Hot Mustard Fruit: Better than I thought!

As the sun rises on Thanksgiving Day, squirting mustard onto fruit seems like a perfect metaphor for the upcoming four years.

Hot Mustard Fruit ¼ cup butter, melted ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar 2 tbsp prepared mustard* 1 16-oz can sliced peaches, drained 1 13½-oz can pineapple chunks, drained 2 large bananas, cut into chunks Heat oven to 325°. Grease a 6-cup casserole. (A loaf pan will do in a pinch.) Mix together butter, sugar, and mustard in a large bowl. Take out ¼ cup of this and set aside. Stir the fruit into remaining mixture. Place into the casserole. Spoon reserved topping over it. Bake 40 minutes. Serve warm. *ie, the stuff you squirt onto sandwiches (as opposed to dry mustard powder). Mrs. J. R. Burrier; Nicholasville, Kentucky; Favorite Recipes of America: Desserts; 1968

Favorite Recipes of America: Desserts, 1967

This recipe has been staring at me for a long time. Even when I haven't opened the cookbook in ages, I know that the hot mustard fruit lurks within. But I was always afraid to go for it. I have asked several friends to go on the hot mustard journey with me (who wants to do such things alone?), but everyone always muttered awkward excuses or mysteriously forgot. 

Eventually, I shared the hot mustard fruit with a recipe swap group I'm in and asked if anyone wanted to have a virtual hot mustard fruit party. By "virtual party" I meant that whoever had the courage could make it and share a few pictures and (probably well-censored) opinions. Many people said it sounded fun. But for whatever reason, no one has shared their hot mustard as of this writing.

Getting to the recipe, Mrs. J. R. Burrier wastes no time getting to our featured ingredient. And she really puts the "mustard" into "hot mustard fruit." Look at the size of that mustard blob! It looks like I let an unsupervised five-year-old use a squeeze bottle.

Our resulting mixture tasted like the beginnings of some really good barbecue sauce. I wasn't prepared to think this was any good.

Those lumps are there because I decided to throw in all of the rock-hard clumps in the brown sugar and hope they dissolved.

I have to give Mrs. Burrier credit. This recipe comes together really fast. After melting our butter and squirting mustard on it, we merely need to open some cans and cut up a banana. I was ready to stir and bake until I saw that I had purchased something more revolting than mustard-loaded fruit.

It turns out that canned peaches and canned oranges have insidiously similar labels. It's hard to tell one picture of orange semicircular wedges from another when you're already telling yourself this could be your last chance to experience consequence-free folly before grocery prices have another pandemic. 

You may think I would simply use the oranges instead of peaches. But I truly detest canned oranges. At best, they are those weird sticky things that I pluck out of the fried rice when I make the mistake of paying for Panda Express. 

I didn't even want to repurpose them. Yes, I could come up with some lovely recipes that would make the canned orange segments semi-edible. But anything I made to salvage the canned oranges would be better if I omitted them. And so, I decided to reluctantly accept that my stupidity cost me $1.49 and thank the oranges for teaching me to carefully scrutinize canned fruit. (I apologize to anyone who likes canned oranges. Before you get too offended that I hate them, keep in mind that I also think cranberry sauce is better with chopped celery in it.)

And so, I went back to the grocery store for canned peaches. As much as I thought this recipe was nuts, I wanted to give it a fair chance by using the ingredients Mrs. Burrier wrote down. In the canned food aisle, I carefully read the labels and made sure I got the correct fruit in the correct-sized can. Instead of saying "How are you," the clerk asked "Are you sure this is all you forgot?" I said yes, I was quite sure. Yes, I had already planned and bought for all of this year's Thanksgiving baking. Yes, I was certain I wasn't forgetting anything else. Yes, I had double-checked. Based on the cashier's concerned face and determined questioning, a lot of people had boomeranged in and out of the store in a horrible panic.

Back at the house, I had already dumped the pineapple into the mustard mixture before realizing I had purchased canned oranges. Before going out for peaches, I put the mustard masterpiece-in-progress in the refrigerator. I know that both sugar and mustard are famously antimicrobial, but a little bit of food refrigeration never hurt anyone. When I returned, the pineapple chunks had taken on an unnerving resemblance to cut-up chicken soaking in a particularly pungent marinade.

If we pretend I didn't need to go to the grocery store twice, this recipe is really quick to make. Only a few minutes after melting the butter, we were finished mixing it together.

I think the banana is the only healthy thing in the recipe.

Now, Mrs. Burrier says to use a 1-quart casserole pan. Since I cut the recipe in half, I got out the smallest baking dish in the cabinets. Aside from today's recipe, I only use it when slipping a single-serving dinner into the oven next to something larger. 

Purely out of curiosity, I flipped the dish over to see if they stamped its size underneath. They did, and this is a one-quart casserole just like Mrs. Burrier wanted. I only say this because I cut the recipe in half. Had I used Mrs. Burrier's original amounts, we would be putting twice this much mustard fruit into a casserole of exactly this size. I think that would boil over, don't you?

And so, we only needed to spoon our reserved topping over the rest of the fruit and bake. Until tonight, drizzling caramel has always made things look even better than before. But today, it made the fruit look like it followed me under the car the last time I changed the oil.

40 minutes later, our hot mustard fruit was ready to serve. If you ignored your nose, it actually looked pretty good. I would have put some sort of crumble topping on it, but Mrs. Burrier didn't think it was necessary. Maybe she didn't want to distract anyone from the delicious flavor of mustard.

For those who can't get enough mustard in their fruit, there were a lot of pan juices ready to spoon over your portion. I think a bowl would be better than a plate for serving this. But I didn't realize that until it was too late.

This was a lot better than I expected. I think the fruit definitely benefited from the protracted baking time. It gave the vinegar in the mustard plenty of time to boil away. It's like dipping fruit in honey-mustard sauce, only a lot richer. With great surprise, I'm going to say this is actually pretty good. The mustard adds a bit of complexity that makes this just a bit better than an assemblage of canned fruit would normally be. Heck, if you have the ingredients for this, why not slap it together really quick and jam it next to the Thanksgiving turkey? 

In closing, it's definitely weird, but it's not bad.

Second-Stab Saturday: New England Cinnamon Drops (they are now raisin-free!)

Today, we are revisiting a recipe that had so much potential but came out so bland.

New England Cinnamon Drops 1 cup sugar ¼ cup shortening ¼ cup butter 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder 1 egg 1½ tsp vanilla ½ tsp almond extract 1 cup thick sour milk, or buttermilk (I used sour cream) 3 cups flour Cinnamon-sugar for sprinkling Heat oven to 375°. Grease a cookie sheet. Cream the sugar, butter, shortening, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add the egg and extracts. When thoroughly mixed, add the sour cream and beat well. Then mix in the flour. Drop by the teaspoon onto baking sheets. Then sprinkle the cookies with cinnamon sugar. If desired, pat them into a neater shape after sprinkling (the cinnamon-sugar will keep them from sticking to your fingertips). Bake 10-12 minutes, or until golden on the bottom. Bertha Lyman Shellington, 3 West Park Avenue, Haddonfield, NJ; Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange, June 21 1935, page 12

Some readers may recall when we made the New England Raisin Drops. At the time, we asked "Would it have killed Bertha Lyman Shellington to add some damn vanilla?" Well today, we are flavoring the cookies with the fermented seed pods of a vining orchid that only grows in the beautiful tropics! That is, we are adding some damn vanilla. And also a little almond extract because I felt like it.

You can see the the vanilla right where it should be: in the mixing bowl instead of on the shelf.

Our cookie dough was a lot floppier than last time. Our previous New England Raisin Drops were firm enough to shape with the hands. But today's dough was too sticky for anything but spoon-dropping. Well, they are called New England Raisin drops, so I can't be mad when they acted like their name. Anyway, Bertha Lyman Shellington spoon-dropped her cookies, and she won the $2 basket of groceries.

I didn't know if today's softer dough would spread and flatten in the oven, or if the cookies would retain their shape like the last ones did. After sprinkling on the cinnamon sugar, I patted away the pointier protrusions just in case. I'm glad I did, because these cookies spread a little but not much. Also, they puffed up a lot. I could easily have made them smaller.

And of course, I will grab any excuse to play with the cookie press. For this recipe, I resisted the temptation to use every stencil in the box. I am already learning that the star is the most reliable stencil in the box. It's not the fanciest one, but the other shapes can bake into sad-looking blobs if your cookies are in a bad mood.

Our cinnamon stars looked ever-so-cute. However, I don't know whether I recommend using a cookie press for this recipe or not.

If you own a cookie press and want to try these for yourself, you should know that they did not come off the ungreased pan without a fight.

It's been a surprisingly long time since I had to scour a baking sheet.

Adding flavorings to the dough did wonders for the cookies. When I let everyone try these, one person said "These are dangerous!" and left the kitchen with two in each hand.

The cookies vanished rapidly when I wasn't looking. (Of course, I contributed to their disappearance too.) The spoon-dropped ones are what muffin tops wish they could be. They're almost like little snickerdoodle cakes. That generous splash of vanilla did wonders for them. And so did de-raisining the recipe.

Brown Sugar Spritz Cookies: or, Buying a press to go with the instructions

I didn't want to wait for our cookie press to break before getting a better one.

Brown Sugar Spritz Cookies ½ cup shortening 1 cup light brown sugar ¼ tsp salt 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla 2¼ tsp sifted flour Heat oven to 400°. Have ungreased baking sheets, a thin metal spatula, and a cooling rack ready. Beat the shortening until soft and creamy. Add sugar and salt, beat until light. Then add the egg and vanilla, beat until well-whipped. Mix all but about two or three tablespoons of flour. If dough is too sticky, add the remaining flour. You can also add a little more if necessary. Put into cookie press. Then press the cookies onto the ungreased baking sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes (mine were done in about six), or until golden at the edges. Immediately after removing from the oven, use the spatula to transfer the hot cookies to the cooling rack. These cookies are better the day after baking. Source: Mirro cookie press instructions

Source: Mirro cookie press instructions

As Thanksgiving approaches, the baking aisle and other parts of the store are getting worryingly empty. In earlier, happier times, I would have figured it was the natural result of the holiday baking surge. But this year, I've been looking at the bare shelves and asking "Is this just the holidays, or are people quietly stockpiling before the next president launches a trade war?" 

And so, because sometimes new toys are entertaining in times of distress, I bought a Mirro press to go with my Mirro instructions. Now I only need someone to get me a Dormeyer stand mixer to go with the Dormeyer recipe book. When I turned the press' handle, it glided on its screw-threads. The whole thing felt like quality in my hands. Also, it came with little stencils for doggies and butterflies! I couldn't wait to make dog-shaped cookies.

The doggie is right under the press handle.

I only made these cookies so I could try out my exciting new toy, but I had high hopes for the recipe. I imagined they would be like a cuter-looking version of the slice-and-bake blondies from Mrs. George Thurn.

And so, we begin with brown sugar and shortening. Every recipe on this handout begins with shortening. Perhaps they were leery of overly moist butter in those days, too.

After halving so many recipes, I have gotten unexpectedly good at splitting eggs. These days, it's a trivial task. I used to put the other egg half into a frying pan for a quick mid-recipe snack, but these days I freeze it for when I'm making another half-recipe later. That's why our egg looked like this:

I forgot to defrost the egg, but figured that letting the mixer kick it around the room-temperature batter would melt it fast enough-- like when you stir butter into hot spaghetti. Sure enough, the egg was thawed and perfectly mixed after about a minute.

After our dough was floured and ready, it was time to bring in our beautiful, high-quality cookie press. We giddily learned that this new(ly acquired) press can hold a lot more dough than the first one. It nearly held all the dough at once.

Unfortunately, our cookies did not want to stick to the pan. I don't know whether to blame the recipe, the cookie press, or good old-fashioned operator error. But I had to pry about half of our cookies off of the press without bending them out of shape. Some shapes seemed to work better than others. Almost all of the butterflies and about two thirds of the stars stayed on the pan when I lifted the press off. But most of the cookies came out like this:

I also tried the tiny star, but the cookies all like ragged plops (though at least they all stuck to the pan). Even though I don't care about "presentationality," I reloaded them into the squirter. I think this tiny star stencil must have a specific use that I don't know about, because it makes ugly cookies.

I hate to say it, but I like the cheaper cookie squirter more than this one. If you ignore how the cheaper press feels like its little ratcheter could snap at any minute, it is a lot easier to use. In fact, if the cheap one proves durable, I may let the older one find a new home.

But when the vintage press worked, it worked really well. It made the cutest Christmas trees (when they actually stayed on the pan). Unfortunately, the doggie cookies I was so excited about turned into blobs. The butterflies were not much better. Someone said the dogs might actually be donkeys since those are a big part of Christmas iconography. But I don't think it matters. They look like misshapen capital H's.

The swirly starburst one is my favorite.

When the cookies were freshly baked, they were hard. Like, they put your teeth were peril. The next day, they had softened to an astonishingly perfect texture. I didn't even put them in a container. I just left them out on a plate. The day-long ripening period makes these cookies perfect when you have everyone coming over for the holidays. You can finish all the baking and cleanup the day before, and forget about them while you're frantically preparing on the morning of "the big day."

After softening overnight, these cookies were really good. They tasted exactly like I hoped they would. But while the molasses cookies had been far better than I hoped, today's cookies were merely exactly as good as I hoped. Not every recipe from an instruction manual can be a magically blissful. If I hadn't picked the molasses recipe first, this one would not have seemed like a lesser experience.

Chocolate Spritz Cookies: or, Not the best recipe in the Bible

Today, for the first time, we are getting spritz cookies from somewhere besides cookie press manuals!

Chocolate Spritz Cookies 3 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted 1 cup (½ pound) butter ¼ tsp salt ½ tsp vanilla 3 egg yolks 2½ cups sifted flour Heat oven to 400°. Have ungreased cookie sheets, a thin metal spatula, and cooling racks ready. Cream the butter, salt, vanilla, and sugar. Add the egg yolks and beat well. Then add the chocolate and beat very well. When the mixture is light and airy, gradually add the flour, gently beating only to mix. Put the dough into a cookie press and press it onto the ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until darkened at the edges. Immediately upon removing them from the oven, use the metal spatula to get them off the pan and onto the rack. If you don't have a cookie press, you can shape the dough any way you like. I particularly like rolling it into balls, rolling these in sugar, placing them on the pan and pressing my index finger across them. Source: Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

Yes, instead of getting recipes from manufacturer instruction sheets, we are consulting our dearly beloved copy of Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts. Some readers may recall that I asked a friend of mine to make a duct tape jacket for it that says THE HOLY BIBLE. 

Every time I follow the instructions in this text, I always find happiness. Today's joyous experience begins with creamed butter and sugar with melted chocolate on top.

I had a few misgivings as we mixed the first round of ingredients together. The batter was more "chocolate-tinted" than chocolate.

The batter tasted a lot milder than I hoped. But to Maida Heatter's credit, the dough handled really easily. It wasn't too gloppy, nor was it too stiff.

In preparation for when my cheap cookie press finally snaps, I decided to try some other ways of getting pretty designs onto the cookies. I took this random bowl with designs molded into the glass, and pressed it on top of dough balls. I first rolled the dough in sugar so the bowl wouldn't stick.

The resulting cookies had a cute design stamped on top, but it didn't look as nice as I hoped. Up close, they looked pretty. Otherwise, the cookies just had a random bump in the middle.

These cookies were super easy to press out. In fact, I didn't need to remove a single misshapen dud from the pan. This is a relatively new experience for me, but I wasn't surprised. Maida Heatter's recipes always work. I only hand-shaped some of the cookies are hand-shaped so I could see what non-cookie-press options work well with this particular recipe. I hate when lack of specific gadgets gets in the way of chocolate.

These cookies taste a lot more... polite than I expected. They're very good with tea, but they're not as rich as I hoped. I think they'd be a nice light finish after a really heavy dinner. But these cookies are not my favorite recipe from The Holy Bible. They're not bad, but I doubt I will put a lot of splatters onto this page. 

Honey Nutmeg Pizzelles

It's always a good time to make pizzelles! (Well, almost.)

Honey-Nutmeg Pizzelles 3 eggs 1½ cups flour* ½ cup sugar ½ cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled ¼ cup honey 1 tsp. baking powder dash dried ground nutmeg Combine eggs, sugar, butter and honey together. Whisk well. Sift dry ingredients together and mix into the wet mixture. Mixture should be thick enough to drop from a spoon. Add more flour if it isn't. Bake on pizzelle iron. *I ended up using two cups of flour. Source: Fante's Kitchen via the Wayback Machine

Today, we are returning to Fante's pizzelle page. They seem to have taken it down after a website renovation, but fortunately the Internet Archive has preserved all their recipes and helpful advice. Above this one, they wrote "The aroma from these cookies as they bake will have your mouth watering!" I've never made honey-nutmeg flavored anything before, and was really excited.

I was a little suspicious that this recipe didn't demand an electric mixer. Every other pizzelle recipe I have made has started with whipping the eggs until they turn into a bowl of foam. Of course, I've only made five recipes. And the people who run a kitchen supply store in the Italian Market of Philadelphia know a lot more about pizzelles than I do.

This one looks as simple as making muffins: mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, then stir it all together. The recipe specifies that the eggs must be beaten before adding them. I usually skip that step (mixing everything seems to beat the eggs well enough). But today, I followed Fante's directions and beat the egg first. We do not contradict the people who taught us how to use the pizzelle iron in the first place.

The batter looked slightly gelatinous in a way that I haven't seen in my previous pizzelles, but five recipes are hardly a vast breadth of experience to draw from.

And so, only four minutes after measuring everything, we were ready to heat up the iron! This is the first time I've wished I had turned on the stove before mixing the batter. With all our other recipes, I would have been wasting heat while whipping eggs.

As an amusing side note, some readers may remember when conservative pundits had a short flareup of squawking over gas stoves. At the time, I was talking about it to a part-Italian friend of mine who is a climatologist. I said that it seemed like no one who was turning gas stoves into a crusade actually did any cooking at home. He paused awkwardly, and then said "I cook for myself all the time, and I don't like gas stoves." Then he started to pick up speed. "As a scientist, I think that---"

"But how would I make pizzelles?" I cut him off.

Over the phone, I could hear the scientist and the Italian fighting inside his head. Eventually, he managed to say "Uh, that's a good point."

Back to the recipe, today's pizzelles turned a lovely golden brown, and they did so a lot faster than all our previous ones. I think it's the honey, which apparently caramelizes a lot faster than sugar does. 

The fast browning was really nice when impatience struck, but it also meant we didn't have much time between perfectly cooked and completely burnt. We also made a lot of pizzelles that were perfectly golden on one side and very pale on the other. But when they came out right, they looked so, so pretty.

That really dark one in the back cooked only 5 seconds longer than the other ones.

As delicious as these are, they didn't really taste like honey. I shouldn't be surprised-- they only contain a quarter cup of the stuff. But even if the title ingredients were barely detectable, these were so good. Since the honey made them turn brown faster, the pizzelles could reach that perfect color without all the spices cooking out.

 

I would definitely recommend this recipe. They have that exquisite taste that tells you they're definitely homemade. If you want to pretend you got a pizzelle recipe from your cousin's coworker's former college roommate from Italy, this one will make people believe you. Of course, we at A Book of Cookrye make no promises of whether that would work on any actual Italians.

Chocolate Wafers: or, It's a good day

Sometimes I revisit a recipe and think "Whyever did I stop making these?"

Chocolate Wafers     Oven temperature: 400° ¼ cup (½ stick) butter ½ cup sugar ¾ tsp baking powder ¼ tsp baking soda Pinch of salt† 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted* 1 tsp vanilla 1½ tsp light cream or milk 1 large egg 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted flour Cream the butter, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the melted chocolate, and mix well. Then add the vanilla, cream or milk, and the egg. Beat well. Add the flour and beat only until it is mixed. Pat the dough onto the edges of the bowl so cold air can circulate through it better, then refrigerate for about 30 minutes, or until it is firm enough to work with, but not hard enough to crack. When ready to bake, heat oven to 400°. Have baking sheets lined with parchment paper or greased foil. Place the dough onto a well-floured surface, and sprinkle more flour on top. Roll the dough out about ⅛ thin (it will handle better than you think). Cut it out with the cookie cutter(s) of your choice, and place them about a half-inch apart on the pans. You may want to use a spatula to lift the cookies off the countertop and onto the pans. Bake 7-8 minutes, or until they feel almost firm to the touch. If you want to speed this up, you can forget all this business with a refrigerator and a rolling pin. Instead, roll the dough into small balls in your hand (don't bother chilling it first). Then roll them in sugar. Place them on a greased or lined cookie sheet 2 or 3 inches apart. Then flatten them by pressing with your finger or the random drinking glass (or whatever) of your choice. These cookies are very rich, so you should make them small. Bake until barely darkened at the edges. *If desired, you can substitute 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Add an extra 2 tablespoons of butter to the amount already in the recipe. If you want to get a better chocolate flavor out of the cocoa powder, melt the all of butter in the recipe and get it quite hot. Then whisk in the cocoa powder, and leave it to sit until it re-solidifies. (If any water separates out of the butter, just put it into the mixing bowl with everything else and forget about it.)   †Omit if butter is salted. Source: Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

 

I used to make these cookies all the time. After all, why take up exercise if you're still going to sacrifice chocolate?

Just as I so fondly remembered, the cookie dough was a beautiful rich dark brown. Before adding the flour, it looked tantalizingly like brownie batter.

Maida Heatter directs us to roll out the dough one-eighth of an inch (that's 3-ish millimeters) and then use a cookie cutter. This, naturally, will produce the chocolate wafers promised in the recipe title. But back when I semi-routinely made this recipe, I never had the patience for a rolling pin and cookie cutter. (Chocolate is too hard to wait for.) Instead, I used to roll the dough into small balls, roll each one in sugar, and press my finger across them like so:

Today, I decided to also play with my new cookie squirt gun. It may be cheaply made, but it has held up through multiple batches of cookies so far. Most of the stencil shapes come out exactly how they look like they would. Others were a surprise. Who would expect this peculiar shape to produce perfect hearts?

Well, I say "perfect," but we had a lot of misshapen cookies that I plopped back into the mixing bowl. Also, I cannot recommend making chocolate wreaths because they look like... um.... Well, see for yourself.

For the sake of thoroughness, I decided to make thin wafers like Maida Heatter told us to. I've made this recipe a million times, so I figured that I ought to follow the second half of the directions at least once. When I saw how thin the dough is supposed to get, I feared the it would be like wet toilet paper (the cheap kind). But it handled surprisingly well. In fact, I think it would be easier to make a pie crust out of it than the graham cracker dough.

My only (self-inflicted) problem was that I was parsimonious with the flour that I scattered onto the countertop. This led to my cookies sticking to the surface. Had I not made such an avoidable mistake, these cookies would have been a cinch to work with. Also, I have to note that you get a lot of cookies when you make them this thin. I got two panfuls out of a tiny lump of dough.

As the cookies baked, the ones I rolled into balls puffed up and took on a very cute crackly look. As I said, this isn't the official way to shape these cookies, but it's my favorite.

You can tell why Maida Heatter decided to make wafer-thin cookies out of this dough when you eat one. These cookies are really rich, and you get sated quick. So unless you need a lot of therapeutic chocolate, you might make them a little smaller than I did. With that said, they're really good, really easy, and definitely worth making.

Also, for those who still mourn the loss of Famous Wafers, this recipe is exactly what you need.