Graham Cracker Cake: or, Second verse, not as good as the first

Apparently my great-grandmother liked graham cracker cakes enough to save two of them.

Graham Cracker Cake ⅔ cup flour ¾ cup granulated sugar 2½ tsps baking powder ½ tsp salt 1⅔ cups graham cracker crumbs (or 7½ oz by weight) ½ cup shortening ¾ cup milk 2 eggs (medium-size if you can get them)* Heat oven to 375°. Cut parchment or waxed paper circles to fit the bottoms of two 8-inch round pans. Coat the pans with cooking spray, then press the paper into place. Press out as many bubbles from under the paper as you can. Then spritz the top of the paper with more cooking spray. Into a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the crumbs. Drop in the shortening by spoonfuls on top of everything. Then pour in the milk and vanilla. With electric mixer at low speed, beat just until dry ingredients are wet. Then beat two minutes at low to medium speed. Scraping the bowl and beaters as necessary. Add the eggs and beat 1 minute longer. Pour into pans. Spread the batter, making it just a little lower in the center than at the edges. Bake 25 minutes or until done. Cool in pans on cake racks ten minutes. Remove pans, peel off paper, cool on cake racks and frost as desired. (I used plain white icing with a lot of almond extract.) *The store near me does not sell medium eggs. Swapping in extra-large eggs didn't hurt a thing. Source: Unknown clipping, probably from a Chicago-area newspaper, likely 1930s-1940sNotebook of Hannah O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

I didn't know you could make a cake of graham crumbs until I tried the recipe she wrote on random scrap of paper. This one was good enough to get neatly pasted into "The Book," so we will see if it's actually better.

I wasn't going to sift everything, then I read the directions and saw that we're supposed to more or less dump everything in and then turn on the mixer. So I figured the sifter would help break up any flour clumps.

The bowls are already piling up!

After stirring in the graham cracker crumbs, I could see that we would have a lot of cake.

The directions now tell us to dump in everything (except the eggs). I've seen a fair handful of cake recipes that go like this from the 1940s and 1950s. I think it was supposed to replace the tedious, allegedly old-fashioned way. (You know, the instructions that go something like "Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, then alternately add flour and milk...") But with a few exceptions, this cake method seems to have faded out of cooking as soon as the paper advertisements crumbled into unarchival dust.

Moving down the ingredient list, we are told to use "emulsifier-type" shortening. From what I understand, that is shortening that has some extra emulsifier added so that water won't separate out of it (or at least, not as easily). You can get it from commercial suppliers (in massive commercial-size boxes of course), but it's not very common in grocery stores. I decided to hope that our ordinary store-brand shortening was good enough. Fortunately, nothing in the cake is so expensive that an oven failure would break the budget.

We dropped everything in, turned on the mixer, and after two minutes (plus time to dampen) we had a sludgy light-brown mixture. At first I thought it looked too heavy, then I remembered we hadn't added the eggs yet.

After adding the eggs and letting the mixer go some more, it looked like cake batter. It occurred to me that since I have a kitchen scale, I could have weighed the bowl before and after putting a cake batter in it, and then used the scale to divide the batter into perfectly equal halves. Then I decided that only insane people and wedding bakers do that.

Speaking of getting batter into pans, I love that this recipe has us papering the bottoms first. It's so reassuring to know that no matter what happens, the cake absolutely cannot stick to the bottom of the pan. We may have to cut around the sides, but we have a guarantee that we will get the cake to fall out in one piece.

In addition to the pan size, this recipe tells us how tall the cakes should come out. I couldn't help getting out a ruler, which showed me that today's cakes fell short of the specified 1¼ inch. (I shouldn't be surprised. Recipes tend to vastly overestimate the yield of servings too.)

Having reached final assembly, I ignored the icing that came with the recipe because I already know what whipped corn syrup would taste like. Instead, I made white icing and added a thoroughly unnecessary amount of almond extract.

This brings us to the worst part of cake making: competently getting icing onto it. I've said this before, but I like to spread my icing thin. I think it's best as a sweet finish to the cake, not as something you have to scrape off and put in a mound on the side of the plate. Unfortunately, the only way to get a cake to really look nice is to smear so much icing on that your spatula can't get anywhere near the cake itself. And I have to agree with longtime commenter Freezy who said that what decorators call a crumb coat, the rest of us call "a disgusting amount of frosting."

With that in mind, I made only a small batch of icing. I got a little bit between the layers, and managed to coax the last spatula scrapings from the bowl onto the top.

At this point, I stepped back for good look at our cake-in-progress, watching its bare sides gently drop a few crumbs onto the plate as the air blew in from the heater vent. I could have made another batch of icing and tried to cover the sides without making an ugly wreck of it, but I decided "It's cute as it is. This is the look." Seriously, put this in a freshly sterilized all-white kitchen and I think it'd look like it came right out of Pinterest.

This tasted oddly like banana bread without bananas in it. I don't mean like the result of omitting the bananas from the recipe. Imagine if the bananas had departed from the banana bread and left their spirits behind. 

The cake has nearly the same texture as those supermarket sheet cakes that punctuate so many birthdays and office parties. It felt professional when I sliced it. But if we're going with graham-cracker cakes, I think the one my grandmother wrote down herself tastes a lot better. (I think it's the butter. The other cake doesn't use shortening.)

As a postscript, I wondered if the cake had reached its specified height in the center. (It rose into a dome instead of flat on top.) So after cutting a slice, I got out a ruler and found that the two layers are exactly the correct height. Maybe if I tried that trick of tying wet rags around the sides of the pans, the whole thing would be. 

 

Second-Stab Saturday: Spinach-Bacon Pie without all the fuss

Sometimes, recipes are a lot more work than they need to be.

Spinach-Bacon Pie 1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell 6 strips bacon, cooked crisp, then crumbled or chopped* 1 (12-oz) package frozen chopped spinach, defrosted 3 eggs 2 tbsp flour 1 tsp salt 2 tsp onion powder (more if desired) 1 tsp black pepper ½ tsp cayenne pepper (if desired) 1 cup evaporated milk 1 cup (or 4 oz) shredded cheddar cheese (or any other type of cheese that melts well) Heat oven to 400°. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, flour, and seasonings. Then mix in the bacon and spinach. Don't drain the spinach before adding it-- mix all the juices in with everything else. Pour this into the pie shell. If needed, gently spread out the spinach if it landed in a sort of pile. Sprinkle the cheese on top. Then bake about 20-25 minutes, until it puffs up on top. *Naturally, you can just cut up 6 pieces of pre-cooked bacon if you have that on hand. Adapted from 100 Prize-Winning Recipes from the Pillsbury's Best 9th Grand National Bakeoff, 1957--- via Mid-Century Menu. Recipe by Linda Lee Bauman (Whitehouse, Ohio), Junior Winner

The spinach-bacon pie has made its way into regular rotation in this house. But all that business of juicing frozen spinach, measuring fluids, heating canned milk, and everything else got more irksome every time I made it again. So I decided to cross out the directions and just stir everything together.

At first I was worried. This pie won a Pillsbury Bakeoff prize with all its fussy instructions, so surely every step was there for a reason... right? Also, the ingredient list specifically calls for hot milk. I didn't know whether that had some crucial effect on how all the ingredients interacted in the mixing bowl. Then I decided that at worst, this would turn into spinach soup with a soggy pie crust under it.

This time, the raw filling looked more like leaves with a little bit of white mixture around them. When I squeezed and wrung the bejaysus out of the spinach as the recipe directed, we had little green shreds floating in white-ish fluid. At first I thought this might seem more like a panful of leaves than a decent pie. Then I decided that even if I never took the shortcut again, this pie couldn't possibly be bad enough to throw out.

Well, now I feel silly for posting this recipe with a long list of directions. In my defense, I was following what was originally in the book. But now we know that you can just stir this pie together.  

I really like this pie (which is why I make it so often). It's like a low-effort quiche. And for something that has such a hefty serving of vegetables, it doesn't taste like "you have to eat your vegetables." It's just plain good.

Putting Eggnog Into An Ice Cream Machine

Happy Boxing Day, everyone! For those who celebrate Christmas, it's time to put all those holiday worries away. And regardless of you got out any decorations this year, 'tis the season for discounted eggnog!

So, a while ago Marcus tried eggnog for the first time and said "This tastes like melted ice cream." We never followed up on that. At the time we didn't have an ice cream maker, and then we simply moved on to more entertaining culinary territory. But today I wanted to finally see if this works or not. 

 

This machine had the most passive-aggressive warning sticker I've seen.

I was surprised at how well the eggnog whipped up as it froze.

Eggnog may taste like melted ice cream when you drink it, but it doesn't turn into decent ice cream. It had little bits of ice grit, but not the good kind of ice grit that comes in sorbet or water ice. And it became unexpectedly bland after it got cold. I thought it'd be something like a cinnamon-spice ice cream, but really it just tasted cheap.

But all was not lost. We simply let the eggnog melt and return to its natural state and then consumed it as the food industry intended.

Fresh Cranberry Salad: or, If you use lemon jello, it's not a dessert

Christmas time is meat grinder time!

Cranberry Salad 1 (3-oz) package lemon jello ¾ cup sugar 1 cup boiling water 2 cups raw cranberries (about 7.3 oz by weight) 1 cup finely diced celery (about 5 sticks) 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 cup chopped or sliced almonds, if desired Whisk the jello and sugar into the boiling water. If they don't completely dissolve, just heat the water up-- whether on the stove or in the microwave. Set aside. Coarsely grind the cranberries, whether in a food processor or a hand-cranked grinder. Then chop the celery if you haven't already. Add the cranberries, celery, and lemon juice to the gelatin. If any juice dripped out of the cranberries while grinding them, add that too. Refrigerate until partially set. It's ready when the berries and celery stay put after you stir it, instead of floating back to the top. Then stir well and pour into individual molds, or a square pan, or any other container of your choice. (I usually just put it in a clear bowl and serve without trying to unmold it. The light goes through the glass and shows the color really nicely.) Refrigerate until firm. Serve with the almonds sprinkled on top. Note: If you really want to follow the original, whip about a half-cup of cream. Then fold in a half-cup of mayonnaise and spread over the top. Unknown book or handout (probably 1930s)Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

It looks like Christmas is gradually making a post-covid comeback. People put a lot more decorations out this year than last, reviving the beloved tradition of turning extension cords into fire hazards. And we are seeing a slow return of evening-news angst about "Christmas spending" and whether it will prop up the economy. 

Despite Christmas wedging its festive way back into our lives, there are still signs that pre-pandemic prosperity has yet to trickle down. First of all, the store is selling red velvet cake rolls, chocolate cake rolls, and pumpkin------ wait a minute.

Is this a good time to remind everyone that subbing carrot for pumpkin was popular the last time we had a depression?

Also, the grocery now stocks things that probably landed in the dumpster out back before everything got so expensive.

We're not here to gawk at stores selling recognizable animal parts here at A Book of Cookrye. Like, we all know where meat comes from. But I don't think calling them "chicken paws" is an improvement. More importantly, they are nearly $2 per pound. 

On a more anecdotal note, thrift-shop and garage sale offerings keep getting rattier. We've long passed the time when you could get nearly-new things from Craigslist (or the various sites that replaced it).

But happily for those of us who are ducking the holidays, you can still get cheap fresh fruit at Christmas. The last cranberries from Thanksgiving are still on sale in the back corner of the produce section, which is both a testament to their shelf life and also a wonderful bargain. And as we learned while flipping through my great-grandmother's cookbook, apparently they liked cranberry-celery gelatin just as I do (if perhaps not as much).

I don't know what book or handout this comes from, but the page looks like the 1930s.

Incidentally, my great-grandmothers entire recipe binder is on this page if you'd like to see what else she clipped or wrote down.

This year, I lost the screw that holds the grinder's handle on. It remains at large, even after I emptied every single drawer it might be in (and all the other ones too). Fortunately, the hardware store had a replacement:

With our kitchen devices back in order, it was time to get pulverize a lot of cranberries!

Soon, we had a pile of fruit shards and some very pretty juice that had dripped out the back.

Now that all of our produce was reduced to tiny pieces, it was time to get down to salad.

I wasn't raised on midwestern food, so I can't quite tell what separates "salad gelatin" from "dessert gelatin." But from what I understand, lemon Jello equals salad, even if you suspend marshmallows in it. Since this is my first time interacting with lemon Jello, I tried a spoonful. It tastes like cheap lemonade that contains absolutely no citrus.

It looks like our cooking pot has become a chamber pot.

Interestingly, this recipe seems to end with raw cranberries. I've never partaken of raw cranberries aside from eating a few out of the bag when I'm cooking them. Perhaps not cooking the fruit makes this a salad? (And the celery of course.)

I tasted a spoonful of our salad, and it was oddly bitter and sharp. The instruction to serve with mayonnaise on top didn't sound so weird anymore. Like, this was definitely sweet, but it wasn't dessert-sweet.

Then, as I was putting the book away, I realized I had forgotten something...

Yes, I didn't see that we should have added a fairly substantial amount of sugar to this. (I thought the sugar in the Jello box was meant to suffice.) This was easy to correct, if a little annoying.

Isn't the color beautiful?

The recipe calls for stirring in sliced almonds. But as we have have learned from previous gelatins, nuts go weird and soggy in gelatin after a day or two. It's like biting into a wad of boiled cartilage in a pot roast.  

But to see just if this recipe was better with all of its ingredients, I sprinkled some almonds on top. To my surprise, all the flavors were perfect together. Who knows, I just might try a bit of mayonnaise on top to see if they were right about that too. 

I liked this a lot because I like cranberry sauce with celery in it, but obviously not everyone does. The cranberries completely covered the artificial lemon flavoring except for a faint chemically bitter undertone. And we can pretend that the raw fruit is better for us even after a deluge of sugar. In short, this is really good if you like cranberry sauce with recognizable fruit in it. The almonds are delicious on top. The celery, of course, is optional.

Hump-Day Quickie: Fresh Cranberry Cream

Cranberries are in season! You really can't get fresh cranberries out of season (though they are in the frozen aisle year-round), so I wanted to try a recipe that uses raw cranberries in their fresh-from-the-bog state. This comes from longtime commenter (is it too forward to say "friend of the blog"?) Freezy, who shared it underneath our last cranberry recipe.

Fresh Cranberry Cream Note: All these ingredient amounts are approximate. You don't necessarily need to get out a measuring cup for this recipe. ½ cup cream ¼ cup powdered sugar ⅓ cup raw cranberries Chopped pecans, if desired Cut the cranberries in half. Whip the cream, then beat in enough powdered sugar to make it sweeter than you usually would. Stir in any flavorings you like. A generous splash of almond extract is good, and a few drops of mint extract is unexpectedly delicious. Then stir in the cranberries. Sprinkle each serving with chopped pecans if desired. These amounts serve two. Source: Freezy down in the comments

Yes, these are the only ingredients. And of course I whipped the cream in the measuring cup.

Cutting all those cranberries in half does get a bit tedious, especially since you have to do them one at a time. (Or at least, I did.) But afterward, you only have to stick a mixer into some cream and then stir it all together.

Apparently they call this "the pink stuff" at Freezy's place, but mine was very white.

And if you're feeling fancy, you can also bring out the pecans!

 

I added a truly excessive splash of almond extract because I always like the stuff. Then I thought "Mint would probably be really good in this..." I don't know why I thought of mint-- maybe because like cranberries, mint is a very wintery flavor. At any rate, a few careful drops of mint extract made this so good. I'm going to have to make some more minty-cranberry things because the two go together so well.

This is such a lovely, easy winter treat. And it's so nice to have fresh fruit at this time of year. Yes, we can get fruits all year round (trade wars permitting), but winter peaches and strawberries always taste like styrofoam. Cranberries are actually in season when all the other fruits are not. And apparently they don't store very well because you really can't get fresh cranberries any other time of year-- so raw cranberries are a real once-a-year indulgence.

Waffle Iron Shortbread: Easy to make, good enough to give away

Today we are making more waffle cookies!

Waffle Iron Shortbread 250 grams (1 cup plus 2 tbsp) margarine or butter 3 eggs 250 grams (1 cup) sugar 2 tsp vanilla, if desired ½ cup cornstarch 18 grams (1 tbsp) baking powder pinch salt About 450 grams (3 cups) flour Melt margarine and set aside to cool. (Or heat it until it's almost melted. Any remaining solid pieces will be soft enough to mix in just fine.) Thoroughly beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Mix cornstarch, baking powder, and salt, then place in the bowl along with about half the flour. I think these are also good with a slight bit of cinnamon-- not enough to be recognizable, but enough to add a slight little something extra to the flavor. Start stirring and then add enough flour to make a batter about the consistency of very thick sour cream. Let batter stand about 10-15 minutes. Then cook on a hot, well-greased waffle iron until lightly golden. Что бы приготовить? от Алекандра Попова (What to Cook? by Alexander Popov)

These days, I trust cooking videos that are shot at home more than professional ones. If the lighting looks like it costs more than a kitchen renovation, it's probably a content farm using trick-editing to make worthless recipes look like they actually work. (Also, after watching Russian cooking videos just to see how their kitchens are different from ours, I recognized the words "Das vedanya" at the end!)

This recipe starts with a lot of bowls. Even with a dishwasher, it's annoying to use so much counterspace and later so much rack space in the magic cleaning machine. But it was nice to have everything ready to go before I stirred a single thing together. I hate to admit it, but it was faster than my usual method of measuring each ingredient out as we get to it.

After getting everything together, it was a simple matter of stirring it into one big bowl and then letting it rest. At first I was annoyed about waiting for 10-15 minutes, but it was a perfect chance to clear off the countertops at a leisurely pace. 

Some people may recall that we got two Soviet irons and then nearly ruined one of them on the first attempt: 

This iron and I have been in a conflicted relationship ever since, but today I decided to get it out because I hadn't used it in a while. I wanted to see if it had decided that it liked life on the other side of a trans-Atlantic voyage. 

When I spooned our first mound of dough onto the iron, it looked exactly right. It's so reassuring when your batter looks just like the one in the video. It was firm, but ever-so-slightly drippy in a way that suggested it would easily become runny and spread throughout the iron.

 They fell out of the iron perfectly, and were dangerously good.

We made these again for our neighbors who have Al CaBone the 12-foot Christmas skeleton in their yard. For gift-related purposes, I used the heart-shaped iron because they're so dingdarn cute.

For whatever reason, today's batch was like cookie dough as soon as I mixed it. As I mixed, I started to have little crumbly bits even though a lot of the flour remained in its separate bowl. (Instead of pouring it back into the bag, I used it for blueberry muffins.)

As I was waiting for the waffles to cook, I couldn't help noticing that they cast the purchase price onto this thing. I almost thought I could figure out how much this cost in modern money, then I realized that I could never figure out the year this was made.

I think it says 4 rubles, 70 kopeks.

If we could figure out how old this iron is, we could find out how many years' wages it cost in Soviet Russia. But that is impossible because once they started manufacturing something, they didn't change it until they could no longer slap the factory machinery back together. I mean, look at their cars:

And of course, it figures that I can never get the batter amount right until we reach the end of the bowl. We had oozing waffles and incomplete waffles the whole time I was making these (which doesn't matter unless I'm trying to give them away), but the last scrapings of batter finally yielded near-perfection.

Even with a few factory seconds, we happily had more than enough to give away. I always forget that this makes surprisingly small waffles. It therefore stretches your batter a lot. But full disclosure I overcooked some of them on one side. I could lie and pretend we always have perfect cookies, but we don't deceive here at A Book of Cookrye.

I tried doing a ganache drizzle on these, but it looked bad and also didn't taste as good as I hoped. And as much as I like chocolate, I don't think it's very good here. It obliterated the cookies' flavor. Fortunately, we had plenty of bare cookies left for giving purposes.

I think I simply don't like ganache. Like, it's easy, it's photogenic (most of the time), but it turns chocolate into something horribly overwhelming. I might use it as a very thin crumb-coat on future cakes, but I won't use it for much else.

You don't even need to break one open to see how fluffy they are.

In case you didn't figure out these are good when I gave them away with my signature on the card, these are delicious. These are like shortbread cookies that came off a waffle iron instead of the oven. They have that perfect soft texture. And they also had a much better shelf life than a lot of other waffles.

Lemon Meringue Pie: Absolutely worth it

As the weather gets colder, the oven gets hotter!

Lemon Meringue Pie Lemon Cream Pie ¾ cup sugar 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 1¾ cups water 2 eggs, separated Juice of 2 lemons Grated rind of 1 lemon ¼ cup sugar (for meringue) 1 baked pie shell Place the egg yolks into a medium mixing bowl, beat them slightly, and set aside. Sift sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt into a saucepan or the top of a double boiler. Add boiling water and whisk until smooth. Then place over boiling water or a medium burner (depending on whether you're using a double boiler or not). Cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens completely. Don't take it off the heat as soon as it thickens just a little, but keep going until it stops getting thicker. Remove from heat. While whisking in the yolks hard, gradually drop in spoonfuls of pie filling until you have beaten in about one-third to half of it. Then return this to the heat and cook about one minute longer. Remove from heat again, then stir in lemon juice and rind. Allow to cool completely. When everything is cooled, heat oven to 400°. Pour and spread the filling into the pie shell. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then, with the mixer running, gradually add the sugar one spoonful at a time. Allow each spoonful of sugar to completely dissolve before adding the next. Then spread this onto the pie, being sure it touches the crust on all sides. You may find it easier to put the meringue into a food-storage bag with a corner cut off, and pipe it into place. If it looks bad, just spread it with a knife or a spatula afterward. Place in the oven and bake until the meringue is golden on top. If you make the meringue a bit ahead of time and find it's turned into a bowl of stiff and dry foam while sitting out, just put the mixer back in there and beat it again. Note: Meringues really only last a day before they start dripping and oozing out little brown beads. And they don't freeze well. So if you want to make this pie ahead of time, you really can't freeze it with the meringue on top. You have two options. The easiest: forget the meringue. You can put spray-can of whipped cream next to the pie if you like. The other choice: freeze or refrigerate the egg whites (depending on how far ahead you're making this). Then make the meringue and put it on top of the pie the day you serve it (or the day before at earliest). Unknown source (looks like a magazine clipping or a food label), probably 1930s-1940s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

The freestanding pastry cases may have been a bust, but the lemon pie we put in them was really good. It comes from my great-grandmother's binder since I already had it open to learn how to make underwhelming tarts. She actually has two lemon pies. I chose the one that has more lemon in it. Conveniently, it also uses fewer eggs.

As we piled our ingredients into the sifter, I could tell that this pie absolutely could not stay runny after cooking. That's a lot of flour and starch. 

The recipe says to cook "until thick," and boy did this ever. Also, I know we're supposed to use a double boiler, but sometimes I like to live dangerously. Anyway I don't have a double boiler at hand and didn't feel like perching a mixing bowl over a pot.

 

We are next directed to simply "stir in slightly beaten egg yolks", but I didn't trust that instruction for a minute. (Lest we forget the egg curds in our hot macaroni salad.) 

When tempering eggs, you usually pour your hot mixture into the eggs while beating them very hard. But today, we had to carefully aim small blobs of steaming goop into the little bowl. It was annoying, but do you see any scrambled eggs?

After mixing in the lemon juice in, I tried a bit on the tip of a spoon. And... if you want your pie to make you pucker, this is the recipe for you. I might use this recipe the next time I want to put lemon filling in a cake. For one thing, it won't go gloopy and get squeezed out between the layers. Second, the concentrated lemon flavor is perfect for spreading thinly between cakes.

But this was too beige for me. This may be the natural color of lemon pie, but we have artificial dyes now. 

I nearly dyed the whole thing purple instead.

With the magic of petrochemical artifice, it's now the exact color of that cheap filling in gas station pies!

I really liked this. Some lemon pies are basically sugary cornstarch with a little bit of lemon that fell in by accident, but this is definitely a lemon pie. I loved how tart it was. We have another lemon pie in this book, and I'm a little bit afraid I already made the good one. 

 In full disclosure, after two days the meringues were starting to put out little brown droplets and get a little drippy. So if you want to make lemon pie more than a day ahead, you should forget the meringue and just squirt canned whipped cream on top at serving time.