seemed like the perfect chance to enjoy it again.

Yes, there is actually butter in a hot buttered rum. I thought it was just a quirky name for the drink.

Oh Yum! The perfect combination of flavors. Not too sweet. Not too much lemon. And the butter added a nice touch to it taking the edge off the alcohol. I could live up north if I drank this every night.

My Rating: Keeper!

Family and Friends Rating: I'm not sharing this drink

Banana Tea Bread

Cleaning my freezer the other day, I discovered that I am a bit of a hoarder...of overripe bananas. Is there anything else you can make with overripe bananas besides bread or muffins?

One of the best things about old cookbooks is all of the wonderful advice in them. This particular book, originally printed in 1909 although I have the 1951 edition, is a "friendly tip-off to show the inexperienced cook...how to cook." And it is not just for the young bride or career girl but also for the older woman who is only cooking for two again.

 It's a pretty basic recipe.

 Mashed over-ripe bananas look pretty gross. Sorry.

 I may have baked it a little too long.

 Still sliced up nicely.

Ta Da! A little butter and I had a lovely afternoon snack!

The recipe was easy to through together but tasted fine but there was nothing special about. It is a good starter recipe to experiment with.

My Rating: Okay. Good to help get rid of a freezer full of bananas

Family and Friends Rating: "Super moist, a lot of flavor but nor overwhelming."

Lemon Sponge Pudding

For some reason steamed puddings have both interested and scared me. This one seemed simple enough and it had the great line "Never mind if the milk curdles." I can handle this one.

It comes from a 1945 4-H food pamphlet on Milk and Eggs.

 I only had to purchase the lemons. As I am baking more, I am amazed on how little I have to purchase now that I have all the basics.

Lemons!

 I chose to bake it at the hotter end of the range because my oven is like that and to test for doneness, I simply used the toothpick method. It turned out beautifully!

 The dessert had a light and fluffy sponge cake hiding a rich lemon pudding.

This had such a fancy feel to it while being incredibly simple. The cake's light flavor was a nice balance to the very rich lemon pudding. It tastes much better warm and does not keep well. For a nice dinner party these would look great in individual dishes.

My Rating: Keeper! A show off dish.

Family and Friends Rating: "Rich" "Surprising!"

Honey Nut Brownies

Honey is becoming more popular in baking once again. I enjoy honey but it is not an ingredient I bake with a lot. This booklet from the 1941 is full of interesting recipes.

 And it as been reviewed by the American Medical Association. Bonus!

 In a book full of honey I had to pick something with chocolate.

The ingredient list is pretty usual except there is more nuts than any other ingredient. I bought some great honey from a local farm stand...so yummy...

 So many walnuts! The batter was so liquid I was afraid this was going to be a complete failure.

 I had to add about 10 more minutes to the baking time but it baked up lovely.

 The finished product looked light and chocolatey! It is more of a cakey brownie with a touch of fudgeyness.

 This recipe was easy and only need minor baking adjustments, which could be my oven. I had my doubts about this one but it turned out great. You must wait until it cools to cut. Or just grab a spoon and dig in. Very light and fluffy. It was mostly walnuts with a light but distinct honey taste.

My Rating: Keep for a rainy day

Friends and Family Rating: "Yum!" "Gooey but not sticky"

French 75

A nice relaxing evening deserves a great drink.
I can't remember how I got this fantastic 1933 edition of The Savoy Cocktail Book but it has one of my favorite covers.

"Being in the main a complete compendium of the Cocktails, Rickeys, Daisies, Slings, Shrubs, Smashes, Fizzes, Juleps, Cobblers, Fixes & other Drinks known & vastly appreciated in this year of grace 1934 with sundry notes of amusement & interest concerning them together with subtle observations upon wines & their special occasions Being in the particular an elucidation of the manners & customs of people of quality in a period of some equality. The Cocktail recipes in this book have been complied by Harry Craddock of the Savoy Hotel, London."

This book has some fantastic illustrations!

All the cocktails are listed in alphabetical order so it made finding the French 75 very easy. The recipe does not differ too much from modern recipes I have tried. The one big difference was the use of powdered sugar instead of simple syrup.

Beautiful and delicious!

Overall it was tasty. I decided to use a shaker to mix everything (except for the champagne of course) but the powdered sugar still did not dissolve well. This made the drink more sour and less sweet than I would have liked.

My rating: Good and fun but I'll use simple syrup next time

Friends and Family Rating: Unknown. It was too cold for visitors.

Coconut Icebox Cookies

For my first recipe I thought I would go for something simple, that would be hard to mess up. And I love cookies and cakes...this blog may mostly be recipes of baking but I will try to branch out. No guarantees though.

I found this wonderful little cooking pamphlet Successful Baking for Flavor and Texture originally published in 1936. This is the 5th edition.

Out of all the delicious looking recipes I settled on the Coconut Icebox Cookies because I had all the ingredients on hand. It was snowing.

Interesting note: sweet milk is regular milk.

Easy Peasy! This easy recipe went together quickly and painlessly. I used my standing mixer because I'm lazy and it makes mixing so much easier especially when you have to cream butter. This recipe did not need it. The dough was very soft. It was supposed to formed into two 6 inch logs but I would probably make them longer next time. I am a big fan of smaller cookies. These were a little too large for me.

The dough firmed up a bit in the refrigerator (2 hours) but I still ended up with oval cookies...which was exactly what I was aiming for.

My house smells wonderful!!

Sorry for the odd looking pictures. I played around with 2 different filters on the photos. The top picture is more accurate for the cookies but I think the hot chocolate looks more delicious in the bottom picture. 

These cookies are delicious! Soft, light and not too sweet. The coconut adds moisture and a bit of texture more than flavor. The outside has a nice crunch with a soft, chewy inside. This recipe is definitely a keeper for me!

My rating: Keeper!

Family and Friends rating: 'Excellent' 'Light, crispy, and chewy'

Putting Snow Days to Good Use

Post number 1!

I remember being a kid and waking up so excited at the sight of snow. My sister and I would bounce on our parent's waterbed and stare at the local news eagerly waiting for the School Closing screen to appear showing our school at the top. If you missed the list you had to suffer through politics and death and boring stuff just to see if your school was there. And you never started to get ready until you had seen the list, at least twice. Then it was breakfast and cartoons and playing in the snow!

Snow day as an adult...not as much fun. Missing work one day just means you have more to do the next and there is no just relaxing. It is cleaning, shoveling snow, and working on projects. Like this one, a blog about my recipe adventures.

I like cooking and vintage things. Every holiday time I put together a big batch of cookies.  This year I decided to look through my collection of old cook books for ideas. And I found some great ideas! And some gross ones...and some interesting ones. So I decided to try some and share it!

This blog is just a fun exploration of old recipes. I am not a chef nor a historian nor a photographer. I am just having a good time with food. Enjoy!