Red Onion Tarte Tatin: Even when it doesn't work, it is wonderful

Onions are things of beauty.

Red Onion Tarte Tatin 2½ pounds red onions 2 tbsp butter 1 tsp sugar Dried thyme (or fresh thyme sprigs if you can get them) 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar Salt and pepper to taste Parmesan cheese for serving        Cheddar-Thyme Pastry: 3 oz (¾ cup) all-purpose flour 2 oz (½ cup) whole-wheat flour 1 tsp thyme (chopped fresh thyme if you can get it, dried if not) Salt to taste 2 tbsp butter 1 oz (about ¼ cup) shredded Cheddar cheese 2 to 3 tablespoons ice-cold water Heat oven to 350° with a heavy baking sheet on the center shelf. Peel the onions and cut them lengthwise in half. If they're very large (say, if you only needed two or three to get 2½ pounds of them), cut them into smaller wedges. Don't cut them into small pieces-- you want big onion chunks. Heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Then add the butter and sugar, shaking and swirling the pan to thoroughly coat the bottom. When the butter starts to bubble and sizzle, add the thyme sprigs (or a sprinkling of dried thyme). Arrange the onions on top, getting them as close and crowded as possible while keeping them all in contact with the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat to low and let cook without stirring for around 10 minutes. Then cover the pan with foil and place on the baking sheet in the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes. While the onions are cooking, make the pastry: Mix the flours, thyme, and salt. Rub in the butter, then mix in the cheese. Add enough water to make a ball dough that doesn't leave any crumbly bits behind in the bowl. Or, place everything but the water in a food processor. Pulse until it's thoroughly mixed and mealy. Then, with the processor running on low speed, gradually pour in a slow stream of water until a dough ball forms. Place your pastry (whether hand-mixed or food-processed) in a bag or food container and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. When the timer goes off for the onions, test them with a skewer. They should be tender but not mushy. Remove them from the onion, but leave the baking sheet in there. Place the skillet on a burner and set heat oven to medium. Raise the oven temperature to 400°. Move the baking sheet to a higher shelf. Cook the onions without stirring on the stovetop (over medium heat) until the juices are thick and syrupy. While the onions are cooking, roll the pastry out to a 10-inch circle. When the syrup in the pan is reduced, give each onion piece a gentle nudge (without really moving it) to ensure it hasn't gotten stuck into place. Drape the pastry over the onions, tucking the edges down and under everything. Set the pan in the oven on the baking sheet that you left in there. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden on top. After baking, let rest 20 minutes. Have a flat platter or tray ready, one that's bigger than the skillet. After the time has elapsed, put the platter upside-down over the skillet. Holding the two tightly together (don't forget the hot pads!), give the tart a very good shake. Then flip the whole thing over and lift the pan off. It should leave the crust on the platter with all the onions nicely embedded in place. If any onions stick to the pan, just put them back into their places on the crust. If they all stick, just get them out with a spatula and arrange them as best as you can on the crust. Lay them caramelized-side up. It won't look as nice, but it'll still taste really good. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1995

Today, we are making Delia Smith's red onion tarte tatin! If you've never heard of a tarte tatin, it's kind of like a cross between an upside-down cake and an apple pie (or in our case, an onion pie). The special part is that you cook the fruit (or onions) on the stove so it caramelizes on the bottom, which becomes the top when you flip it out of the pan and onto a plate.

Before we could get to the onion excitement, we had to make the crust. I know the recipe says to do this during the one-hour downtime while our onions bake, but I've never attempted a tarte tatin before. Therefore, I wanted everything finished so I could put it out of mind. This also let me clear the countertop of all mixing bowls and dirty measuring cups before getting to the real fun. When I'm trying a totally new-to-me recipe, clear countertops help keep my mind straight.

Delia uses whole-wheat/thyme/cheese crust on top. I thought this sounded amazing, and was already planning to make it in the future without bothering with the rest of the tarte tatin. 

The recipe calls for 1 ounce of cheese, which seemed like a lot less than I would use. But Delia Smith's recipes always work, so I didn't mess with it. And sure enough, our "small" allotment of cheese nearly smothered everything else.

Our instructions say we can use a food processor, but I didn't feel like cleaning all of its parts. Even when you put everything in the dishwasher instead of cleaning every plastic piece by hand, the food processor demands a lot of rack space. You usually end up leaving a big stinky pile of dishes in the sink until next time, and I didn't want to deal with last night's plates tomorrow.

Now that we had the crust out of the way, we could truly enjoy our time with the onions. Delia has us cut the onions in half, which seemed far too big until I saw how small the onions were on her show. I decided to cut mine until they were about the same size as hers.

Source: Youtube

I refrigerated the onions the night before because that often cuts back on their tear-gassing ability. But red onions really love attacking your eyes. I had to bring a special friend out of the living room to help with my eyes.

I've seen a lot onion "hacks" that claim they'll prevent crying. They never work. But if you simply aim a fan at the onions, it will blow their fumes away before your eyes feel a thing. Even if the fan is pointed right at your face, it disperses the onion gas before it can do anything to you. Incidentally, this particular fan has a special feature: you can't stick your whole hand into the blades. (Though you can easily imperil a finger if you want to.)

As I laid my onion wedges into a rosette, I got really excited about how beautiful this would be. Delia crowded the onions into the pan, which makes sense because onions are the whole point of the recipe. So, I filled all the gaps with onion chunks and slivers until I could cram in no more.

Some of the onions started to gently fall apart as they cooked, but I didn't worry about losing my rosette at all. After all, I didn't need to move the onions again until serving time. In our serene state, I thought the center onion wedge turned into something geometrically interesting as it let go of itself.

Delia tells us to put a very heavy baking sheet in the oven before turning it on, so I did. You don't see unnecessary steps in a Delia Smith recipe, so I figured it must be for a good reason. And to prevent any sudden pan-warping (which she strenuously warns us about should we use cheap or flimsy pans), I dug out the roasting pan that came with the oven.

I love when a near-perfect spotlight shines on the things I do right.

If your kitchen has a good vent, you really want to use it for this recipe. I found myself blinking a lot from itchy eyes. Someone else came in for a snack, and I noticed their eyes also got a little pink after a minute or two of chatting.

Tears aside, we now had nothing to do but wait. I didn't think about this when I first measured out the ingredients, but fifty minutes is a long time to wait on a recipe. I can see why Delia said to do the crust now instead of at the beginning. But this was a great time to tidy the countertops, transfer the dirty dishes from the sink to the dishwasher, wipe the errant splats, and make a cup of tea. I also measured out the ingredients for the muffins I had planned to help all the non-onion-lovers feel better about the smell.

After the first baking, we had only to reduce the pan juices to a syrup and then bake the onions again. My stove did this in about half the time given in the recipe, which hopefully didn't mean that I ruined it by setting the burner too high. But how can a recipe go awry and look so beautiful?

After another thirty minutes of baking, our crust looked at least a little golden on top. I decided that I could wait no more. The onions had tantalized me long enough.

Our onion wedges had loosened up and fanned out while baking. I lifted one up to peep underneath, and it was the most beautiful shade of caramelized I've seen outside of a crock pot.

Now, Delia says we must have an absolutely flat platter to turn our tatin onto. And after our local adventure getting a platter from a dead microwave, I have one! I was really excited to use my special cake plate for something besides cake.

When I lifted the skillet off the platter, I could see that we had a tatin failure on our hands. This is what it looked like after shaking the pan a lot, cutting around the edges to loosen things, and everything else I could think of. 

I can only guess that I overdid the part where you reduce the pan fluids to a syrup. I may have accidentally candied the onions and welded them to the iron. 

On the TV show, Delia cheerfully says that if any onions stick to the pan, you can just gently lift them out and lay them into place. Which is all well and good unless all of them stick. Even if I wanted to match each onion wedge to its dent in the crust, they fell apart on contact with the spatula. I ended up laying them browned-side-up and deciding it looked good enough.

De-panning issues aside, this was a little hard to serve. Eventually I figured out that our tarte tatin was easier to cut with scissors like a pizza. (Yes, I cut pizza with scissors.) And fittingly enough, it was easier eat this like a slice of pizza. The onions fell apart on contact with a knife and fork.

Aside from our aesthetic failure at the end, this was far easier than I thought. It took a while to make, but most of that time was spent letting it mind its own business. I didn't have to stay in the kitchen and fuss over it the whole time.

This was so, so good. You would have thought I spent a long time carefully balancing ingredients and seasonings instead of waiting on the oven. The onions were almost as sweet as a fruit pie. It almost tasted like I had put a lot of brown sugar under there. The balsamic vinegar had boiled off all its acid, leaving behind balsamic without the vinegar. 

The whole thing seemed like it contained far more expensive ingredients than it actually does. Even though it turned into a tatin mess, I'm very glad I made it.

Roast Pumpkin Soup: or, Carrots can't be everything

Today, we are making more Delia recipes!

Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Melted Cheese 1 3-3½ pound whole pumpkin 1 tablespoon peanut oil 1 large onion, finely chopped 3 cups vegetable or chicken stock 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons whole milk 2 tbsp butter Nutmeg to taste 4 oz Swiss cheese (Gruyere or Fontina), cut into ¼-inch cubes (or any other cheese that melts well) 6 tbsp cream or creme fraiche Fresh parsley (dried will do in a pinch) Croutons Salt and pepper to taste Before beginning, take the cheese out of the refrigerator so it'll be at room temperature by the time you serve it. Heat oven to 475° (gas mark 9, 240°C). Cut the pumpkin in half from top to bottom (ie, from the stem to the blossom end). Quarter each section lengthwise (so you have eight pumpkin slices). Scoop out the seeds and string. Brush with oil, shake on salt and pepper to taste, place on a heavy baking sheet (thin ones will warp), and bake until fork-tender, 25-30 minutes. While the pumpkin bakes, melt the butter in a large pot over high heat. Cook the onion until it just begins to turn color. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for around 20 minutes. When the pumpkin is done, remove from the oven and let cool. Then scoop the "meat" off the rind and add it to the pot. Add the milk and stock, then salt pepper and nutmeg to taste. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Then blenderize the soup. (Unless you have a large blender, you'll want to do this in batches.) Leave the center cap of your blender lid open (or whatever sort of opening the blender has at the top to allow you to pour in things while it's running). For reasons I don't understand, when you turn a blender full of very hot liquid, it suddenly pressurizes enough to pop off the lid and splatter everywhere. Leaving the lid a little open prevents that, just like loosening the lid on a container of leftovers before putting it in the microwave. Pour the soup through a strainer to catch any stringy bits that the blender missed. At serving time, heat the soup to a very low barely-simmer. Stir in the cheese cubes until they's warmed through and barely starting to melt. You don't want to melt the cheese. This soup is so much better with the soft cheese floating through it. Ladle the soup into bowls (preferably warmed). Spoon a little cream into each one. Sprinkle with croutons and parsley. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1995

I've said this before, but I really love watching Delia Smith videos. She somehow manages to give very precise directions, but somehow comes off as calming instead of nitpicky. It is a rare skill, which I think is a big part of why her career has lasted so long. 

A lot of her ingredient lists involve things that are special-order items on this side of the Atlantic (even when there isn't an ill-advised trade war on), but this one looked easy to shop for. However, I didn't want to use a pumpkin. For one thing, you can't get a fresh pumpkin in midwinter without nicking someone's leftover porch decorations. Also, I didn't want to dull my knife by hacking through a raw squash. So instead, we're using... these!

To my surprise, our carrots actually took a little longer than a pumpkin would have. But they smelled unexpectedly good toward the end of their roasting time. To emphasize: Delia Smith is so good that she can make carrots enticing, and she didn't even use carrots in this recipe.

Moving away from carrots and onto happier ingredients, I doubled the onion in the recipe. It doesn't look like a lot because we halved the soup. But you can take my word that we are being wonderfully generous with the onions.

Here we get to the first reason to use an actual pumpkin instead of carrots. Had we used pumpkin, the rind would have been charred but the edible part would have been fine. Since we didn't follow the recipe, we had to cut the blackened underside off of each carrot before putting it in the pot. (The second reason to use pumpkin is that carrot soup just isn't as nice.)  

Now that the pot was fully loaded, we could get to the toppings. I had cut up some French bread to make our own croutons, and slid them in the oven under the carrots. You shouldn't make croutons at nearly 500 degrees, but I thought it preposterous to get out the toaster when the oven was already fiendishly hot. 

I'd love to say they came out perfect, and they were indeed just the right shade of golden on top. But when we flipped one over, they were a little well done. Fortunately, they weren't completely burnt. If you like dark toast, they'd be fine.

At this point, we only needed to simmer and wait. Unfortunately, I forgot to make extra croutons to snack on while the soup cooked. I've said this before, but I really like croutons. When I let myself buy them, I eat them right out of the box the way other people go through potato chips.

The carrots plumped up a bit, but they didn't look great.

The blender made things look worse. Had this soup got any more unsightly, I could have passed it off as a diet recipe.

I forgot that carrots tend to cook to a brighter color than pumpkins. Our "pumpkin" soup looked like a safety warning sign. Maybe that's another reason to follow the recipe and use pumpkin: no one wants their soup to look like melted crayons.

This reminds me: a lot of the bigger Crayola boxes have a color called "macaroni and cheese."

All right, so our soup is kind of ugly. But let's dress it up with everything the recipe calls for:

That looks so much nicer, doesn't it? I know sprinkling on dried parsley lacks the panache of garnishing with fresh, but it still adds a nice flavor.

This soup was sweeter than I thought it'd be. But then again, it had roasted carrots and half-caramelized onions, so should I be surprised? The nutmeg added a bit of a sausage-y overtone which I thought was really nice. And of course, the half-melted cheese interspersed throughout was amazing. I would have liked provolone better, but that's just because I really, really like provolone.

For the record, carrots make a perfect counterfeit pumpkin pie, but they do not make a similarly magical pumpkin soup. This was good enough to save the leftovers, but I won't use carrots for this again. If I can get my hands on an actual cooking pumpkin (and perhaps a Sawzall with food-grade blades) I will revisit this recipe.

Cranberry Cabbage: or, Cranberries that aren't a dessert

We must bid a reluctant farewell to cranberry season. 

Spiced Cranberry Cabbage 1 pound (450g) red cabbage, quartered lengthwise 4 oz (110g) cranberries 2 teaspoons peanut oil 1 medium onion, chopped 1 (or 2) large garlic clove, finely chopped ¼ tsp cloves ¼ tsp cinnamon ½ tsp nutmeg Salt and pepper to taste 1 tbsp brown sugar 7½ tsp red wine vinegar Shred the cabbage finely (about ¼ inch or so). Discard the stalks and tougher portions of the leaves. Place oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. When it's hot, cook the onion for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another 2 to 3 minutes. Then turn the heat up to high. Add the cabbage and cook, stirring constantly, for about 3 or 4 minutes. Then add the seasonings and cranberries. Reduce heat back to medium and cook until tender, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add the sugar and vinegar, stir well, taste to see if it has enough sugar, and serve. Note: Any leftovers are really good mixed with mashed potatoes. Delia Smith's Winter Collection, 1996

Today's recipe comes from Delia Smith's Winter Collection. Apparently she somewhat infamously started a cranberry fad after using them so heavily in the book. So I was really excited to see what creative ideas she had. This one looked a lot like a variation on the sweet-sour cabbage we have made, except with cranberries instead of apples.

I was excited to make this because every other cranberry recipe we've made has been some variant of cranberry sauce: boil cranberries and add a lot of sugar. Even the apple-cranberry pie felt like putting cranberry sauce into a pie crust instead of a serving bowl. The cranberry cream is only non-sauce recipe we have made until today.

Now that all our ingredients were lined up, it was time to try cabbage like I've never made it before. 

New recipes can sometimes be daunting. But if you are ever in doubt, start with onions!

Our refrigerator has been a bit overzealous since getting repaired. It half-froze the onions. So, I turned the heat a little higher than Delia did. Our onions were perfect and golden right on time.

I know I've said this before, but cabbage expands a lot when you shred it. This was going to be one of those recipes that leaves a ring of half-dried flyaways around the pan.

So far, this recipe had been a simple matter of sauteeing cabbage. But now, we have gotten to the special ingredient: Fresh (ish) cranberries!

After just a few seconds, the first berries popped. I was so excited. You would never know they'd been in the refrigerator for at least three weeks.

As I found out on the first taste, cranberries get very bitter when you cook them. I nearly threw out the whole thing, grocery money be damned. But just in case, I added the vinegar and brown sugar because Delia told me to. To my surprise, they fixed the dish and unlocked the flavors that I didn't know were in there. Though I should note that I had to add a few more spoonfuls of sugar to balance out the cranberries' bitterness.

I liked this a lot more without the spices (yes, I made it twice). It was also one of the few times I get almost as excited about the leftovers. We had special plans that involved a mashed potato.

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

Of course, we didn't close out cranberry season with healthy vegetables. Instead, we made cranberry blondies. (The recipe is my Mom's. By which I mean it came out of her Betty Crocker cookbook.) 

They didn't come out of the pan without a lot of well-chosen language, but they were delicious. 

 

Cocoanut Tea Rolls

Today, we are venturing to Australia!

Coconut Tea Rolls 1 egg ¼ cup milk 8 oz (2 cups) self-raising flour (to substitute plain flour, see below) 2 oz (¼ cup) butter 8 oz (1 cup) sugar 4 oz (1 packed cup) shredded coconut Additional milk and coconut flakes for rolling Heat oven to 400°. Have greased or lined baking sheets ready. Beat the egg and milk together, set aside. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Or, stir the flour with a whisk to break up any clumps and fluff it up. Gently rub in the butter with your fingertips until the two are thoroughly combined. Mix in the sugar and coconut. Then mix in the egg and milk. It may seem dry and crumbly at first, but keep mixing and it should all come together into a stiff dough. (If it doesn't, you can add milk one small spoonful at a time.) Knead for about thirty seconds. Dough will be sticky. Roll into small balls. Brush each one with milk, then roll in coconut. Place on the baking sheet, giving them plenty of room to spread. Bake until golden at the edges, about 10-15 minutes. To substitute plain all-purpose flour: Using a measuring cup: Put 1 tablespoon of baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt in a measuring cup, then spoon in flour until it comes up to two cups. Using a scale: Tare it out, add 1 tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt, then add flour until it all adds up to 8 ounces. The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; May 30, 1932; page 1

When we made the economical raisin pie, we said that we tried to figure out how old the recipe was and instead found a different economical raisin pie in an Australian newspaper. It was printed above something called "bloater paste," which is apparently mashed smoked herrings. It might be easy to snark on herring paste, but that's only because they didn't call it "pâté." After all, smoked salmon pâté semi-reliably shows up in high-tax-bracket restaurants that would never serve salmon paste.

The Southern Districts Advocate; Katanning, Western Australia; May 30, 1932

I'm not in a rush to make the raisin pie from the same news page (though I haven't ruled it out either), but I really wanted to try the "Cocoanut Tea Rolls." (As a side note: I love that the recipe column was literally top-center of the front page.)

Since I now own a kitchen scale, I didn't have to convert weights to cups. Nevertheless, I couldn't get past the first line of the ingredient list without having to look things up. I needed to know how much baking powder to use because I wasn't about to buy self-raising flour. (Or self-rising, depending on where you live.) Skipping past the AI slop (is it worth it?) and SEO garbage in my search results, I found what I sought on Betty Crocker's website.

I have pause and give credit to the General Mills people. We all know that Betty Crocker is not a charity operation, but they give out a lot of paywall-free cooking advice. They even have an "Ask Betty" section on their website where you can send in any question and get a free professional answer. It almost makes up for the company getting children hooked on part-of-this-complete-breakfast sugar kibble before they're smart enough to know better.

We don't really do self-raising flour in the US. Most stores stock it, but it doesn't pop in recipes very often. This may be the one time we Americans aren't lazier than everyone else. We may drive anywhere that's farther than a three-minute walk (that's 1.8 hectoseconds for our metric friends), but by God we will get out a little spoon and measure our own baking powder. 

That little mound of white powder is all-American hard work.

Now that we had all our ingredients sorted (both self-raising and otherwise), it appears our "tea rolls" start out like scones. You mix the flour and butter together like you're doing a pie crust, add some other things to make a firm dough, then knead it a bit and bake. 

 

If you look at our dough balls, you can see that this was a sticky process. I wondered if I had done something wrong. I've made a lot of rolls, and the dough isn't supposed turn your hands into a mess.

Well, here they are, rolled in coconut and ready to bake! I immediately thought of Alec Baldwin's Schweddy Balls.

The recipe says to bake "until golden," but I started to worry before the dough got slightly warm. Some of the coconut had already browned and we had a long baking time left. Would I end up scraping cinders off my tea rolls?

I couldn't decide if I made these right. On one hand, they're called "tea rolls" but ours were more like cookies. However, it is my understanding that only Americans use the word cookie. I haven't jaunted to Australia or the UK to find out, but I did search for the word "cookies" across every issue of the the newspaper that today's recipe comes from, and only got a lot of occurrences of the word "cockies." (If anyone from Australia happens to drop by, please tell me what the heck that means!) 

So if the word "biscuit" changes meaning across every international border and "cookies" cease to exist outside of The Land Of The Free, perhaps we made perfectly correct Australian tea rolls. Sure, they are a tiny bit overbaked, but they don't seem to mind too much. Some recipes are ruined if they bake just twenty seconds too long, but cocoanut tea rolls will forgive you for not hearing the timer.

As soon as I tried one of these, I stopped worrying about whether they came out as Australia intended. No recipe can go wrong and be this good. They're dense and chewy with a wonderfully crisp outside. Everyone who tried these liked them. One person came back to the kitchen, grabbed quite the handful, and said "Work can wait."

We're going to sign off with what is apparently an iconic piece of Australian culture:

 

Second-Stab Saturday: Candied Sweet Potatoes without all the fuss

My great-grandmother didn't have to make these the long way.

Candied Sweet Potatoes 3 pounds sweet potatoes (just round to the nearest potato) ¼ cup water ½ cup sugar (brown, white, or maple) 3 tbsp butter ¼ tsp salt (only add this if butter is unsalted) Cinnamon to taste Boil or microwave the potatoes until done. Then pick off the skins and cut them into pieces a little larger than bite-size. Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a large frying pan. Reduce heat to medium and boil until thick and syrupy. Turn off the heat, add the butter, salt, (and cinnamon, if desired), and stir until all is melted and mixed. Add the potatoes to the pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly and scooping the syrup off of the pan and pouring it on top of the potatoes. (A large serving spoon is better than a flat wooden spoon for this. Continue cooking until all of the syrup sticks to the potatoes. They are done when the syrup no longer forms puddles in the pan when you stop stirring. If desired, you can use orange juice instead of all or part of the water when making the syrup.  Source: Handwritten recipe, probably 1920s-1930s Notebook of Hanora Frances "Hannah" Dannehy O'Neil

As I said the last time we made my great-grandmother's candied sweet potatoes, I don't like them but everyone else does. (I think everyone who cooks a lot ends up with at least a few recipes like that). Well, when you don't like something, you rarely want to spend too long make it, even if you're cooking it to be nice. This brings us to the new (to me) shortcut: doing these over the stove.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I first saw a recipe for candied sweet potatoes in Mrs. Wilson's newspaper column. Instead of parboiling the potatoes and baking them, she told her readers to fully cook the potatoes and then put them in syrup over a stove burner. 

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

I probably should have done this in a bigger frying pan, but the potatoes came out all right (even if I had to keep putting escapees back).

I'm not sure that I'm making these right. An image search for "candied sweet potatoes" yields pictures of neatly sliced sweet potatoes with a perfectly even glaze. Mine always come out smushed, no matter how gentle I am with my basting. But I've had no complaints.

I hate to say my great-grandmother wasted a lot of effort on her candied sweet potatoes, but these were ready after about two minutes on the stove. I wouldn't mind the longer baking time if I could forget the potatoes until the timer went off. But her way involves constantly coming back to baste. I thought that perhaps the long baking time allows the syrup to really penetrate the potatoes. But you couldn't tell the difference. 

With the printed-and-pasted recipes in my great-grandmother's book, it's easy for me to imagine that she skipped over the unnecessary fusswork. But she wrote this one out by hand, so I guess she actually kept coming back and bending over the oven with a basting spoon.  

As I said last time, these taste like a sweet potato casserole if you didn't get out a potato masher. Since I don't like sweet potato casserole, I can't say that I love these. But everyone else seems to like them, so this must be a good recipe. You can't argue against a well-scraped plate.