Fried Rosettes: or, Adventures in deep-fried collectibles

Sometimes it seems like I'm not unloading junk so much as trading it for junk I actually want.

Rosettes or Timbales 1 cup flour ½ cup whole or evaporated milk ½ cup water 1 teaspoon sugar ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon vanilla 2 eggs Put all ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir gently with a spoon until batter is smooth and as firm as thick cream. If you have to get out a whisk and beat vigorously before the flour lumps go away, let it stand for an hour before frying. If you used a plastic bowl, transfer the batter to something heat-resistant so you don't accidentally touch the bowl with the hot iron and melt it. You may prefer to pour the batter into a shallow baking pan rather than a bowl- it might make dipping easier. Heat oil to 325°-350°F, or about 160°-190°C. If you don't have a frying thermometer, dip a knife in the oil long enough to heat it. Quickly wipe it dry, then dip the tip into the batter and fry it. The batter should become golden in about 40 seconds. Dip the rosette or timbale iron in the oil long enough to heat it up. Wipe the oil off the bottom of it (just the bottom, not the sides) and dip it in the batter. Be sure the batter doesn't go over the top of the iron. Fry until golden, which should take about 40 seconds. When you lift the rosette out of the frying pan, tip it upside-down to pour out the oil that got in it. Then gently loosen it from the iron onto a plate with paper towels on top. I'm not good enough at making these to give precise directions, but here are the hints from the instruction sheet: Your oil is too hot if: Your drop from the iron before being removed from the oil. Your batter falls in a partially-cooked noodly mess, right back into the dipping-bowl as soon as you lift the iron out. Your rosette comes off the iron in the oil.  The rosettes are too soft when cooked. If the rosettes have blisters, your eggs or batter were overbeaten. Let it stand for an hour. If patty shells are not crisp, the batter is too thick. Dilute it with more milk. The bottom of patty shells can be made fried more crisp by putting them back into the oil and letting them free-float for a bit. If your rosettes start coming out soggy, your oil has cooled too much. (Every fresh rosette sucks some heat out of it, and not all stove burners can keep up.) Just let the oil rest and reheat for a minute or two. US Utilities wafflet iron instruction sheet, 1933

Several years ago, we had to empty out a late relative's apartment in Chicago. (I think I've said this before, but this was how I found out that I had relatives in Chicago.) We have only just now gotten around to going through many of the boxes that we threw in the back of a U-Haul and then stuffed into various closets back home. A lot of things are only interesting because no one threw them out ninety years ago, like handwritten electric bills or toothbrushes from the Jazz Age. But every time we consider just flinging it all in the trash, we find things like my great-grandmother's recipe binder or some amusingly gossipy letters. (Her husband was a mortician. She had occasional opinions on how various decedents were dressed and how their houses looked for the wake.)

Anyway, Mom tacitly encouraged me to help her regain some space in the house by taking anything I either liked or thought might be worth selling. This included a lot of swag from the 1933/1934 Chicago World's Fair. Either they went to the fair repeatedly (it was in their town, after all), or they visited for one tightly-packed day and grabbed absolutely every free flyer they could carry. I don't think that random mass-produced flyers count as "irreplaceable family treasures," so online they went (and didn't sell for very much).

Selling world's fair souvenirs involved looking through a lot of already-sold listings for price comparisons, which in turn made Ebay's algorithm think I was absolutely obsessed with the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Even had I wanted to buy historical clutter, most of the collectibles were too collectibly priced. But it turns out that even the most devout world's fair collectors aren't very interested in old kitchen things. I got these for cheaper than buying on Wish and without the risk of lead poisoning. (Yes, Ebay's algorithm finally got me again.) I thought it'd be fun to try making them.

More of these await in the box.

 Like pizzelles, I had never been particularly interested in making timbales until I decided to buy the implements. But fortunately, this has no underlying post-breakup motivation. I just thought they'd be fun.

You can tell the Depression was on when these were made. They printed DELICIOUS --- INEXPENSIVE --- EASY TO MAKE (emphasis mine) right on the box.

Also, I love how they ended the address with "Chicago, U.S.A." like you're mailing international packages. They really wanted people to buy these and take them home around the world. I wonder if any of these would turn up if you peeped through kitchen cabinets on other continents?

These may look cute and dainty in pictures with no scale reference, but they were surprisingly big. Like, a single one nearly covered the plate. 

Of course, plates don't come in standard sizes. So here it is on a 3x5-inch index card.  

I put our new toys on the kitchen scale. We have a pound of metal.

Because my scale is bilingual, here it is in grams. I want everyone to appreciate the heft, whether you use customary or metric.

Some of the irons were, um, seasoned with cooked-on grease. I found this reassuring. If someone got these to work at some point, in theory I didn't buy commemorative duds.

These particular irons have an exciting feature: you can screw this little flat plate onto the bottom and make little tartlet-shell things instead of flowers or snowflakes. I've seen irons that make those cute little fried wagon-wheels and irons that make tartlet shells, but I've never seen ones that can do both. I wonder if they never worked as well as advertised, and therefore no one bought them?

And if you take the little plate off, it looks like a souvenir medallion.

The other one might look like a random cloud design, but it's actually a take on the logo from the world's fair where it was sold (ie, that planet-looking thing on the box). It even says 1933 if you flip it over. I find that absolutely delightful.

I've never fried rosettes before, but I didn't want to look up instructions online. I'm not as good as I'd like at spotting AI slop. Until the AI bubble pops, it is not safe to mix boiling-hot fat and inhuman garbage. Fortunately, someone selling another set of these irons uploaded pictures of the instruction sheet.

 

After skipping over the more brand-specific directions, cutting out the product placements, and undoing some of the more peculiar ad-agency capitalization, let's see what they have to say:

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

Heat mold in your favorite fat at a temperature from 325 to 375 degrees. (ed. note: about 160° - 190°C.)

("Your favorite fat"! I love it.)

If no thermometer is used, dip point of knife in batter, then hold it in hot fat. It should brown in about 40 seconds. Never let fat smoke.

I tried this, and you should know two things: First, heat the bare knife in the fat before dipping. Second, wipe it dry and quickly dip it in batter before it cools off. If you don't wipe off the hot oil, the batter will just slide right off.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the damn batter did not come off the knife after frying. I had to soak each test-knife (I did this multiple times over the course of frying) overnight.

When molds are hot, remove and lightly wipe bottom on cloth. Dip hot mold into batter but never let batter go over top of mold. Then place back into hot cooking fat and fry until a delicate brown— about 25 to 35 seconds. Wafflets must be fully covered with cooking fat while being cooked.

When patty shell plate is not in use, always keep the small screw in the hole in the bottom of the mold.

Well, keeping the screw in place makes sense. First, you don't have to remember where you mislaid the darn thing. Second, you won't get batter stuck in the screw-hole.

TO MAKE PATTY SHELLS

First screw patty shell plate on THIN side of mold by using point of knife or coin.

First, I am NOT jabbing the end of my good kitchen knife into a flathead screw. Second, did people not have screwdrivers at home in those days? Even my friends who can't use tools have a cheap one lying around from the last time something broke.

Heat up mold and dip into batter about ¾ its depth. Then lower mold gently into hot cooking fat, keeping mold level so patty shell will swell evenly all around as it rises to top of mold. Let mold rest on bottom of pan to cook.

(Never heard of keeping things at the bottom of the pot while you're frying before. I'd have thought they would burn.)

To make "cream puff" cover for patty shell, remove the plate and make a very shallow rosette.

That actually sounds so cute! I wanted to try it as soon as I read it.

All right, now we're getting to the handy hints section:

POINTS TO REMEMBER

If wafflets drop from mold before being removed from utensil, your lard is too hot. If they are too soft when cooked they have been cooked too quickly. If they show blisters your eggs or batter have been beaten too much. If patty shells are not crisp the batter is too thick and must be diluted with milk. The bottom of patty shells can be made fried more crisp by putting them back into hot lard and cooking more while they float on top.

Rosettes or patty shells can reheated by placing in a warm oven.

Fancy colors are obtained by mixing pure vegetable colors into the batter. Rainbow colors are obtained by mixing various colors into different parts of the batter before putting the molds in.

All of that seemed good to know.

If we zoom in on the instruction sheet I didn't buy, we have a recipe. Some of the words are cut off in the picture (understandable since they were trying to sell merchandise rather than document random instruction sheets for posterity), but we can infer the missing words.

If this is the recipe they use for demonstrations, hopefully it's good enough to sell me on not trying to return these.

Well I feel like I am ready to fry some rosettes, don't you? 

The directions tell us to pile all our ingredients into a bowl and "stir gently" with a spoon. (Apparently if you overbeat the batter, these don't fry right.) However, my gentle spoon-nudging only yielded a lumpy mess.

I had to get out a whisk and defy the warnings about blisters on my patty shells. After beating this hard enough that Fanny Cradock would have approved, our batter resembled "thick cream" as specified. It was also thoroughly impregnated with little bubbles, which presumably is why our instruction sheet threatened blisters. Fortunately, the directions have a remedy:  let the batter stand for an hour should an unfortunate whipping occur. Patience would ward off ruination.

While our batter recovered from a severe overbeating, I got everything else ready. After screwing the rosette iron onto the handle, I thought to myself that it looked hopelessly cute. If you were in charge of coming up with props for a kiddie play, some spray paint and glitter would turn this into a really good fairy wand. (Though if children are the same as I remember from that age, you'd have to prevent whoever was playing the good fairy from bashing people with the wand as soon as they felt the weight.)

After getting our batter whipped and letting it recover, it was time to fry. As a safety note, choose a pot that gives your oil plenty of room to boil up. Don't settle for something that is technically deep enough to immerse your rosettes and patty shells. I ended up switching to a saucepan after this proved inadequate.

Just because you have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen doesn't mean you should use it.

I wanted to make the little "patty shells" as the direction sheet calls them. Dipping and frying seemed like a wonderfully fast way to crank out lots of tartlet shells without any pastry fuss. However, our first attempt looked sad and bulbous.

The leaflet says this will "add dignity and pleasure to your parties."

I think I know why no one makes interchangeable rosette/pastry case irons. We had some batter leak past the removable plate, firmly anchoring our patty shell. We couldn't get it off without ripping it. (I would later carefully bend the screw-on plate back into flatness, but that would wait until everything was cooled off and dried.)

I decided that my pastry case (or "patty shell" in company parlance) dreams would have to wait until further practice. Until then, I would try out every single one of the irons in our one-pound bag of goodies, starting with our special 1933 commemorative iron. This one was my favorite because it couldn't have come from anywhere but the world's fair. So it presumably was only available for a few short months of a single year, in one demonstration booth in a single city. (Well, I say that. There's a good chance they sold the surplus in the local office or gave them away as curiosities to customers and employees until they were finally gone.)

My first attempt at making special 1933 crispy things failed before we even made it to the oil. The batter flash-cooked on the iron and fell back into the bowl in hot, slimy noodles.

I referred back to the instruction sheet, which says "If wafflets drop from mold before being removed from utensil, your lard is too hot." So I turned off the burner, let the oil cool a little, and used the intermission to wipe the splats from the countertop.

Our next attempt at making a crispy fried 1933 went better until I tried to get it off the iron. But at least my lard wasn't too hot anymore.

After some more attempts, we actually got one to stay intact! See, it's an art-deco cloud swirl that says 1933, the year of the world's fair. It is also full of oil since I didn't know you're supposed to tip the iron upside down before getting your cooked creation off of it.

I wondered if they designed a 1934 iron when the fair was extended into the next year.

Dizzy with success and airborne grease, I decided next to try the little iron that makes two at once. If it worked, I thought I'd use it for making things like mini quiches and other things that you hand around on occasions when a fork is too inconvenient. The batter half-slipped off, which simultaneously gave me the sting of failure and the happy chance to read A CENTURY OF PROGRESS- U.S. UTILITIES on my limited-edition kitchen clutter. (Future patty-shell attempts would be more successful.)

At this point, I began to reconsider whether this as an economical way to make treats in the summertime. The box says they're inexpensive, and I had thought that perhaps frying would be cheaper than running the oven. But between sopping up the ongoing mess and wiping the irons before every dip, I think the massive outlay of paper towels offset any energy savings.

With that said, I decided next to try these very small irons. I don't know if they're part of this set or if they just got dumped into the same bag when someone's kitchen was being emptied out.

The starburst/flower one came out really cute, but I think the other two were amorphous fried blobs. If you didn't know these are supposed to be a fish and a butterfly, could you tell?

At this point, I decided that I had gotten marginally better at making these (though not good enough to promise anyone a tray of them), and dared to revisit our first iron. Our next stars came out so pretty I could imagine buying them off a cart in the park. As a side note, I love how you can see the flathead screw in the center.

Despite the massive pileup of failures in the trash can, the successful ones were really good. They were incredibly light and delicate, like fragile floating bits of crispiness. After tasting one, I was ready to brave the mess again (but not tonight!).

Naturally, I had to take one of our more successful mini-shells and fill it with something, just to see if I could. With that in mind, I had made a half-recipe of applesauce-date mallow. It involves nearly no heat (aside from microwaving the applesauce for a bit), which is perfect when we're trying to keep things easy for both the air conditioning and the electric bill. Also, I was right when I speculated that it is a lot better when lightly spiked. Unfortunately, it is the same color as our patty shell.

Just to complete things, I put the matching lid on top.

These make wonderfully crisp shells. It was almost like very thin layers of puff pastry, except fried. I don't know how long you can leave these pre-filled before they get soggy, but it was fantastic. It's like picking the breading off of fried foods, except in really cute shapes.

I'm not going to close with detailed instructions on how to use rosette irons because I wouldn't know. But I will list my first-time mistakes so that you can avoid them:

• Put your batter in a shallow bowl (or a baking pan, I saw some people do that in videos) before you try to dip the iron. It's a bit awkward trying to get in a deep bowl with a piece of metal on a stick.
• Don't use a plastic bowl. Otherwise, your hot iron might melt a hole in it when you dip.
• Have a metal slotted spoon ready in case they fall off the iron and back into the oil. (Obviously, a plastic spoon will melt!)
• Line your work surface for easier cleanup. There will be a big mess. In the old days I would have suggested a thick layer of newspapers. These days I might suggest the brown paper they use to pad out boxes for shipping. Whatever you use, it will be so much easier to just roll up your entire splattery mess and throw it out.

Graham-Coconut Cupcakes: or, Just use a full-size cake pan. They're better.

Now that most of our neighbors have burned off their fireworks stashes, how was everyone's Fourth of July?

Everyone in our neighborhood was slightly more restrained with their fireworks this year than last. We only had a slight haze in the air. Last year, we had an honest-to-God London fog. You could only see about two or three blocks ahead in the smoke. The fireworks were a constant earsplitting crackle well into the night, and the stink of burning metal seeped into the house even though I remembered to shut the door. I know it was a miracle the entire county didn't go up in flames (there's a lot of dry grass at this time of year), but I missed the exuberance this year.

For this fourth of July, I wanted to introduce everyone to the absolute delight that is graham cracker cake. Then I decided to eliminate the hassle of paper plates and plastic forks by making cupcakes instead. That is how I learned that not every cake recipe makes good cupcakes.

Because I grew up in the nineties, I had to dye the icing turquoise. (Turqouise was everywhere in the nineties, whether it was the color of your entire car or just the logo on your normal-colored T-shirt.) I didn't realize until too late that I had color-matched the mixing bowl.

So many of my friends' parents had bathrooms in this color.

 The icing came out exactly as I planned, but the cupcakes were not so great. You know how I wrote in the original recipe that it really likes to stick to the pan? Well in this case it stuck to the paper no matter how carefully you tried to peel it off. You couldn't remove the paper without ripping away huge chunks of cake.

Even if you extracted the cupcake intact(ish), the batter seems to need a large pan to bake right. These were a little gummy and just a smidge on the wrong side of underwhelming. But at least they looked cute!

Happy belated independence day, everyone!

Sauteed Lettuce Salad: A recipe repeat for our colon-cleansing times

We've run today's recipe before, but now that we have a cyclosporiasis outbreak I think wilted lettuce worth revisiting. After all, the surest way to kill germs is to cook them. Had you even heard of cyclosporiasis before the outbreak? Neither had most people outside of the CDC and the USDA. That's why (until Trump and his handlers took office) we fund government programs to keep these things out of our food. In theory, this means that we the laypeople can live happily unaware of things like "screwworms" and "explosive diarrhea parasites." But nowadays, you're better off assuming your salad is as germy as raw meat and thus getting it into a hot frying pan. 

Wilted lettuce (doesn't "sauteed lettuce" sound better?) and the latest outbreak also remind us that most weird-looking recipes evolved for a reason (with the exception of the mid-century burst of bizarre foods that came out of advertising companies spending more money on in-office alcohol than ad photographers). Now that every salad comes with an elevated risk of a surprise colon cleanse, it's easy to see why people used to cook it.

So, with that said, let's remember that 1) cutting government funds "for efficiency" without seeing what would break leads to nationwide disease, and 2) salad greens can be cooked, even if we're not used to it anymore. 

Anyway, in case it helps in these increasingly horrid times, here (again) is the wilted lettuce! 

~---------~ 

Are your salads getting monotonous? Do you need a "pleasant variation from the day's usual tricks?" Are you concerned about budget cuts to food safety monitoring and therefore want to ensure that any stowaway microbes don't get past your stovetop? (Didn't that last sentence age well?)

Wilted Lettuce 3 hard cooked eggs, sliced 1 large head lettuce ½ teaspoon salt (or more to suit taste) 1 teaspoon sugar 6 slices bacon, cut into small (half-inch ish) pieces 2 tbsp vinegar Wash the lettuce thoroughly, drain it, and chop it into pieces slightly larger than bite size. In a very large frying pan, cook the bacon until it is crisp and the drippings have come out of it. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add the vinegar, then add the lettuce and eggs. Cook until the lettuce is tender but still bright green.  Serve at once. The leftovers aren't as good as when it's fresh, so make only as much as everyone will eat the first time. We recommend serving with a crusty bread to soak up the juices. Source: Chicago Tribune; April 17, 1936

Today, we are opening my great-grandmother's recipe binder and trying one of her newspaper clippings. I ran into problems at the first line of the ingredient list. An unfortunately-placed ink smudge made it impossible to read the amount of boiled eggs. I couldn't tell if it called for six or eight.

I emailed the Chicago Public Library, asking if they could track this recipe down and find a more legible copy. A reply arrived within a few hours: "Today is your lucky day, this recipe happened to be in the Chicago Tribune, whose database we can pretty easily search. The recipe is attached. It looks like 3 is the number of eggs."

Join or donate to your local Friends of the Public Library, everybody!

 

At first I wondered what kind of lettuce I should put in this. Today, we mostly default to iceberg, but how common was it in 1936? Before I let myself get caught up in period-correct salad greens, I checked the prices. Iceberg lettuce suddenly seemed perfect.

Back at the house, the lettuce had to wait until I had boiled the eggs. Since I never remember how to do that, I have to look up Delia Smith's guide every single time. I didn't think to look if she has a guide for neatly slicing them elsewhere on her site. But if you look past my inept knifework, you can see that these came out of the pot at the perfect time. Unfortunately, they also stank up the kitchen.

I have previously mentioned my theory that the weirder and wackier flavors of yesteryear made more sense when everyone smoked, whether they lit their own or inhaled a pack a week secondhand. In a similar vein, I would like to speculate that people didn't mind adding boiled eggs to everything because you couldn't smell them over the omnipresent stale smoke. Price of eggs notwithstanding, it seems like people these days don't "volumize" casseroles with chopped boiled eggs as often as we did when every sofa had an ashtray balanced on the armrest.

After getting the eggs ready, our recipe conveniently has us cover the faintly sulfurous smell with bacon. This is one of those recipes where cheap bacon (the kind that's mostly fat) might actually be the better choice. I don't think the recipe necessarily wanted to add bacon meat much as harvest the drippings for lettuce-wilting.

This salad can torture everyone in the next room of the house. First, they get the tantalizing scent of sizzling bacon. Then, all at once, they get the bitter smell of hot lettuce. I wonder if the people in a certain Chicago apartment were leery whenever they smelled bacon coming from my great-grandmother's stove. Sometimes you get bacon and waffles, other times you get wilted lettuce.

Speaking of title ingredients, we were ready to wilt our lettuce! We are told to "wash lettuce, drain, and chop." It is surprisingly hard to get all the water out of lettuce after you've washed it. I didn't want to go out and buy a salad spinner, but I definitely wanted to borrow one.

I cut the recipe to one-third, and the biggest skillet was barely up to it. Did everyone in Chicago have paella pans?

Just like fresh spinach, the lettuce shrank a lot. This may be why people don't cook lettuce very often. But on the other hand, it's a lot easier to eat your daily quota of greens when you can compress them into a small bowl.

 

Things were going ever-so-well until I added the egg after the lettuce was done. While I was stirring everything long enough to warm up the egg, the lettuce lost its bright green color and took on that dull gray look that says "You're not leaving this table until you finish your vegetables."

That bowl contains a third of a head of lettuce. That's, like, two or three wedge salads. Lettuce shrinks a lot on the stove.

Did you know iceberg lettuce has a flavor? Well, after shrinking it down to a seventh of its original size, its flavor is concentrated. The bitter lettuce (not overcooked, just its actual taste), salty bacon, vinegar, and boiled eggs went together better than I thought. But you have to be in the mood for pungency before you think this is "a pleasant variation from the day's usual tricks." As I said earlier, I can't help wondering if the flavor of this made more sense when life had a background of cigarettes and higher liquor sales.

Purely for the heck of it, I sent a picture of this to Marcus, our longtime friend who definitely isn't traumatized from trying various recipes on the blog. He did not seem to regret being too far away to drop by.

 

Because I still had two-thirds of a lettuce and another boiled egg in the refrigerator. I soon made a second wilted salad. This time, I cut up the bacon before cooking it instead of after. As we learned from the cream onion pie, the bacon gets crispier and the fat renders off better. I also didn't have to pause mid-recipe for a chopping break. (As a food safety note, chop your lettuce and get it off the cutting board BEFORE cutting up the bacon. That way, you don't get raw-meat germs in the greens.)

Instead of waiting til the end, I added the boiled eggs just as everything was heating up. The lettuce stayed green, but I don't think it made a dramatic visual difference. There's really no way to make iceberg lettuce look pretty after you've cooked it.

This recipe is not disgusting, but it's also not a classic waiting for rediscovery. You have to be in the mood for some well-placed bitter flavors before you can like it. But if you're like me and always keep a jar of sauerkraut on hand, you might not be disappointed. Some of my friends suggested I try this with kale instead of lettuce, so I'm going to keep an eye on the clearance produce. 

Despite the lack of salad ecstasy, I'm not going to cross out the wilted lettuce in my reprinted copy of the book. This recipe may have regained a place in our kitchens thanks to CDC budget cuts. It might be wise to start cooking all our vegetables again-- or at least briefly heating them to get rid of any microscopic stowaways. And of course, this salad is a good way to salvage any salad greens that aren't quite as fresh as they were when you bought them.

Cheese and Ham Pie: or, Carbohydrate bliss interspersed with meat

Today, we are continuing our Australian salute to cheese!

Cheese and Ham Pie 4 oz ham, cut into into bite-size pieces 6 oz egg noodles, cooked in salted water 4 oz (1 cup) grated cheese 1 oz (2 tbsp) butter, cut into small pieces 1 cup milk 1 egg Pastry for one crust Salt and pepper to taste Heat oven to 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C). Coat a pie pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle the ham in the pan. Place the noodles on top. Then sprinkle the cheese over the noodles. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Then dot with the butter. Whisk together the egg and the milk, then pour over all. Cover with a top crust and cut holes to vent. Bake about 30 minutes or until golden. Note: If you're buying ready-made pastry instead of doing it yourself, puff-paste would be really good on top of this. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935

This is the season for leftover ham. I deliberately took home a lot of leftover ham from Easter and froze it until the time felt right, which I decided is now. 

As it turned out,  ham is the first word in the recipe title but we don't use much of it. This is what happens to cooking when the Depression was on.

Not pictured: 1 ounce butter.

What the recipe lacks in ham, it makes up with carbs and cheese. Six ounces of macaroni is a lot more than you may think. After mounding the cheese on top, our pie overtopped the pan.

Lastly, we laid on the pie crust. I folded the extra dough back over the pie-- partially to make a should-have-been cute border but mostly because I was too lazy to trim it.

This pie is what leftovers should be: smothered in carbs and buried in cheese. I probably could have baked it a little longer, but I didn't. It was plain, simple, and just what I hoped for.

In full disclosure, some free-swimming liquid did seep into the freshly-vacated parts of the pie pan when we served it. But although weepimg pies usually bother me, this is one of those recipes where I don't think there's any point in caring about drips. Of course, you can serve this with more bread to soak them up. After all, carbs go great with carbs.

Raspberry Puffs: Serve as breakfast or dessert

Today, we are making muffins out of iffy fruit!

Raspberry Puffs 1 tsp salt 2 cups flour 2 tsp baking powder ¼ cup shortening or butter 1 egg ½ cup sugar ¾ cup milk 1½ cups raspberries, fresh or frozen* Heat oven to 375°. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan, or line it with paper cups. (These fall out of the pan pretty easily without the paper liners, so you don't need to go out and buy them if you don't have any.) Sift together the salt, flour, and baking powder. Or combine them in a small bowl and stir with a whisk or a fork to fluff them up and break up any flour lumps. Cream together the sugar and shortening. Beat in the egg. Add milk alternately with the dry ingredients. You want to try to keep the batter at more or less the same consistency the whole time. Fold in the berries. If using frozen raspberries, try to mix them in quickly-- before they have a chance to thaw and break apart. Fill the muffin cups about half to two-thirds full. Bake until the tops are slightly golden, about 15 minutes. These are good served warm with butter, raspberry jelly, or with the following sauce:       Raspberry Sauce 1½ cups raspberry juice† ½ cup water ½ cup sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 tablespoon butter Thoroughly mix the cornstarch and sugar in a saucepan, eliminating all lumps. Add juice and water. Cook over medium heat (or high heat if you're really careful to scrape the bottom of the pot) until it boils and thickens. Remove from heat and add butter, stirring until melted. Serve hot on the Raspberry Puffs. *The original recipe uses canned whole raspberries. You might find them at a farmer's market (or if you do your own canning and made a batch). †If you use the above-mentioned preserved raspberries, you can use the juice you drained off for the sauce. Or you might buy raspberry syrup (like the flavored syrups they have in coffee shops). If you buy raspberry syrup, mix it with the water in the recipe and then thoroughly dissolve the cornstarch before turning on the heat. Taste the sauce before adding any additional sugar. A Book of Selected Recipes: The Ashland Times-Gazette Cookbook, Mrs. George O. Thurn, 1934

I've been dog-sitting for my parents these past few days, and found a small tub of raspberries starting to expire in the fridge. (I think we all know that raspberries last about thirty seconds before growing fur.) I didn't know what to do with a nearly-full box of raspberries, but our old friend Mrs. George Thurn did!

A Book of Selected Recipes: the Ashland Times-Gazette Cookbook, Mrs. George O. Thurn, 1934

Even though I wouldn't eat raw berries if I had to pick off the fuzzy bits first, I figured that any latent spores would get baked away. But before we get to wholesome fruit, the recipe starts with a quarter cup of shortening. It always feels weird to open a completely new can of scientifically white fat and gaze upon it as it waits to transform ordinary cooking into an unnatural act.

As often happens with scientifically modern recipes, our mixing bowl started with a complete absence of color.

Every time I come back here and do a bit of cooking, I am surprised my mom's mixer hasn't finished falling apart. The motor came half-unmoored inside the housing who-knows-how-many years ago, and now the whole thing shakes and rattles your hand. But apparently this mixer is like my first car: no matter how much it falls apart, it simply won't give up. (The car was deemed unfit for public roads by the end of its time, but damnit it drove itself onto the reaper truck.)

Moving down the recipe, we are supposed to sift our flour with a few other ingredients. Instead, I put them in the really big measuring cup and whisked them until all the lumps in the flour had loosened up. I'll have to keep an eye out for a quart-sized measuring cup. (That's one liter-ish for our metric friends.) It makes an unexpectedly convenient mixing bowl for small batches.

Our puff batter turned out a lot thicker than I thought it would. As a recipe note, there was no dairy milk in the house-- only powdered or almond. I went with the latter because I figured it would be like adding lots of almond extract. You couldn't taste any difference, but it would have been nice.

And now, we finally arrived at the fruit! Mrs. Thurn calls for canned raspberries, which I have never seen. Did factories used to can raspberries the same way they do peaches? Or did Mrs. Thurn think we either canned our own fruit or got some from a neighbor or at a farmer's market? Regardless of how your fruit arrives, this recipe uses a decent-sized cereal bowl of it. I added a handful of blueberries because we didn't quite have enough raspberries for the recipe. No one likes fruit parsimony.

They only look this good because I picked off a lot of fuzzy bits.

The raspberries broke apart into lots of little pieces as I stirred them in, regardless of how gentle I was. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized this means there will be lots of berry thoughout each muffin. If you want your raspberries to stay intact, you might buy them frozen and mix them in very fast before they have a chance to thaw.

I baked these for fifteen minutes as directed. They sprang back when gently pressed, but looked pale. I thought that perhaps this recipe just doesn't brown very much. Some things stay pale no matter how long you bake them-- like Mrs. Wilson's one-egg cake or the pepperless pepper cake.

 

When I took one out of the pan, it was cooked but still felt very doughy. You'll know what I mean if you've ever eaten brown-and-serve rolls without browning them. So, I put the muffins back in the oven until they got a little golden on top. I thought this might harden and dry them out, but they were still wonderfully soft.

Without the attached sauce recipe (which I didn't make because I don't have any raspberry juice), these are right in the middle ground between savory and sweet. They're not quite a dessert (or at least, not by American standards), but they're also not something you'd serve next to a pot roast. The muffin batter was itself mildly flavorless, which would have been a problem in other recipes but today meant that it really let the raspberries' flavor pop.

Actually, given how these are fully baked before getting nice and browned, these might make good brown-and-serve breakfast muffins. You could bake them when you have the time and then pop them in the freezer (or just leave them out if you'll be serving them the next day). Then you would only need to stagger into the kitchen and put them in the oven before you start the tea.