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, 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.

Summer Spaghetti: or, Good tomatoes never need help

We meant to go to the hardware store and ended up at a roadside produce tent.

Summer Spaghetti 2 pounds very ripe tomatoes 1 small sweet onion, finely chopped 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed 2 tablespoons finely minced fresh parsley ½ teaspoon basil ¼ cup olive oil Red wine vinegar* Salt and pepper to taste 8 oz shell pasta Freshly grated Parmesan to taste Peel and dice the tomatoes.† Add the onions, garlic, parsley, basil and olive oil to the tomatoes. Season to taste with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Set aside. Cook and drain the spaghetti. Toss the hot spaghetti with the tomato mixture. Serve immediately tossed with cheese. The tomato mixture may be prepared ahead and refrigerated. Bring it back to room temperature before mixing with the hot spaghetti (you can just microwave it for a short time). This is also good served cold, especially with fresh lime juice squeezed over it. *The original recipe uses tarragon wine vinegar, but that seems hard to find these days. † Peeling tomatoes is not as irksome as you may think. If you cut a slit in them, then dip them in boiling water for 30-60 seconds, then put them in cold water, you can pull the peel off with your fingers. Here's a video showing how to do it. The Cotton Country Collection; Junior League of Monroe, Louisiana; 1972

After several years of nothing but supermarket vegetables, it was amazing to find peaches that smelled like peaches. The scent of the cantaloupes actually hit us as soon as we walked in the tent and told us how good they were. For once, we actually ate all of the produce instead of letting it slowly rot in the fridge with our other good intentions.

Getting to today's recipe, we got some really big tomatoes. Like, usually you can't get tomatoes like this unless your neighbor has a tomato patch in her spare time. They looked ordinary sitting by themselves, so here's one with my typewriter for scale.

These were good enough to just slice onto a plate, but we got a lot of tomatoes. So I decided to make something called "Summer Spaghetti."

The Cotton Country Collection; Junior League of Monroe, Louisiana; 1972

I've been eyeing this recipe for a long time, but I could tell that it absolutely depends on good ingredients. And for some reason, the farmer's markets around here all close close bizarrely early in the morning. Even if I end up trudging in the hottest part of the miserable afternoon, I refuse to set an alarm clock to buy vegetables.

The recipe calls for peeled and diced tomatoes. I had horrible visions of squishing the tomatoes into a sad mess while hacking at them with a paring knife, which nearly made me give up before I had put the spaghetti in the pot. Then I figured that if anyone could make peeling tomatoes easier, Delia Smith could. Sure enough, she has a video about peeling tomatoes that requires no knife skills. She says that if you put them in boiling water for a minute or so, "you'll find the skins will slip off really easily." It sounded too good to be true, but it worked! Doing our tomatoes the Delia way was as easy as picking the peel off of a cooked potato with your fingers. I've said this many times, but Delia Smith never fails to come to your aid.

In full disclosure, chopping the tomatoes was a slithery, messy process-- even with a freshly sharpened knife. I don't think there is an easy way around that without some very specific factory machinery. Also, that runoff so delicious that I tipped the cutting board into a teacup.

Aside from waiting for our pasta to boil, this was surprisingly fast to put together. This is all the chopping you have to do for this recipe. If you're half-decent with a knife, you can probably do it while the spaghetti's cooking.

I should have put the tomatoes in a bigger bowl to make room for everything else. But doesn't it look gorgeous anyway?

I should note that our tomatoes got soupy within a few seconds of stirring everything together. This must be why we're told to serve immediately.

I had prepared the full amount of tomatoes since the recipe says we can do that ahead if desired, but only cooked half the pasta. I think this accidentally improved our summer spaghetti. This is the recipe if you make it as written. Don't you think it needs more tomato?

But if you should double the tomatoes (or halve the pasta without halving the tomatoes), you get this. Doesn't it look better?

Note that we splurged on actual Parmesan instead of canned powder.

I don't understand why the recipe writer tried to stretch the summer produce with extra pasta. Farmer's market vegetables don't tend to have a shelf life, and there's no point in parsimony with short-lived ingredients.

This is one of those recipes that reminds you that vegetables can be so damn good. Obviously, if you use the produce from the supermarket, this would be as thrilling as one of those droopy broccoli trays in an office breakroom. But in the summertime when the really good tomatoes appear at farmer's markets, you owe it to yourself.

Sour Cream Cookies: I wouldn't bother if I were you

After so many successes, Mrs. Mary Martensen has let me down.

Sour Cream Cookies ¼ cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs, beaten ½ tsp lemon juice 1 cup sour cream ½ tsp baking soda 3½ cups flour 1 tsp baking powder Heat oven to 400°. Have greased or parchment-lined baking sheets ready. Cream the butter, then thoroughly beat in the sugar. Mix in the eggs, lemon juice, and sour cream. Sift in the remaining dry ingredients. Roll one-fourth inch thick, sprinkle with sugar, and bake ten minutes. Makes sixty cookies. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

I always keep sour cream on hand because it's nice in so many things, and my current container was getting close to expiring. And while one can throw out things that are at the end of their prime, aren't cookies better?

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Mrs. Mary Martensen tells us to add the sugar and a couple of other things to the bowl all at once, but I could already tell that would end badly. After all, our small allotment of butter was still clinging to the sides of the bowl in hard clumps. So I instead beat in the sugar until the two were thoroughly mixed before introducing the remaining ingredients.

Ahhhh, clump free!

We are directed to add "eggs, well beaten." I decided that the eggs would be plenty well-beaten after I was done mixing them in.

And so, it was time to add in the sour cream. Bearing in mind the New England raisin drops, I also added some vanilla-- and also some salt because I think they had unsalted butter in 1933.

After mixing in the flour, I began to doubt Mrs. Mary Martensen. (She had already disappointed us with the cabbage au gratin. At the time I charitably decided that no one's perfect.) No one could take a rolling pin to this sticky mess and make it a quarter-inch thick. 

I thought that maybe like Maxine Menster's cookies, you're supposed to refrigerate the dough first. Perhaps an experienced cook would have known that just from reading the recipe and mentally adding up all the ingredients in their head. 

But because I am not that good, I had already preheated the oven and refused to waste the electricity. So I forgot about doing things properly and thoroughly coated the mass of dough in flour to keep it from sticking. After that, I didn't need a rolling pin. I only had to pat it out with my fingers.

I was surprised at how nice and neat these cookies looked. My success felt like cheating fate.

I feared that these would melt into dough puddles, but instead they became adorable little poufs.

I tasted these and was immediately glad I halved the recipe. They're... not good. They have a perfect texture, but they taste like nothing. They're not merely bland. They taste empty. There is no absence of subtle flavor. Instead, there is no flavor. They weren't even sweet- the sugar somehow dissipated along with everything else. The dough had been promising, all the life in the cookies got cooked out.

I guess it's nice that I cleaned out the fridge and avoided the temptation of excessive calories. Really, this recipe confounds me. The texture is perfect, but they're so depressing. These cookies are what Maxine Menster's are glad they ain't.

Strawberry Whip: or, Spring is turning into summer

We overestimated how much we wanted strawberries.

Strawberry Whip 2 tbsp gelatin, or 1 (¼-oz) envelope 1 tbsp water About 8 oz fresh strawberries A little lemon juice, if desired 1 tsp vanilla Red food coloring, if desired 1 cup cream ½ cup sugar Mix the gelatin and water in a small microwave-safe bowl. Set aside to soak about 5 minutes. Puree the strawberries, then pour through a strainer to remove the seeds and stringy bits. Microwave the gelatin until melted and watery, about 5 seconds or so. Add the gelatin, lemon juice, and vanilla to the strawberries. If desired, add a few drops of red food coloring. Whip the cream and sugar in a large bowl. Then fold in the strawberries. Transfer to the container of your choice, and place in the coldest part of your refrigerator. Chill and serve. Adapted from a handwritten manuscript, 1930s-1940s Notebook of Hannah Dannehy O'Neil

Strawberries have been astonishingly cheap these past few weeks. I don't know if it's a bizarre confluence of economic coincidences, if we live near a lot of strawberry farms and didn't know it, or if it's some combination of the two. Furthermore, the berries are actually in season (ish), so they taste like strawberries instead of like nothing. We got one small box last week, and they were so good that we bought a lot of them the next time we went grocery shopping. They soon started to get pruny and squishy, and I didn't want to lose them.

I could have suspended the berries in red Jello. As many have noted before me, gelatin is surprisingly good at extending the lifespan of fresh produce. But today, I wanted to adopt my great-grandmother's apricot whip. Instead of stewing apricots, we're blenderizing strawberries.

After a good pulverization, I ran the strawberries through a sieve. This was the only tedious(ish) part of this whole recipe, but would you want all these seeds and stringy bits in your pink fluff?

As soon as I realized I was making "pink fluff," I had horrible visions of the ballistic-grade pink pie we made a while ago. 

And also, pink fluff is one of the more infamous midcentury desserts. It's almost a symbol of the insipid "cooking" that involved creatively dumping three cans into one bowl. But then I figured this is literally strawberries and cream (with some gelatin to keep it from deflating, of course).

Speaking of strawberries, I decided they needed a bit of artificial assistance to look their best after getting blenderized. Fruit is rarely fruit-colored enough.

This reminds me a lot of the cream of strawberry pie we made a while ago. Both of them are basically strawberries and whipped cream. And both of them looked so pretty at this stage.

This recipe was agreeably fast since we didn't have to wait on a pot of simmering dried fruit. Only ten minutes after sprinkling the gelatin over the water, we were ready to, as the recipe says, "Chill and serve." And then, of course, we discovered that the bowl-scrapings were delicious.

 

This wasn't as magical as I fantasized it would be, but it was still very good indeed. It did get a bit bland in the refrigerator, though- which surprised me. I know strawberry is perhaps the most inoffensive of artificial flavors, but the actual fruits tend to actually have a taste. So while this isn't necesessarily the best way to appreciate fresh strawberries, it's pretty good if they've slipped just a bit past it. 

 

Rice Cheese: It needs more cheese

I couldn't argue with cheese and rice.

Rice Cheese 3 cups cooked rice ½ cup shredded cheese 1 cup tomato puree (fresh or canned)* 1 teaspoon melted butter Salt, black Pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste Heat oven to 325°. Grease a medium-sized casserole dish. Mix all ingredients. Place in casserole dish. If the rice is dry (or if it's right on the edge of being too dry), pour a little water over it. Cover with a lid (or with foil if your baking dish doesn't have a lid) and bake for around 20 minutes. Note: This didn't mind baking at 350°, so you can put it in the oven next to other things baking at that temperature. *In a pinch, you can put canned tomatoes in a blender. "In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; July 8, 1935; page 3

This recipe uses a lot more rice than I expected. I had initially thought it is supposed to creatively refresh leftover rice (because cheese solves everything). But as far as I know, few people cook enough rice to have nearly a quart of it left over. Obviously, we cut the recipe down a lot. 

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

It seems that people used to boil and drain rice like spaghetti, sometimes adding an extra step where you return the rice to the fire to separate the grains a bit. But today, we are embracing modernity-- even if it means we have to temporarily return our souffle pan (which also steams the occasional pudding) to its original home.

Moving down the recipe, we're supposed to mix the rice with cheese and "tomato sauce." I had a particularly unwelcome suspicion that tomato sauce is Australian for ketchup, so I picked an Australian supermarket chain to see what turned up on their website.

Thinking that perhaps food definitions have changed a bit since 1935, I decided to see if The Southern Districts Advocate ever had anything to say about "tomato sauce" around the same time they printed today's rice. Sure enough, one edition of "In the Kitchen" was devoted to preserving that year's apparently bountiful tomato harvest. They had a recipe for "A Good Tomato Sauce," which looks like ketchup as we know it today.

"In the Kitchen," The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; March 4, 1935; page 5

Note the addition of apples, which I think would be really nice if I ever decide to make my own tomato sauce instead of buying it. But getting back to the recipe we're actually making, I didn't want to make a big pan of rice and ketchup-- period-correct or not. (I would be willing to put something like Miss Leslie's ketchup in our rice, but her recipe was in the wrong hemisphere and already a century out of date.) Instead, I pulled some half-pruned tomatoes out of the back of the fridge and put them in our new toy mini-chopper.

The rest of the recipe was easy enough: stir it together and bake.

This tasted like a rough draft of Spanish rice. (Which doesn't surprise me-- both are mostly rice and tomatoes.) I think it could have used more a lot more cheese. I was hoping for something like macaroni and cheese but with rice. Instead we got rice with a gallingly tasteful seasoning of cheese. I wasn't thrilled, but I did keep the leftovers. 

 

If I revisit this, I'll probably triple the cheese. There's a time and a place for using cheese lightly (or so I've heard), and rice absolutely isn't it.

Lemon Pie no. 2: It's always time for lemon pie

I can't imagine needing two lemon pie recipes.

Lemon Pie #2 3 egg yolks Juice and rind of 1 lemon 3 tablespoons flour 1 cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1 cup boiling water 1 tablespoon butter 1 9-inch pie shell Heat oven to 350°. Bake the pie shell until slightly golden. Whip the egg yolks and lemon juice until very light, set aside. Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt into a saucepan. Whisk in boiling water until smooth. Add the lemon rind and stir over medium-high heat until it thickens and comes to a boil. Turn off the heat. Add the butter and the egg yolks, stirring until the butter melts. Pour into the pie shell and bake until set, about 25-30 minutes. If desired, top with meringue and return to the oven until lightly browned. I thought this was better with whipped cream instead. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated, depending on preference. Meringue: Beat 3 egg whites (which you saved from separating the egg yolks for the filling) with an electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form. Continue beating while gradually sprinkling in 5 tablespoons of sugar. Beat until the sugar is dissolved and everything is smooth and glossy. Spread on the pie, return to the oven, and bake until the meringue is lightly browned. Handwritten note, probably 1930s-1950s Notebook of Hannah D. O'Neil (née Hanora Frances Dannehy)

We may have found why my great-grandmother occasionally needed "a pleasant change from a piece of lemon meringue pie." I can't imagine making lemon pie so often that I needed a second recipe for it.

I was going to skip over this recipe. We already made a lemon pie from her book and liked a lot. Why would anyone need multiple lemon pies? But then again, I have multiple brownie recipes for different moods (the extra-rich brownies, the very sweet brownies, the quick and easy brownies, etc). 

With that in mind, if there is any real variation in lemon pies, I've never found it. They always taste like the recipe on the back of the cornstarch box, whether I make them myself or buy them at the fanciest bakeries my budget can forgive. This pie looked a bit different, which made me wonder: are there other lemon pies and I've been missing out all this time?

Furthermore, I can't imagine why someone would write down a second recipe for the same pie unless it was better than the first.

And lastly, my car battery died and I wanted to bake my way out of being despondent. I didn't mourn the car battery, but I was forced to confront the insane prices of car parts amidst a trade war and an actual war. (Nothing has trickled down to my neighborhood yet.) Lemon pie it would therefore be. 

Three tablespoons of flour didn't seem like much until I got it into the sifter.

I hadn't made this pie yet, and I already liked it more than the one that shows up on the back of the cornstarch box. That one never seems to set unless I burn an offering to Fornax (the Roman goddess of hearth and oven), and even then I sometimes end up euphemistically calling it custard.This one uses a lot more to hold it together.

Let the record show that because we semi-always follow directions here at A Book of Cookrye, I did in fact get out the sifter for this. It seemed like more bother than I'd usually do for a lemon pie, but I'm not the one who wrote this down. 

As directed, I stirred in boiling water "until smooth," which was a lot easier than I expected. I thought I'd have to thrash this with a whisk, but we were done in a few seconds.

I did this in a separate bowl because I actually like my nonstick pot now.

The recipe doesn't mention using the lemon rind, but I think it really makes the flavor pop. I'm going to assume people would have done that instead of throwing out ingredients that were right on the countertop and waiting. Maybe cooks back then thought adding the rind was too obvious to write down, like "discard the eggshells."

This particular recipe calls for egg yolks "beaten light," which I've never seen in a lemon pie before. Usually you just put everything in the top of a double boiler and stir it for a minute or two. I put the whisk attachment into our mixer to see what the point of this might be. Seeing a single whisk (they were too cheap to put two in the box) hovering over the food made me think of when I replaced my broken handmixer with a power drill (which at the time led to several unsolicited and unculinary wall perforations).

I thought that one lemon wasn't enough for a whole pie, so I bought two. (Perhaps my great-grandmother meant a large lemon, rather than the smaller ones?) But a generously-dipped tasting spoon showed me that the first lemon was more than enough for the pie, so I put the other one away for future plans.

We are next told to add the butter and whipped egg yolks right to the pot. There's no mention of slowly spooning hot filling into the egg yolks until they're tempered. I was in a bit of a mood, so I decided to see if I really needed to bother with that. Maybe whipping them changes something and thus forestalls egg drop soup?

 

To my surprise, this actually worked. Nothing got scrambled, and we had a few swirls of foam that floated on top of the pot. I had thought they'd completely deflate and mix in. Perhaps this is like one of those sponge puddings that bake in layers? (Also, I really should have slipped in some artificial dye. This would have been really cute if it was pink.)

I decided not to make a meringue because they only last a day or so before deflating and dripping out those little brown beads. (Remember the rice pudding?) I do like a good meringue, but I also like desserts that last a bit.

However, this pie was incomplete without some sort of white fluff on top. I always thought people just did the meringue for presentation, but lemon pie is a lot better when dressed. So I gave it a dollop of whipped cream.

 

I didn't think a single lemon would be enough for a whole pie, but you'll notice that this is a relatively shallow pie so it all worked out. It was really good. More so than the other pie, this one tasted like fresh lemon. It's easy to make and hard to give away. If you don't want to make a whole pie of it, this would make really good lemon squares if you bake it on a shortbread cookie crust. Or, imagine it in a pavlova or a blitz forte.