Chocolate Bars: or, Making every recipe Mirro sent out

I didn't know I am a completionist.

Chocolate Bars ¾ cup shortening 1 cup sugar ¼ tsp salt 1 egg 2 tablespoons milk ½ teaspoon vanilla 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted 2 cups sifted cake flour Heat oven to 375°. Have ungreased cookie sheets, a thin metal spatula, and a cooling rack ready. Cream the shortening, sugar, and salt. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla. Beat to mix. Then add the chocolate, and beat until whipped and very light. Then sift in the flour. Add enough to make a soft dough- you may not use all of it. The dough should not be crumbly. Put into a cookie press fitted with the bar tip. Pipe long strips of dough across the baking sheet. Then use a knife to cut lines every 2 or 3 inches, depending on how big you want the cookies to be. (Since you're not pressing the dough onto the pan, you can do this on ungreased parchment paper.) Bake 8-10 minutes (mine were done in six). Keep in a tightly sealed container if you want them to stay crisp. They will go soft otherwise. NOTE: If desired, you can substitute six tablespoons of cocoa powder for the chocolate. Increase the shortening by two tablespoons. You will draw a lot more flavor out of the cocoa powder if you melt all of the shortening in the recipe, getting it very hot. Then whisk in the cocoa powder, and allow it to cool until it re-solidifies. Source: Mirro cookie press instruction sheet (undated, but it looks like the mid-1940s)

Today we are trying the only cookie press stencil that I haven't gotten out yet, and also the last recipe on the Mirro cookie press instruction sheet.

Mirro cookie press instruction sheet

 

I melted the shortening and added the cocoa powder so it could "bloom." Honestly, I can't believe it took me so long to learn about blooming cocoa powder. It's such a simple step, but it brings out so much more chocolate flavor than simply stirring the cocoa powder in with everything else. 

I didn't intend to let the chocolate-flavored shortening sit out overnight, but we had a really big dinner and no one wanted cookies afterward. And so, like letting your fresh herbs marinate overnight in the salad dressing, the cocoa spent all night exuding all its goodness into the fat.

The next day, we plunged the beaters into the shortening and prepared to beat it soft. I don't usually cream the shortening by itself before adding the next ingredients, but it usually isn't molded to the bottom of the bowl.

Readers will note that these cookies contain no leavener besides the air that you beat into them. And so, before adding the flour, I turned the mixer to its highest speed and let it run until the batter was beautifully whipped and utterly delicious.

I loved how easy these would theoretically be to squirt out. As I understood it, you don't even need to press these out one at a time. You just extrude long strips of dough on the pan and then break them up into cookies. In theory, I might even fit an entire batch onto a single pan! (Or two pans if I wasn't halving the recipe.)

At first, I tried piping out long cookie strips and then cutting them and spreading them apart. My first attempt at pushing out ribbons of cookie dough were wobbly and sad. I couldn't decide if I didn't like using the cookie press this way, or if I would get better with a little practice.

For the next batch, I tried putting short strips as the dough came out of the pan, which I could then cut in half before baking. That went a little better. They look like a mess on a pan, but at least they're a successful mess.

At this point, I realized that the dough was too crumbly. You might think I would have figured this out when I first tried to extrude the dough, but I thought it was supposed to be like that. I still don't know the correct dough texture for spritz cookies. It doesn't matter that I've now made literally every recipe that came with the cookie press. Maybe I will figure that out eventually.

For another batch, I tried cutting the dough off of the gun as it came out. About half of them looked so bad that I dropped them back in the mixing bowl. The remaining ones still didn't look all that great.

For my last batch, I decided to simply squirt strips that were as long as the pan, and then score them without moving them apart. In theory, I could break them up after baking. I know you're usually supposed to separate your cookies before they enter the oven, but sometimes I like to live dangerously. I should have made these cookies the "wrong" way the first time. They broke apart exactly where I cut them. Even those crackers with pre-scored lines don't separate so easily.

These cookies were really good on the first day. They were incredibly light, crisp without being hard, and with a perfect chocolate flavor that rivals the some really good brownies. But if you plan to make these ahead, you really need to store them airtight. Over the next day or so, they softened so much that they practically reverted to raw dough.

Bangor Brownies: or, Chocolate therapy is timeless

I can't pass up a brownie recipe.

Bangor Brownies ¼ cup shortening 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla ¼ cup chopped nuts ⅛ tsp salt 1 cup sugar 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted ¼ cup milk 1 cup flour 1 tsp baking powder ¼ cup chopped nuts, if desired Heat oven to 350°. Cut a piece of paper to fit the bottom a 9" square pan. Then coat the pan with cooking spray. Press the paper into the bottom of it, eliminating as many bubbles underneath as possible. Spritz the top of the paper with cooking spray. Cream the shortening until softened. Add the sugar and eggs. Beat by hand for one minute, or with a mixer until fluffy. Add remaining ingredients all at once. Beat vigorously by hand for four minutes, or with an electric mixer until thoroughly mixed. Pour into the prepared pan and bake 30-35 minutes, or until the center barely springs back when lightly pressed with your fingertip. When cooled, top with chocolate fudge frosting, or with white icing flavored very generously with vanilla. Note: If desired, you can substitute 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder for the chocolate. Add an additional two tablespoons of shortening to the amount already used in the recipe. To really bring out the chocolate flavor, melt all of the shortening, getting it very hot. Then whisk in the cocoa. Let stand until it re-solidifies, then begin the recipe. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

When I first read this recipe, I thought it looked more like a cake than brownies. Perhaps it took a while for brownies to become the fudgy squares we know and inhale today.

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

As I always do nowadays, I bloomed the cocoa powder. That is just a fancy way of saying I melted the shortening, got it really hot (as opposed to barely warm enough to go runny), stirred in the cocoa, and let it cool. It brings out so much more chocolate flavor than just stirring the powder in-- just like soaking dried herbs in oil overnight.

Bloomed cocoa aside, our well-creamed mixture was very sandy. It looked more like the beginning of a crumb pie crust than the first step of a recipe that begins with "Cream the shortening and add sugar."

 

I had misgivings about how dry this recipe was. Usually, the butter-shortening mixture looks like this before adding an egg, not after. But I figured that if I wanted to make something that comes out like everything I've made before, I wouldn't be using a different recipe.

The directions now say to "add the remaining ingredients and beat four minutes." I didn't know if we were supposed to dump everything in at once, or if we were supposed to alternately add the flour and the liquids (as one does with most cakes). On the one hand, the spice cake we made a while ago tells us to pile everything into the bowl and start stirring and it came out fine, as did Mrs. Wilson's one-egg cake. On the other hand, when we tried this on a normal cake recipe, it overflowed the pan and turned into a goopy mess. As a reminder:

Back to the brownies: I checked the other recipes on the same page to see how detailed their directions are. Did Mrs. Mary Martensen always write out every step, or did she tend to omit the obvious? After all, these were originally printed in the newspaper. Every column-inch was precious. 

Most of the other recipes in this book are pretty detailed, even if they're so terse that a single word can add ten minutes of prepwork. So I think Mrs. Mary Martensen literally meant to throw it all in a bowl and start stirring. After all, the Depression was on. Time is money, and people didn't have a lot of either one.

The resulting batter seemed halfway between a cake and brownies. It also tasted insanely good. As I held up the mixer and let the batter drip off the beaters, the chocolate ribbons made me swoon. I had a really hard time getting this into the oven instead of eating it all.

After leveling off the batter, I used the spoon to make a swirl on top. I didn't know whether the batter would flatten itself in the oven, but either way it would (hopefully) look pretty. Also, I know the cookbook calls these brownies, but this did not feel like brownie batter to me.

We are told to top these with fudge frosting, but I really like brownies with white icing. I think the contrast between the vanilla on top and the chocolate below is exquisite.

I'm not sure where the line is between cake and brownies, but this recipe is squatting right on it. Like any good devil's food cake, it has just enough chocolate flavor to almost have too much. Clearly, anyone making Mrs. Mary Martensen's brownies in 1933 would not have to add underwhelming chocolate to all the other miseries of an economic collapse. I wouldn't tell anyone that these are supposed to be brownies, but if someone called them brownies I wouldn't disagree. I would also definitely make these again.

Lemon Crisps: or, More fun with a cookie press!

For some reason, a couple of lemons mysteriously landed in the grocery cart.

Lemon Crisps 1 cup shortening ½ cup sugar ½ cup brown sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind 2½ cups sifted flour ¼ tsp salt ¼ tsp baking soda 2 tbsp lemon juice Heat oven to 400°. Have ungreased cookie sheets ready. In a large bowl, cream the shortening until very soft. Gradually add sugar and lemon juice, beating well. Add egg and grated lemon rind. Sift the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add to creamed mixture a little at a time. Put dough into a cookie press and form cookies on the ungreased cookie sheets. Bake until golden around the edges, about 10-12 minutes (mine were done in 7). Source: Mirro cookie press instruction sheet (undated, but it looks like the mid-1940s)

Today, we are making another recipe from the Mirro instruction sheet. As I've said (often), they may have made a lousy cookie press, but their recipes are fantastic.

One lemon did not yield enough rind for this recipe. Well, maybe one of those giant lemons would have, but oversized fruits are usually bland. Also, I am suspicious of unnaturally large fruits and vegetables. At any rate, we got half a recipe's worth of rind from one lemon, but we got two batches' worth of juice. So as a bonus, we were able to put the surplus (fresh-squeezed!) lemon juice on pasta salad a few days later. 

We do not skimp on lemons in this house.

After creaming everything together, the mixture was a lot paler than I expected. I wondered if I had somehow accidentally undermeasured the brown sugar. But then again, the recipes from this instruction sheet start out unnaturally white. So perhaps it was reverting to its true form.

And so, it was time to get the dough into our press! I decided to try out the five-pointed star stencil. They looked a lot more raggedy than the picture on the box. Since I didn't feel like reloading the dough and trying again, I left them on the pan to see how they baked. 

A lot of pressed-out cookie recipes hold onto their shape pretty well, but these spread out a bit. So in choosing what stencil shapes to use, pick one that will still look cute if it gets a little rounded out. I've said this before, but the stencil shaped like a big asterisk always comes out cute, even when your other cookies look like blobs. 

 

Once again, the Mirro people gave us an excellent cookie recipe. It's a real shame I can't make it using their own press, but I am very glad I nabbed the instruction sheet from some random Ebay seller's page. It makes me feel kinda bad for the people who resolutely made the plain spritz cookies every year for Christmas and never tried any of the other recipes that were right there on the same page.

The small hint of brown sugar gave extra depth to the lemon flavoring without overpowering it. And adding all of that lemon rind was definitely worth it. If you make these, definitely buy two lemons to grate into it. And just like the recipe title implies, they were very crisp. As with every other recipe I've made from the Mirro sheet, I would make these again.

Butterscotch Pie: or, Putting the "sweet" in sweets

You can learn about people from their recipes, including how much they spent on sugar.

Butterscotch Pie 1½ cups light brown sugar (or ¾ cup each white and dark brown sugar) 1½ cups water 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons cornstarch 2 tablespoons white sugar 2 egg yolks (save the whites for the meringue) ⅛ tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla 1 baked pie shell*        Meringue: 2 egg whites ¼ cup sugar ¼ tsp cream of tartar In a small saucepan, bring the brown sugar and water to a boil, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, sift the flour, cornstarch, and white sugar into a medium saucepan. Have the egg yolks ready in a medium or large heatproof mixing bowl. When the sugar boils, pour it slowly over the sifted ingredients, whisking hard as you go. Beat for another minute or so to eliminate any lumps. Then cook over medium heat until it thickens, stirring constantly. When the sugar mixture is thick, start whisking the egg yolks very hard. Continue whisking while you slowly pour in about one-third to half of the pie filling. Pour it back into the saucepan and cook 1 minute longer, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in the butter. When the butter is completely melted and mixed in, add the vanilla. Allow to cool completely. When ready to bake, heat oven to 325°. Pour the pie filling into the crust and bake until it jiggles but does not slosh, about 40-50 minutes. Then remove from the oven and set aside while making the meringue. Meringue: Beat the egg whites until frothy. Then add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff. (Ideally, the egg whites will form peaks almost but don't quite hold a stiff point.) Then sprinkle in the sugar a little at a time. Each time you add a little sugar, keep beating until it dissolves before adding a little more. Spread this onto the pie (no need to let the pie cool) and return it to the oven. Bake until it is browned, about 10 minutes. *If you are making your own pie shell, bake it until it is crisp, but don't let it darken. Source: Handwritten manuscript (1930s or 1940s)

Today, we are once again cracking open my great-grandmother's binder, which has a lot of desserts in it. None of them are of the "mildly sweet" type. As we have learned, these people REALLY liked sugar. Also, I shared this recipe with a friend who said "MORE butterscotch???"

On a side note, I love how her handwriting on this page starts out prim and perfect, and gets more scrawly as she realizes she's running out of space.

Also, I love how she apparently cut a pie recipe out of an actual book (and not just some pamphlet) and discarded the rest of it.

Even though I never met my great-grandmother, she intimidates me with her ruler-straight margins. She wrote this recipe is as rectangular as a printed newspaper column. I showed the page to a friend of mine, and he flinched in terror. It's nice to know that my forebears can scare people from beyond the grave.

I printed the recipe out so I didn't need to worry about getting splats on fragile ancient irreplaceable paper. And so, with her original directions propped up next to the stove, it  was time pour out a lot of sugar and make a pie. 

I've made a few custard pies like this that never seem to set. But this recipe has eggs, flour, and cornstarch in it. If it stays gloppy, it's because the universe itself took my pie away from me.

I didn't see the point of sifting our dry ingredients, but  my grandmother's cursive intimidated me into it. I dared not disobey someone whose handwriting can make people flinch at seven paces. Besides, I have a dishwasher at hand for all the little bowls that were already piling up.

I know it looks like I just dropped a mound of powder onto the counter, but it's in a clear glass bowl.

As we set the first saucepan onto the stove, it looked like we were making the icing for Louise Bennett Weaver's spice cake.

While we waited for the sugar to boil, I thought about how I would finish the recipe. I had originally planned to pour the boiling syrup into the bowl where the "white ingredients" waited. Then, after returning everything to the pot, I would put our egg yolks into the same bowl to wait for tempering. Then I realized I could just put the "white ingredients" in a second saucepan and transfer everything over. (If you're confused, so was I until I reread the original recipe like five times.)

In order to prevent hardened flour curds, I furiously whisked everything while I poured in the syrup. The resulting suds on top made it impossible for me to see if I had any escapee flour lumps.

I should have felt bad about thrashing a whisk in a nonstick pot, but this one is flimsy and cheap. It already has a few spots where the teflon has scratched away, revealing not metal but rust. The sooner this pot is truly ruined, the sooner I can repurpose it as a novelty planter.

Moving on with the recipe, we are directed to "add slightly beaten egg. Cook one minute longer." I'm assuming she didn't write about tempering the egg yolks because this was a personal notebook and not a copy meant for other people. Or perhaps tempering eggs was just as obvious then as discarding eggshells is now. 

 

After giving the filling precisely one more minute on the stove, it was amazingly creamy and ready to receive a lot of butter. When it came to the vanilla, I decided to follow my heart (and the advice of a lot of people who commented about the velvet cookies): use a lot more than one teaspoon. I then tasted the filling and stopped worrying about whether the pie would set. Even if it failed in the oven, it would be amazing on pancakes. It's nice to know that even if a recipe fails, it won't go to waste.

It was time to let the it cool off completely. I took the opportunity to take a lovely long walk in a futile attempt to counteract all the pie I would be eating. It was a lovely evening. 

I had expected the pie filling to be firm when I got back to the house, but it was just as sloshy as when I took it off the stove. As I let the spoon sink into the goop, I worried that I had somehow already ruined the pie. Then I reminded myself that this adventure would either end in butterscotch pie or butterscotch pancakes, but either way the pie filling wasn't going down the drain. 

I had thought I would smear the meringue on top and then brown it. But when I read the directions, it says to "bake in cooked pie shell" and THEN put the meringue on top. This is why it's nice to finally have a working printer in the house! It prevents skipping over important steps when copying directions.

In the absence of any cooking time or doneness test, I decided to let the pie bake until it didn't slosh anymore. Given all the flour and cornstarch in this pie, you'd think it would have turned into butterscotch clay in like two minutes. However, it spent a long time in the oven, during which time the crust slowly burned and the pie stayed as gloppy as ever. The amazing smells took over the kitchen like they were teasing me for my impending failure. Eventually, the pie stopped wobbling and also developed a sort of crispy-looking top layer.

As I pulled the pie out of the oven, I deeply regretted making it with others in the house. I couldn't secretly fling it into the trash it was as bad as I suspected. After baking it for so long, I had no idea if I had little bitty curds of scrambled egg floating in it, if it was burnt from top to bottom, or if it was otherwise bad.

Since the pie was finally baked, it was time to put something white and fluffy on top. I have no idea what the baking powder is doing in the meringue, but she wrote it down and I can't argue without a ouija board. Does baking powder make a difference in meringues? Or does it just fizzle away with nothing to raise?

I also don't know why we're supposed to fold in the sugar. Usually you gradually add it while you're still beating. Does that method only work with electric mixers (or at least a handcranked eggbeater)? But again, that's what she wrote down, so there must be a purpose. I folded in the sugar as carefully as possible, but it took the stiffness out of the meringue. It later occurred to me that I should have used powdered sugar, but by then I was already wiping the countertops.

The meringue puffed up really nicely in the oven. I didn't know if it would deflate as it cooled, but it looked really cute. Let the record show that at least for a brief moment, it was really puffy.

The next day, the meringue was flatter than when I spooned it onto the pie, and showed every grain of sugar that I had folded into it.

I almost couldn't believe it when I cut into this pie, but it was an actual pie and not a gloopy mess. You could lift out slices and everything.

Sure, it was a little bit soft, but it didn't flop, drip, or ooze. Besides, did I really want yet another sharp-cornered pie? Everything in life is a balance-- including pies. We don't want them to drip everywhere, but sometimes our pies can be a little too well-set. Lest we forget:

Getting back to today's recipe: this pie was really good, but it is also really sweet. I mean, it's basically a pie crust full of syrup. I'd like to pretend that this means that just one sliver of pie will do, but it has an addictively good taste and a perfect butterscotch flavor. We didn't have a chance to find out what kind of shelf life it has. If I were to remake this (and I probably will), I would probably make little mini-pies instead of one big one. This seems like it'd be better that way.

 

Second-Stab Saturday: Bangin' Bangor Gingerbread

This may the first brownie recipe that is better without chocolate.

Bangor Gingerbread 1 cup flour 1 tsp baking powder Pinch of salt Spices (adjust amounts to taste, and to what's in your kitchen): 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp nutmeg 1 tsp cardamom ½ tsp cloves 1 tbsp ginger ¼ cup melted shortening 1 cup molasses 1 egg 1 cup nuts, if desired Heat oven to 325°. Spray a 9" round or 8" square pan. Line the bottom of it with paper cut to fit, firmly pressing it into place. Then spray the top of the paper. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and spices. Set aside. Mix together the shortening and molasses. Then add the egg and beat well. Beat well. Then stir in the flour. Add nuts last. Pour into the pan and bake about 15-20 minutes, or until firmly set. Turn out of the pan as soon as you take it out of the oven, and cut with a sharp knife. These are better after letting them sit (tightly wrapped) for a day. The spices become stronger. adapted from The Metropolitan Cook Book, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, via Mid-Century Menu

When last we saw the molasses-filled Bangor Brownies, we had made the surprising discovery that chocolate and molasses do not mix. Given how well brown sugar harmonizes with chocolate, we had thought that molasses and chocolate would be like sticky brown poetry. Then we tasted the results.

As we discreetly sent the chocolate Bangors to the municipal hereafter, we speculated that this recipe was only a few spices from making really good gingerbread. And by "a few spices" I mean a lot of them. If you sniffed inside the bowl, it smelled like pumpkin spice season was back.

Just like the first time, the batter got unnervingly bubbly in the oven, but turned out all right in the end.

It is a fundamental truth that brown-colored foods rarely look pretty without a lot of photographic effort. But even by brown food standards, today's recipe looked ugly. The molasses turned it an unfortunately perfect shade of burnt. I promise, it's not even slightly scorched.

As is often the way with unphotogenic cakes, it looked better after cutting.

This was exactly as delicious as I hoped it would be. 

I called it gingerbread, but this recipe wants to be brownies. It has that perfect brownie texture, even though the recipe really doesn't welcome chocolate into the batter. Even though I didn't use the word "brownie," my grandmother called me a few days after I gave her some and said "Those molasses brownies were delicious!" And when people say they like something, you don't start a name dispute. 

I think this is the third time that we've improved a recipe by removing the main ingredient. Sometimes you have to follow a recipe even when it takes you away from its own written directions.

Raisin Butterscotch Pudding: or, That got into the oven quick

Two words: "Luscious raisins."

Raisin Butterscotch Pudding 1 cup sifted flour 2 tsp baking powder ½ tsp salt ¾ cup white sugar ⅔ cup raisins (light or dark) ½ tsp grated lemon rind ½ cup milk 1 tbsp melted butter ¾ cup brown sugar 1 tbsp lemon juice 1⅓ cups hot water Heat oven to 350°. Grease a deep 8" square or 9" round pan. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and white sugar. Mix in the raisins, making sure they're well-coated with the powder. Then stir in half of the lemon rind, milk, and melted butter. Blend well. Spread in the pan. Sprinkle the brown sugar over it. Mix the lemon juice, remaining lemon rind, and hot water. Carefully pour over the top. Bake 40-45 minutes. Serve warm. Note: Even if you usually line your cake pans with paper, don't do it with this one. The paper will float up into the sauce as it bakes. Source: Undated newspaper clipping (probably 1930s or early 1940s), Chicago area

By happy accident, our raisin pudding is egg-free. Don't you love when recipes of yore accidentally turn topical again? 

Let us pause and appreciate how amazing it is that you can turn a yellow-brown piece of ancient newspaper into something this easy to read.

This newspaper clipping comes from my great-grandmother's binder, which has been a fascinating insight into people I never met. They always look grimly tired in pictures, which made me expect a lot of recipes like "boil the spinach for forty-five minutes" or pot roasts seasoned with one-eighth teaspoon of pepper. But apparently they really liked desserts.

Getting to today's recipe, the newspaper proudly printed in large type that it is "just bursting with luscious raisins." Given how polarizing raisins are, the writers may have meant for that sentence to entice half the readers and warn off the rest. 

This recipe is undated, but everything in the book seems to be from the 1930s and 40s. Many of the desserts in the binder (and again, there are a lot of desserts) mention stretching your wartime sugar rations, which places them somewhere in the early to mid 1940s. Since this recipe uses a dizzying amount of sugar, it almost certainly came out before the food restrictions set in. 

Setting aside any speculation about this recipe's year, I'm going to guess that the newspaper printed it in the wintertime because 1) you bake it for 45 minutes and most houses didn't have air conditioning yet, and 2) it looks really rich. 

I went slightly off-book and sanded the lemon rind and sugar together between my fingers. This always helps bring out the lemon flavor. This recipe's massive mound of sugar wouldn't have fit into the flour sifter anyway, so this minor deviation both improved the taste and made this recipe less prone to spill onto the countertop.

I did not think this recipe would be so quick. Aside from a brief detour to get the rind and juice out of a lemon, it's as simple as a batch of muffins. First you mix the dry ingredients, then you mix the wet ingredients, and then you stir them all together. I should note that even though the directions don't mention this, I stirred in the raisins into the dry flour to ensure that they didn't hold together in stubborn clumps. 

Out of curiosity, I timed myself the second time I made this, starting after I had all the ingredients on the counter but before I did anything else. I didn't want to include the time spent digging through the shelves and muttering "Now where did the baking powder go?" 

The lemon is in there somewhere.

To keep things realistic, I didn't rush my way through the recipe. And because I didn't want to fudge my results, I didn't do any prep-- not even measuring the flour. I started the clock at the moment I start grating the rind off the lemon, and ended when I shut the oven on dessert. We had this baking in a smidge less than fifteen minutes. That includes digging out a correct-sized pan and also finding where the scissors went so I could open another sugar package. (Again, this recipe uses a lot of sugar.)

Look at this batter, just bursting with luscious raisins!

Also, do not use a paper pan liner in this recipe. See the note in the recipe box.

I was afraid the batter would be difficult to coax to the edges of the pan. But even though it we had to spread it a bit thin, it slid into place easily.

And now, it's time to make this pudding's magic sauce! You see, this is one of those fun recipes that completely rearranges itself as it cooks. What was on top will be on the bottom, what was beneath will be above, and we don't even have to get out second bowl. We only need to put a lot of brown sugar on top, and then pour enough hot water to almost dissolve it. The recipe doesn't say how hot the water should be, so I went with "hot enough to make you say 'ouch,' but not enough to scald your finger."

In case you didn't notice, this recipe puts equal amounts of sugar in the cake and on top of it.

In case you couldn't tell, this is very sloshy before baking. If you don't have a deep pan, the journey from countertop to oven is perilous. 

 

I had suspected that I would end up with a soggy cake, but I could see the water starting to hide under the batter after just a few minutes. I then wondered if the water would take the brown sugar to the bottom of the pan with it, or if the cake would filter it out and leave a crackly sweet crust on top.

When the timer went off, we had a triumphant dome of cake that didn't look soggy at all. You could also see what the newspaper tells us is a "delicious rich sauce of brown sugar" bubbling up from below.

In case I had any doubts about the self-forming sauce, the cake slid back and forth in the pan with every twitch of my wrists-- as if it was floating on something. 

The cake deflated and flattened back to normal within 5 minutes of de-ovening. But when I put a spatula in there, I found that it had leavened a bit. So, I could put aside my misgivings about a hardened layer of dough-paste. This recipe produced an actual cake, just like the headnote promised.

I should note that when I made this again, I did not mix the raisins with the dry ingredients. As the sauce burrowed under the cake, it took the raisins with it. The pudding still tasted as good as ever, but the free-floating raisins looked like bugs. 

The cake should be "just bursting with luscious raisins," not the sauce! 

Even if you mix the raisins with the dry ingredients, they make make their way under the cake anyway. But at least they mostly cling to the underside of the cake instead of turning into free-floating roaches. I could have tinkered with the recipe to try and make the raisins stay in the cake batter while the sauce filtered through to the other side, but I decided to just let the this pudding be what it is. After all, who wants to make a frustrating ordeal out of an easy dessert?

If we take a close look at the leftovers, you can see how the raisins aren't so much in the cake as they are attached to its underside. If you want to borrow the newspaper's phrasing, you might say that the raisins just burst out of the cake.

I love making pre-social-media recipes.

Setting aside our leftovers and how bad they look, the clipping says "You'll get an extra measure of praise from your family." I didn't record everyone's comments, but I'll let the pan speak for itself.

If you're not watching your sugar, this is really good! It reminds me of the apple-raisin man bait. It's so rich, you'd never guess it has no eggs and nearly no butter. Also, the raisins absorbed a lot of brown sugar and lemon as the sauce migrated through the cake. They became, dare I say it, luscious. Even if you hate raisins, this tastes incomplete without syrup-soaked dried fruit in it. So, pick something else to stir in. 

I'm not going to say that every recipe in my great-grandmother's binder is amazing, but it's looking really good so far.