Chocolate Crackles

Before we make cookies: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the cookies...

Today, we are revisiting my ex's Italian grandmother's recipes! This one isn't particularly Italian, but it looked really good. Besides, cookies are always delicious.

Chocolate Crackles 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1 cup brown sugar ⅓ cup cooking oil 1 tsp vanilla 2 eggs 1 cup flour 1 tsp baking powder ¼ tsp salt ½ cup chopped pecans or hazelnuts Powdered sugar for rolling Melt chocolate. Mix in sugar, oil, and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time, beat each in well. Combine flour, baking powder, & salt. Add to chocolate mixture. Add more flour if the dough doesn't pull from the sides of the bowl when you stir it. Then mix in the nuts. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. When ready to bake, heat oven to 350°. Have greased or paper-lined baking sheets ready. Drop teaspoons of dough into a bowl of powdered sugar. Roll to coat. Place each onto the pan. Bake in 350° oven for 10 to 12 minutes. They should look a little underdone when you remove them from the oven. Carmella Oszterling

This recipe was perfect for this week's weather. The directions tell us to refrigerate the dough, and the days are still warm, but the nights are getting chilly. But it's still not cold enough for the heater. We must choose between jackets in the unheated house or sweating as soon as the furnace turns on. So we could mix cookies by daylight, and bake them without belaboring the air conditioning.

Apparently whoever wrote this was left-handed. The backwards slant in the cursive is a left-handed thing-- or so I've heard. (I'm left-handed and my cursive isn't tipped backwards. It's merely illegible.) 

Getting to the recipe, it's been a surprisingly long time since I've melted a bowl of chocolate chips. I forgot how magical and swoon-worthy they are.

We are next directed to add brown sugar (which is always welcome in our kitchen) and... cooking oil? Cooking oil? Like, the stuff you add to cake mix? After a few moments of angst, I set aside my "butter or nothing" purism because someone's Italian grandmother thought this recipe was good enough to copy down.

I really didn't think the recipe called for enough flour to turn this into a dough. And sure enough, after mixing it all together it looked like brownie batter. Which is fine if you want brownies, but I could already tell this would become runny melted dough splats.

I already knew these cookies would melt into sad splats in the oven, so I didn't bother baking them to find out. Instead, and with apologies to my ex's grandmother for going off-book, I added more flour until it seemed doughier. I figured that in the worst case, I would end up having to pre-flatten each one in my hands.

When you see how well the cookies came out, keep in mind that we dumped in a lot of extra flour instead of a delicate spoonful.

After a long succession of cookies that don't bake right without extra flour, I'm starting to think that perhaps I need to stop buying the cheapest stuff on the rack. In terms of grocery prices, this really isn't a good time to ditch store-brand. But we've been having runny cookies for a while now.

Having gotten the dough to look a bit better, it was time to add the walnuts! Of course, I hate walnuts so I used pecans instead. Pecans are a close relation of walnuts, and they are everything walnuts wish they could be. And if you prefer walnuts, you can simply let pecans go rancid. So pecans are dual-purpose, but walnuts can only ever be walnuts.*

After the temperature outside had dropped and the dough had chilled, it was at last time to bake. Because I don't trust cookie recipes these days, I baked a single solitary test cookie before risking a whole panload of them. The refrigerator had made the dough so stiff it bent the spoon, but we managed to force out one cookie's worth and coat it in powdered sugar.

Our white-powdered dough clod remained resolutely unchanged for most of the baking time. It didn't even melt or puff up. Then, just as I was ready to throw out the rest of the dough, our cookie burst out of itself and became beautiful.

 

I baked the test cookie just a smidge too long, making it ever-so-slightly hard. It turns out that with this recipe, you want to take them out of the oven while they still look a little underdone. I'm glad I didn't waste a whole dozen cookies finding that out.

After these cooled off, they were divine. They're like chocolate-pecan brownies. They reminded me a lot of the Tunnel of Fudge cake, which you may know as the recipe that put a bundt pan in every home. I wasn't worried about whether these would go stale. They wouldn't last long enough.

The recipe also makes a lot of cookies. I keep forgetting that Italian grandmothers don't do small batches, ever. Our cookie jar literally overflowed.

Keep in mind these are only the cookies that lasted long enough to cool off.

__________________________

*I've heard that walnuts are very good when they're fresh off the tree. And while I'm willing to keep an open mind, no one grows walnut trees anywhere near me.↪

Strawberry Mousse: It's actually ice cream

A short note before we get to the strawberries: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the mousse...

Today, we are concluding our festival of refrigeration with strawberries and marshmallows! I wanted our last salute to frigidity to be a good one.

Frozen Strawberry Mousse 1 (16-ounce) package frozen strawberries, thawed (save and include the juice that separates out) 16 marshmallows (or 3½ ounces by weight) 8 or 9 drops red food coloring 1 cup cream Blenderize the strawberries. Pour the puree through a strainer into a saucepan, gently shaking the strainer help the fruit go through. (This removes the seeds and gritty pulp.) Place the strawberries over medium-low heat. Add the marshmallows and cook, stirring constantly, until marshmallows are completely dissolved. Add food coloring until it turns a nice shade of pink. Or, strain the strawberries into a microwave-safe bowl. Add the marshmallows and then cook in the microwave until they melt, stopping and stirring every 30 seconds. Let the strawberries cool to room temperature. When the strawberries have cooled, whip the cream in a large bowl. Fold in the strawberries. Transfer to a one-quart container and freeze. Serves 6 to 8. undated "Martha Holmes" recipe handout (probably 1930s-1950s), Peoples Gas Company, Chicago

For those who missed it, our refrigerator went out recently. After a horrible few weeks with nothing but a hastily-bought mini fridge while we replaced various parts in the big one, our food is once again cold. 

We have been celebrating the refrigerator's return with a lot of chilled dishes. Most of them have proven somewhere between underwhelming and terrible. Also, this is a perfect recipe to close our salute to cold food. It calls for frozen strawberries, so you can't even buy the ingredients if your refrigerator is broken.

Undated "Martha Holmes" handout, Peoples Gas Company, Chicago

This comes from my great-grandmother's recipe book. It looks like she cut it out of a handout and threw the rest away. In case you're wondering why the recipe directs us to freeze in a "Gas refrigerator" (their capitalization), this comes from the local gas company in Chicago. I only know this because I recognized "Martha Holmes" from when RetroRuth on Mid-Century made a pork cake out of one of their books. It involved adding chunks of raw pork fat to the batter and slowly rendering them out while baking for 4 hours (four hours!) at 250°. (For our metric friends, that's 144 hectoseconds at roughly 120°C.) 

Fortunately, the hog product for this recipe comes pre-rendered and heavily sweetened. We're using marshmallows instead of sugar.

You can see that the strawberries have melted and refrozen a few times, and now conform to whatever shape the bag had slumped to. I already planned to make this before the fridge tried its damnedest to die on us.  Through all our troubles and petty misery, I refused to throw out the strawberries. That would have felt like giving up. I refused to accept an existence with nothing but a mini-fridge jammed into the corner and a big fridge sitting dead with the doors propped open. I clung to the idea of strawberry mousse as a lot of our grocery money went to the city dump and the fridge sat dead in the kitchen. I told myself that the future will be refrigerated and we will have strawberry mousse. 

Now that the time for strawberries had come, I decided that I did enough brute-force sieving when we made the prune whip. I put the strawberries in the blender instead. But I did pour the resulting fruit through a strainer to remove the seeds. Doesn't that look a lot nicer than if I'd just emptied the blender into the bowl?

And now we get to the marshmallows! I don't know why we're supposed to use marshmallows instead of just adding sugar. But I have a few guesses:

First, marshmallows may have been cheaper at the time. You'll note that this recipe doesn't use fresh fruit, nor do we use anything expensive like vanilla.

Second guess: the gelatin in the marshmallows is somehow involved in making the texture come out right.

My third guess: this recipe might come from World War II food rationing. People were only allowed a tiny dose of sugar per month. However, sugary foods didn't count against your sugar allowance, which led to a lot of creative repurposing of sugary processed foods like fruit preserves and marshmallows.

My fourth guess: the recipe's from Chicago and therefore from the Midwest. I'm not an expert on Midwestern food, but they seem to love cooking with marshmallows. I don't know why marshmallows are such a crucial part of Midwestern food culture, but they are.

I was going to melt this on the stove, but then I decided that the microwave would be better. I wouldn't have to worry about anything burning onto the bottom of the pot or do my rubber-spatula best with a sticky mess. It worked beautifully, but it took a surprisingly long time. I think the stove would have been faster (though not easier).

As the strawberries heated up, they went from a pretty red to a less appealing shade of salmon. It turns out that the red pigment in strawberries is not heat stable. Others have known this for a long time (including the people who tell us to use red food coloring in this recipe), but I was only just finding out.

I tasted a spoonful, and I had no idea strawberries could be so tart. Even the farmer's market strawberries I have purchased have never been like this. Today's strawberries almost made me pucker-- and that's with a lot of marshmallows melted into them. I liked knowing that this would have a lot of flavor even after it froze.

The recipe now tells us to "add food coloring until a nice pink is obtained." I didn't think our strawberries looked half bad, but the food coloring made them look so much prettier.

And now, we were ready to whip the cream and then freeze. As I poured in the strawberries, I briefly marveled that the strawberries were such a beautiful pink. Then I was like "Oh right! I added a lot of artificial dye!"

After mixing everything, we had the prettiest pink fluff I've ever made. The cream tempered the strawberries' sourness, but this was still a lot more tart than I ever thought strawberries could be. I couldn't help wondering: are heirloom strawberries hiding in the frozen aisle? After all, they don't have to worry if the strawberries can withstand the long journey to the store. Or, are today's marshmallows smaller than they used to be? Should I have added a few extra ones to make up for shrinking marshmallows?

My camera seems to personally hate this recipe. But you can take my word for it, this looked really nice.

After freezing, our mousse turned into ice cream. And it was really good strawberry ice cream-- the kind that you can tell is made with actual fruit. I thought that perhaps the marshmallows would add a recognizable flavor, but you couldn't tell we used them instead of sugar. Perhaps the gelatin really did help things more than I expected, though. Unlike the cranberry ice cream, this was wonderfully creamy without beating it twice. Granted, it still didn't have as nice a texture as ice cream made in a churn. But when you don't want to deal with bagged ice and rock salt, it's really good.

As we end our salute to chilling and serving, let's review what we made. Starting with the worst so we can end with the best:

• Fudge gelatin.  This was the only recipe that hit the trash before anyone else knew I made it. I sincerely recommend this recipe you have to bring something to a Christmas gathering. It's a great way to let everyone know you don't want to be there and you only brought something because you're supposed to. 
• The whiskey thing. This was the biggest disappointment. Yes, the chocolate gelatin was worse, but I thought the whiskey thing would be good. And you can't be disappointed unless you thought something was worth the hope.
• Prune whip. At this point, we're going from the bad to the mediocre. This one continues to baffle me. The ingredients almost work, but not if you follow the directions. And it was in my great-grandmother's handwriting instead of cut from a pamphlet. (I don't want to admit what this says about her cooking.) 
• Applesauce-date mallow was an unexpectedly good use of citrus, even if the recipe is a bit underwhelming without wartime food shortages in the background.
• Cranberry ice cream. We're leaving mediocrity behind and getting to the good stuff. This is probably the best "two-ingredient-only" recipe I've ever made. Granted, those recipes tend to be disappointing. But this was good in its own right.
• Today's strawberry ice cream. It's nearly tied with the apricot whip. Speaking of which... 
• Apricot whip.  This one was my favorite. It tasted unexpectedly like fresh fruit. It has just enough gelatin to keep it from deflating without getting too, gelatin-y.
• Honorable mention goes to everyone else's favorite: the canned peaches suspended in red Jello. (Some people just don't have a sense of adventure.) If you really want to make it special, use the syrup from the can instead of water and then call it a salad.

Whiskey-Rye Blondies: or, The ingredients are nice, the instructions are faulty

A quick note before we get to the whiskey and rye: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the blondies...

We're giving the bourbon another shot before demoting it to lighter fluid.

Whiskey-Rye Blondies 200g unsalted butter (two sticks minus two tbsp) 400g light brown sugar (about 1¾ cups) 2 eggs 2 tbsp whiskey 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp salt 250g rye flour (two cups plus two tbsp) 150g white chocolate chips, if desired (a heaping ¾ cup) 2 tsp golden-colored sprinkles, if desired Heat oven to 180°C (350°F, gas mark 4). Grease an 8"x12" pan or a 9" square. (the original recipe calls for a 3x2 decimeter pan.) You can also use a 9"x13" if you don't mind spreading the batter a little thin. Be sure you have the brown sugar measured and ready to go, even if you don't usually measure your ingredients before you start cooking. Put the butter in a large saucepan. Stir over low or medium-low heat until it is browned. Turn off the heat and immediately add the brown sugar, mixing well. (The sugar cools the butter enough to stop it from burning itself on its own retained heat, even though it will still be very hot.) Let the pot sit until lukewarm. Beat each egg in well, one at a time. Add the vanilla and whiskey with the first egg. Then mix in the rye flour. If desired, add the white chocolate chips. Put the batter into the pan. It'll be very thick, so you'll probably need to lightly spritz the top with cooking spray and then finger-press it into place. If desired, scatter sprinkles on top. Bake 20-25 minutes. A knife or toothpick in the center should come out without any hot batter clinging to it (a few clumps of hot brownie are OK). Note: the original recipe calls for 2 hectograms each of molasses sugar and golden caster sugar. But if you live on my side of the Atlantic and don't feel like going to specialty stores, light brown sugar will be a perfectly fine substitute for both of them. You can also use dark brown sugar for a stronger flavor. (Mal)adapted from the Irish Independent

This recipe starts with browned butter, something that came out of nowhere shortly after salted caramel exploded over all our desserts. Unlike bacon-infused everything, rampant cupcakes, or the tapas craze, browned butter seems to have some staying power.

We are next directed to "Whisk with all your strength to dissolve the sugar, and simmer over a low heat for about a minute. Add the whiskey and/or vanilla, and whisk until you have a smooth, glossy, dark mixture." I spent a long time (and I do mean a long time) stirring. Like Fanny Cradock, I thought of someone I really don't like so I take it out on the saucepan. But I didn't get anything better than a gritty sludge.

Incidentally, someone said I was old-fashioned for using wooden spoons. Are they really so outdated if you can still get them in the supermarket on the same aisle as the measuring cups and spaghetti strainers?

Just as I was about to take the pot off the stove and move on with the recipe, something caught my eye in there. I couldn't tell if things looked a little different or if I was being hopeful. But the sugar was actually dissolving, even if it took a long time to get around to it. I guess patience really is the key here. 

Assuming the butter is supposed to separate into a greasy slick on top, things were going exactly like the directions said. That happy state wouldn't last long.

Next, we are supposed to cool this for 5 minutes before adding the eggs. I set the pot on the countertop so the cold tiles could suck the heat right out of it. 5 minutes later, it was still searing hot.

This isn't the first time a brownie recipe has started out like candymaking before adding flour and eggs. But today's brownies did not want to go right. The brown sugar hardened into a solid rock in the pot. You might think I should have added the egg earlier when the sugar was still semi-soft, but it would have scrambled on contact.

I'll admit there's a chance that the recipe is correct and I messed up. But if so, I say it was due to faulty or ambiguous directions. For once I actually printed this recipe instead of copying it onto a notepad. So whatever went wrong on the stove had nothing to do with any transcription errors. Also, my kitchen scale is bilingual. So I didn't have the chance to make any mathematical errors when converting out of metric.

I thought that maybe things would improve after we mixed in the egg. And so, I gamely proceeded forward and got a sticky mess of gravel and sludge.

I was fazed but not resigned. The instructions tell us to "take up your whisk again. Whisk, whisk, whisk. Keep whisking until the eggs are thoroughly incorporated." I thought I'd speed up the process by putting a motor on the end of my whisk. After beating the everloving snot out of this mixture with an electric mixer, the sugar turned into slightly smaller gravel. You simply cannot dissolve three-fourths of a pound of hard candy into one cold egg. Also, half of the brown sugar was still a hard slab that had welded itself to the bottom of the pot. At this point, I tasted this to see if it was good enough to salvage. It was burnt and awful. Fortunately, I had not yet taken out the trash.

In spite of our failure (and because I hadn't put the bourbon away), I wanted to find out if the ingredient list was better than the directions. And so, I added the browned the butter as directed. Then I took it OFF the stove before adding the brown sugar. The mixture was still fiendishly hot, even though I hadn't tried to make ill-advised hard candy. But I tried a spoonful and it tasted divoon. I can see why browned butter is still with us long after its fad cycle should have ended.

Since I was ignoring the rhapsodic yet incorrect directions, I decided to wait until after adding the egg before beating anything "until smooth and glossy."

And now, we arrive at the whiskey! Even though we barely used a spoonful of it, the whiskey overpowered everything else in the batter. You'd think I dumped in half the bottle.

It was time to add our other title ingredient: the rye flour. It turned the batter a ghastly green. I had no idea rye flour was green until now. And there is simply no way for green and brown to mix into a pretty color. No wonder we are supposed to add white chocolate chips and then cover this in sprinkles. (I omitted both of those to find out if these brownies taste good without any help.) Even though things didn't look pretty, everything was going going exactly as they should. I even had to finger-press the batter into place like the directions say.

The brownies looked better after baking, but they still were a bit off-colored. You'll have to either cover them in icing or switch to candlelight if that bothers you. Or maybe you can use dark rye flour, which would probably turn them a prettier shade of deep brown.

The recipe says to cool these overnight before cutting, but we all know how much faith I have in the directions by now. I cut them right out of the oven while they were still very soft. The trick is to use a metal spatula instead of a knife, hold it vertically, press it straight down, then lift it back up and out before pressing it down again. You don't drag the brownies across the pan like you would if you swiped a knife across them.

I'm so glad I made the recipe twice so I could get it right once. These are so good. I even retracted my offer to let one of my more bucolic friends pour the rest of the whiskey over his next bonfire. 

These had the exact texture as the blondies from Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. I even converted the ingredients out of metric so I could see if it was the same recipe with a rye swap. To my surprise, it isn't. The whiskey flavor was a lot stronger than I thought one spoon would be. And browning the butter gave them a wonderfully intense butterscotchy kick. 

In closing, I recommend this recipe a lot-- provided you keep the ingredient list and throw out the original instructions.

Applesauce Custard: or, The raisins didn't hurt, but they didn't help either

Before we get to the applesauce: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the custard...

Apparently they really liked applesauce at my great-grandmother's house. She pasted in a lot of recipes that use it. (Or maybe she really liked applesauce and everyone else had no choice.)

Applesauce Custard 1 egg 1 cup applesauce 1 cup milk ½ tsp melted butter, melted Sugar to taste ½ cup raisins Heat oven to 350°. Grease a small baking dish (one that holds 4 cups or so). In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the egg until well-beaten. Stir in the applesauce, milk, and butter. Add sugar to taste, and mix well. Lastly, add the raisins. Pour into the pan. Spread the raisins out with a spoon if they landed in a pile in the center. Bake until it jiggles but does not slosh, which may take longer than you think. Newspaper clipping, Chicago area, probably 1930s-1940s

 

I really like making complicated and fussy recipes when my mood is right. But today, I wanted to be nearly done after dumping the ingredients into a bowl.

We only needed one more ingredient to complete the custard, one that is sure to draw complaints at the dinner table: raisins! If I were to speculate, the raisins are here to to add little concentrated pods of sugar to the recipe without adding more sugar to the grocery bill. Or perhaps they are meant to add textural interest to what is otherwise more or less a small pan of baked applesauce. Either way, the raisins promptly sank when I mixed them in. 

Oh, and we almost forgot something! I don't know what this tiny little splat of butter is supposed to do, but let the record show that I remembered to add it.

 

I thought for a moment that I was supposed to put this on the stovetop for a while before baking it. However, our instructions simply say to "bake until custard is firm." Even in a newspaper recipe written as tersely as possible, I figure they would have at least briefly mentioned a saucepan if I was supposed to use one. And so, I poured this into a small baking dish and hoped for the best. 

I should note that in order to fend off questions about what was in the oven (and the inevitable disappointment when I answered), I made a batch of decoy cookies. For one thing, we had a partial carton of cream that was pushing its expiration date, and the cookie recipe conveniently used the last of it. But more importantly, I could wave cookies at people and prevent anyone asking what was in the small pan next to them.

The custard took a really long time to bake. Every time I pulled a batch of cookies out of the oven, I gave the rack a shake to see how things were going in the pan. It simply refused to set. I started to wonder if this recipe used too much liquid for our one egg to set. When the custard showed the first signs of a pretty golden top, I began to think this was coming out all right. But then it started boiling hard. I feared that I had basically made egg drop soup with applesauce in it. Also, exactly one raisin had floated to the surface.

 

After leaving this in the fridge overnight, the custard looked like a worn-out sponge.

This wasn't necessarily bad, but it tastes like economizing. It was an underwhelming dessert, but a surprisingly decent side dish with the pot roast. But I can't get past the texture on this-- and I'm not usually finicky about texture. You know how applesauce is full of tiny little apple chunks? Well, they made this seem curdled regardless of whether it actually was. I think it would be a lot better with thoroughly pureed apples. (Was applesauce more thoroughly pulverized in those days?) I don't regret making this, but I'm not in a rush to repeat it. 

 

Candied Sweet Potatoes: or, Sweet potato casserole without a potato masher

A quick note before we get to the sweet potatoes: Millions of people in the US are losing food benefits. In fact, the Supreme Court just granted Trump's appeal to avoid paying food benefits, thus legally clearing the way for people to starve. 

If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. Food banks often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed.

Right, on with the potatoes...

Someone accidentally volunteered for my great-grandmothers recipes.

Candied Sweet Potatoes 6 uniform-sized sweet potatoes ¼ cup water ½ cup sugar (brown, white, or maple) 3 tbsp butter ¼ tsp salt (only add this if butter is unsalted) Cinnamon to taste Heat oven to 350°. Grease a large roasting pan (or a smaller one if you're cooking fewer potatoes.) Boil or microwave the potatoes until they're somewhere between a quarter done and halfway done. Then peel them and cut into whatever size you like. Place in the baking dish. While the potatoes are cooking, bring the sugar and water to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and boil for 4 minutes. Turn off the heat, add the butter, salt, (and cinnamon, if desired), and stir until all is melted and mixed. Pour the syrup over the potatoes in the baking dish, then stir to coat. Bake until the potatoes are thoroughly cooked, stirring and basting every 5 to 10 minutes. Be sure to scoop the syrup up from the bottom of the pan every time you stir them, so it coats all the potatoes on its way back down. If desired, you can use orange juice instead of all or part of the water when making the syrup. Note: Don't decrease the amount of syrup, even if you are cooking fewer potatoes. Source: Handwritten recipe, probably 1920s-1930s Notebook of Hanora Frances "Hannah" Dannehy O'Neil

For the past few weeks, I've been getting asked to make "candied sweet potatoes," which I have never made before. We do have a recipe from Mrs. Wilson of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger. Unfortunately, I have no idea what she means by "one cup sirup." Am I supposed to boil my own simple syrup? Dump in corn syrup? Use molasses?

Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger; April 23, 1919; p. 12

Long after I set that recipe aside for lack of details, what should turn up in my great-grandmother's recipe book but... candied sweet potatoes!

First off, I love that her penmanship looks like it came right out of the handwriting textbook. Second, this reads like it was copied word-for-word out of a published cookbook. Or perhaps she really sounded like that when she was writing out recipes. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't get past the first word without a dictionary. I have never "parboiled" anything in my life. Fortunately, she says to parboil them for "about ten minutes," and setting a timer is one of my many cooking skills. 

Now we can all learn together!

 

Actually, let's pause for a minute. The recipe says to use "six uniform-sized sweet potatoes." I used the big pot that normally only comes out for spaghetti night. Two potatoes had a bit of extra room to roll around, three of them would have fit just fine, but six would be impossible.

This is a good time to mention that my great-grandmother only had two children. Who the heck was she cooking this many potatoes for? Was she following the time-honored strategy of silencing her husband with carbs? Did she often make when the extended family got together? Did she copy this verbatim from a book and then always cut everything in half? Short of finding a detailed diary to go with the book, we'll never know.

While our potatoes were parboiling, we had another pot with syrup in it. The recipe says to use "granulated, brown or maple" sugar. Maple sugar sounded amazing, but I don't think a single store in the county sells it. Perhaps if I go back up to Canada I will bring this recipe with me. But we used brown sugar instead. 

After parboiling for ten minutes (that's 6 hectoseconds for our metric friends), the potatoes were slightly soft and spongy, like they had sat on the back of the shelf just a little bit too long. I figured that even if I don't know what parboiling is, the timer didn't lie.

I will say that parboiling the potatoes made them a lot easier to peel. Granted, we could have microwaved them until fully cooked and then picked off the skins with our fingers. But the knife slid right through these. I didn't have to use any force at all.

And now we get to the part where the candy meets the spud. We are told to put the potatoes in an "agate or glass dripping pan." I guess "agate" was another term for "granite ware"-- those thin metal pans with speckled enamel. I don't have one of those, so we put the potatoes into the extra-deep casserole and found that things would go a lot better if we cut them smaller.

I initially hesitated to return the potatoes to the cutting board because I really wanted to make this recipe work as written. When I make older recipes, I try to stick to the directions because-- well-- in theory someone got them to work. But we don't have a big roasting pan to make room for full-size spuds. Also, I didn't want to serve or eat massive, sticky potatoes that required a knife and fork.

These spuds might be bigger than the recipe intends anyway. When I put them on the counter, someone gawked for a second and said "Those are some big potatoes!" I don't know where to start looking for produce sizes of yore, but this 1930s illustration shows much smaller potato halves garnishing a crown roast. Our spuds would not have fit on the plate. (And yes, a single advertisement is not a comprehensive resource.)

30 Ways to Serve Bacon, Armour, 1930s-ish

The recipe says to bake "until soft, basting frequently with the syrup in the pan until well candied." I don't know what a "well candied" potato looks like, but I figured they were done when the syrup was too thick to drip down to the bottom of the pan. However, the potatoes weren't quite done when I stuck in a fork. Either our spuds are a lot bigger than the recipe intended, or I didn't parboil them long enough. I had planned to serve them for dinner, but they ended up being an extra-late dessert.

This tastes like sweet potato casserole if you didn't mash the potatoes. So if you like the taste of sweet potato casserole but don't like it being a uniform pulp (or if you just want to introduce a little bit of a change), this could be the recipe for you. I'll probably parboil the potatoes a bit longer next time, though.