The Anticlimactic Cream Cheese Cake

We at A Book of Cookrye have been wondering- what the heck do we do with the rest of the cream cheese from the strawberry pie? We try random substitutions on it, of course!

Cream Cheese Cake ½ c cream cheese 1 c sugar 2 eggs 1½ c flour 1½ tsp baking powder Heat oven to 350°. Grease a round or square pan. Cream together the cream cheese and sugar. Beat in eggs until thoroughly mixed, then mix in the baking powder. Lastly, stir in the flour. Spread very evenly into the pan as it won't level out in baking. Bake until it springs back when pressed, 30-40 minutes.

Yes, indeed, we're using it instead of butter in a cake. We read somewhere that you can, so today we're going to find out.

This photograph brought to you by winter and the makers of Wite-Out.

I have to say, this is the most delicious cake batter ever produced in the Book of Cookrye kitchen. I handed the bowl over to a friend mid-conversation saying "Here, taste this."  After barely dipping his fingertip into the batter and tasting it, his eyes went really wide and after a couple of seconds, all he managed was "....whoa."

It tasted like cheesecake dip. We at A Book of Cookrye had ecstatic hopes of accidentally producing the love child of cheesecake and regular cake. We also really wanted to forget this silly oven business and get a spoon.

However, we baked this anyway. Well, we baked the majority of the batter at least. We may or may not have made sure we did a lousy job of scraping out the bowl. So, we ended up with a lumpy cream-cheese based landscape thing.

It actually kinda looks like a landscape if you squint your eyes just a bit. It held its shape so well, not even leveling out a little. We considered that we could be on the way to discovering orgasmic cheesecake cookies.

However, our hopes of cheesecake cookies were dashed when we tried it. It tasted so ordinary. It's a good cake all right, and somehow it ended up finer-textured than they usually do, but the cheesecake flavor got baked right out of it. It's still a good cake, though.

We should have just eaten the batter.

In which we substitute Diet Coke for eggs because the Internet told us to

I've never mentioned this before, but we at A Book of Cookrye really like Diet Coke. We like Diet Coke so much that we had to stop buying it because we were spending an embarrassing amount of grocery money on it. Nowadays, we only get Diet Coke at our parents' house-- except when Mom is trying to stop drinking it. When we come home and find there is no Diet Anything in the refrigerator on these occasions, we're always quite devastated. (note to Mom: There's an excuse for you to buy more!)
In high school we wrote a poem in praise of Diet Coke which was tacked to our bedroom wall until we moved out. It may still be in some closet in our parents' house. The first line was

O Liquor distilled from Heaven!

and further down,

Thine* aspartame sweetener
Hath savéd my waist!

Why do we say this now? Because while stuck in a long wait a few days ago and therefore a lot more interested in random online listicles than we generally are, this popped up on a list of cooking tips that will purportedly change our lives.

We at A Book of Cookrye do not endorse any of the suggestions in the above picture and take no responsibility for what happens to you if you try them. source

Somehow, I get the impression that substitutions like the aforementioned are what drive people to more reliable vegan dessert ideas:

More great vegan entertaining tips here!

But getting back to the original one. This is from a long infographic of vegan substitutions which was punctuated with cartoony sad animals (you can see the ears of one of them at the bottom) and slogans straight out of PETA pamphlets. We would like to draw your attention to the first subpoint.

We would like to briefly digress to say that no, we are opposed to the notion of vegan cakes. As a peace offering to anyone who might think otherwise, we would like to offer you a slice of this spice cake which is divoon.

I read the Diet Coke subpoint aloud to multiple people who all responded like this:

The passionate reaction was a good enough excuse to try it out in my own kitchen! Now, do we have a cake recipe anywhere that calls for two eggs?

All Electric-Mix Recipes Prepared Specially for your Dormeyer Mixer, 1946

Well, that worked out eerily perfectly. However, we will admit that there's only so much veganism we're willing to put up with in one cake. By that we mean the bigger bowl does not contain margarine.

Now for the "mix-easy" part...

We at A Book of Cookrye would like to briefly pause to say that having made this recipe before, it is a pretty good cake when you're not dumping in Diet Coke for eggs.
That said, surprisingly few places sell Diet Coke by the individual can. The grocery store only had bottles by the cash register. The only vending machine we've seen that sells cans is at the county college 30 miles away. We say this because for the first time in A Book of Cookrye history, we had to get ingredients at a gas station.
Side note: Did you ever realize that (assuming you're also in the US) we live in a country where supermarkets have refrigerators at each cash register for the express purpose of selling you cold sodas? Not even perishable foods that actually might be somewhat good for you, but sodas which neither need refrigeration nor contain anything at all that is good for you? (and no, we're not launching into a sanctimonious anti-soda tirade- see the Diet Coke praise poem at the top of the page.) If that ain't living the first world, nothing is.

So far, so good...

We at A Book of Cookrye honestly don't get why Diet Coke is supposed to work as an egg substitute. Most egg substitutions we've seen are some plant-based equivalent of gelatin which actually makes sense if you're looking at the chemistry aspect of cooking. Regardless of whether it worked, we felt a not-as-minor-as-it-should-have-been heartbreak over wasting a perfectly good can of Diet Coke which was still cold.
But, in the spirit of veganizing previously normal recipes, anyone who complains about Diet Coke eggs can have tofu instead. We at A Book of Cookrye are genuinely amazed at how many times in one recipe some people will pretend tofu is something else. Don't eat butter? Use tofu! Don't eat eggs? Use runny tofu! Cheese? Tofu. Mayo? Tofu!  Heck, there's probably someone out there saying if you're gluten free, you can substitute tofu for flour. At least Diet Coke represents some amount of creativity. It may be the same sort of creativity that leads a first grader to think that Oreos dipped in ketchup are the best thing ever, but it's creativity nonetheless.

This is two eggs.

Diet Coke makes even less sense as an egg substitution upon trying it than it did when reading it. Even if you're ignoring the function of eggs in a cake recipe and trying to swap one liquid for another, two eggs do not measure out to nearly the same volume as one can of Diet Coke. Even if Diet Coke eggs had made sense before trying it, we at A Book of Cookrye suspected that no cake batter is ever supposed to be curds suspended in gloop.

We had considered after buying the Diet Coke that we could have gotten a more suitable type of diet soda for this. Something like diet orange soda might have tasted better in cake. However, once the batter was ready, you could barely tell any Diet Coke was in it. So, onward and ovenward!

We would like to show you the bowl when we were almost done getting the batter into the pans so you can see that no cake batter should ever look like this.

The top of the cake looked, well, almost normal when baked. And heck, it almost smelled like a real cake. For the record, it had to cook exactly twice as long as the recipe said it would, but the recipe writers had assumed we would be using eggs and not... er... egg substitute.

However, when we sliced it, we suspected that all was not right with this cake.

Maybe if we'd bought cake flour it'd have turned out better.

Yes, once again, we had made a pan of congealed cake paste. This cake was everything a cynical bastard waiting for the next disappointment in life would expect when told "And this is a vegan dessert!" It tasted wrong, looked wrong, and was the sort of thing you expect some stuck-up prat with a bag of pamphlets to give you while smugly saying "See? You can make cruelty-free desserts!" It felt like eating paste. The Diet Coke added an unnerving metallic taste that left you thinking some of the pan had dissolved into it during the baking. This is one of the very few things that have left us at A Book of Cookrye feeling like we might puke. And for the record, you should not be able to do this to a cake.

I've never felt like apologizing to a recipe before. But I felt like I'd wronged somebody in perpetrating this... thing, and therefore needed to beg forgiveness of someone. I'm so sorry, Mix Easy Two-Egg Cake. Here, I'll make you with actual eggs to make it all better.

This is how cake batter should look.

Behold, the reward for not trying weird substitutes for the eggs: the cake batter is creamy, thick, curd-free, and divoon!

In conclusion, do not try to veganize recipes by way of vending machines. That way you can get a cake that looks like this.

I think my oven might be tilted.

And when you cut yourself a piece, it will be a divoon, light, delicate cake and not metal-flavored cake clay. You can also get away with using plain flour instead of cake flour because you didn't dump Diet Coke in there instead of eggs. (As a side note, you probably want to dust the pan with flour after greasing it for this one. It's a bit tricky to lift out of the pan otherwise.)

Once again, we at A Book of Cookrye have nothing against vegan cakes, just lousy cakes. If you want a good vegan cake recipe, we actually have one here!








*Yes, I now know it should have been thy.

Second-Stab Saturday: More Cake Drops!

A while ago, we at A Book of Cookrye tried out a cookie recipe that ended up more like little cakes than cookies. Far from being annoyed, we were pleased to have discovered cake drops.

Cake Drops 1 c shortening 1½ c sugar 3 eggs 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp nutmeg ½ c buttermilk (or sour cream thinned with water) ½ tsp baking soda 1½ tsp baking powder 3 c flour Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating in each thoroughly. Stir in the vanilla, nutmeg, baking soda, and baking powder. When all is mixed, add the buttermilk. Lastly, mix in the flour. Chill for at least 30 minutes, preferably a few hours. When ready to bake, heat oven to 350°. Drop by heaping tablespoons onto a greased cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room for them to spread. Bake until browned at the edges, golden on top, and puffy. Ice when cooled. To get them baked faster, bake them on sheets of greased foil. That way, you can clear the cookie sheet for the next batch without waiting for them to cool. A Book of Selected Recipes, Mrs. George O Thurn, 1934

With the annual family reunion soon, we decided this would be a good time to bring some cake drops! Have you ever look at a bowl of cookie dough and realize you'll be spending a long time before you've managed to bake it all? At least with cakes, you just dump it in one pan and that's it.

That is part of why we decided to make big cookies. We also went with big cookies because everyone likes big cookies. Little ones are all right, but they're better for looking dainty on a platter than for eating.
The first batch of cake drops came out sad and flat. Also, you can definitely tell the cookie sheet is a wee bit bent. I can't complain because if I didn't warp this one when learning to cook, I warped the one just like it to an equally severe extent.

Do you think the cookie sheet has a slight bend to it?

We at A Book of Cookrye were helpfully informed (Thanks, Mom!) that they came out flat because we should have refrigerated the dough first. Unlike the last time we made them, it's hot out.

Success!

I wish I could show you how lovely they looked with the icing on top, but instead all I had time to do was get this picture of how well they went over:

Sharp-eyed people will notice the remnants of a pink polka-dotted icing job.

I think this recipe's worth repeating.

Italian Pork Chops in Boozy Cabbage: It's like Italian Bubbles and Squeak but with a pig instead

Guess what happened in the Book of Cookrye world!

That's right, a visit home!

Meat like this is outstandingly rare in our budget of "What is this thing called money?", so we wanted to do something better than just putting them on a griddle. Besides, rarely can we get look at recipes in the meat sections of our cookbooks and actually consider making them!
Most people in our place would pick out a  recipe that makes them salivate just reading it, but we at A Book of Cookrye went with one that left us with no idea what would end up in the pot. Yes indeed, we're cooking the pork chops in boozy cabbage.

The Art of Italian Cooking, Maria Lo Pinto, 1948

We had no idea whether to use a red cabbage or a green cabbage, but we found a one-pounder stacked among the reds at the middle-Eastern store.

You'd never see produce this small in a supermarket.

Does anyone else remember a Pinky and the Brain comic where they ended up in colonial Salem and Brain committed some grievous crime and had to wear... The Scarlet Lettuce? He spent the entire story saying it was in fact a cabbage while the good townspeople shouted "Silence, nonbeliever!" every time he said so? Anyway, the point is, a cabbage cut in half cries out for mathematical analysis, especially if you're into fractals.

We at A Book of Cookrye aren't sure how you're supposed to shred a cabbage, so hopefully having at it with a knife will suffice.

Actually, this recipe involved a lot of chopping things.

We made the executive decision that these pork chops were fricken huge (wheeee!), and therefore we should cut them in half so they'd all fit in the pan. Not that having such a surplus of meat slabs is problematic, of course.

I'm not kidding, they're huge. They're almost bigger than the knife blade.

Having cut them in half, they just barely fit into the skillet (this is an amazing day!).

We had no idea if the recipe meant to brown them 6 minutes per side or six minutes total. When we checked them at three minutes or so, we went with the latter.

Incidentally, for once we read the recipe enough to plan this out and brought out an actual plate for removing the onions to when they were cooked.

This is what preparation looks like.

All right, it's time to dump it all together and wait for supper! We had thought we would just do the whole thing in the skillet, but for once this did not fit. This caused no small amount of consternation in the Book of Cookrye kitchen; numerous culinary experiences had made us believe the skillet was magic and could expand its capacity as needed.

Suddenly I feel like apologizing to my great-grandmother.

Well, the whole thing had to go into the pot and that barely held it all.

And now, a grocery-shopping aside: We at A Book of Cookrye got so nervous buying the wine- all of the bottles had pictures of fancy houses (you know, the sort owned by people who use the word "summer" as a verb), years on the labels because you're supposed to know what that means, weird European-sounding variety names, and little paragraphs on the back that talked about "hints," "notes," and crap like that. We went with the one that required neither a corkscrew nor worry that it would break (also, it was cheap).
Also, as a recipe note, we read that #2 cans hold about a pint, so hopefully 28 ounces is close enough to the right size of tomatoes.

We also went with a small wine bottle because what the heck are we going to do with the rest of it?

All right, this is the moment that caused the most dread in the whole recipe:

It's not Burgundy, but it is the same color.

One cup of wine doesn't seem so bad, but the pot was so densely packed that the wine went up to just below surface level. We panicked at the thought of wasting all this meat in another disastrous wine pie, but it was too late.

Anyone who is comparing this to the recipe will note we made a grievous error. We were supposed to cook everything for a while and then dump in the wine near the end. We figured we'd just leave it for the forty minutes it would have spent on the burner anyway and hope for the best.

Is it supposed to do that?

We considered wine with dinner (we had half a bottle left anyway). But, given how much wine was already in dinner, having more with dinner seemed redundant. Hence, tea.

All right, we took a huge tray of meat and for some reason put it in a pot of alcohol and cabbage. What the heck did we get? Surprisingly white-on-the-inside meat, that's what. It almost looks like meat cake.

However, this was absolutely divoon. I've never had pork chops so tender, and the long stewing time melded everything wonderfully and took out the wine's pungency. The tomatoes didn't even taste like they'd come out of a can.
However, when we had leftovers the next day, the pork tasted like concentrated wine blobs. Since the cabbage and tomato stuff was still really good, there was a marvelously easy solution.

These were the best leftover sandwiches ever!

We were quite relieved these were good because we had a lot of pork chop and cabbage left over.

Would they have been better had we added the wine near the end of the cooking time like the recipe says? I have no idea. However, we at A Book of Cookrye would like to raise a wine-filled measuring cup to Maria Lo Pinto for making a whole cabbage head and a lot of wine absolutely divoon.

Peaches and Cream Cobbler: or, This is what happens when you try those stupid shortcuts

Peaches and Cream Cobbler ½ c butter 1 c sugar ½ c sherry 2 eggs 1½ c flour 1 can sliced peaches 1 (14 oz) can condensed milk Heat oven to 350°. Grease a round cake pan. Pour the milk into it, then arrange the peach slices in it. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and beat thoroughly. Stir in the sherry, then mix in the flour. Spread the batter into the pan and bake until the cake is done and golden, about 30-40 minutes.

We at A Book of Cookrye have been pondering upside-down cakes for a while, mainly because they're delicious. We have also been looking through those "life-hack" images which purport to make our lives easier. One of them suggested that you can use a can of condensed milk instead of brown sugar and butter in the pan, you'll have an upside-down cake without waiting for the butter to melt. Because, y'know, that takes forever. Granted, we at A Book of Cookrye have already done the same thing with caramel ice cream syrup, but what's the fun in doing things you already know will work?

If you've ever wondered about the ceiling lights where I cook, there you go.

At least if this fails, it can't taste bad because condensed milk is delicious and so is cake.

In the spirit of using up things that have been sitting around our room too long, we dumped the last of the sherry into this. This would be the same bottle of sherry that has been with us since we made booze brownies.

It took a really long time to empty this.

If this thing fails, at least it can't fail badly. There's not a thing in this pan that isn't delicious. We've got cake batter, peaches, and condensed milk (which is better than it should be- if you find anywhere that sells it, get ice cream with condensed milk swirled into it).

We ended up with a surprisingly thin layer of batter.

I've never seen a cake that apparently had such a good time in the oven before.

If you hadn't just seen Waiting again and therefore could eat it with a straight face, it was pretty good. However, there was no point in trying to serve it upside down. No one likes a cake that leaks all over the counter. That said, it was really good, especially if you spooned some of the... er... stuff on top of the cake.