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, but 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.

Second-Stab Saturday: Mushrooms will never be fish

We got shiitake mushrooms with the most beautiful emblem on top!

Isn't that 50% off sticker a work of art? I've never had shiitake mushrooms before. I always got the impression that shiitakes were, like, designer mushrooms. Or at least, they're like designer mushrooms if most of the cars in your supermarket parking lot were purchased used.

When I got the shiitakes out of the box, they felt limper and spongier than the ones I usually get. They also looked stringier. I don't know if shiitakes are supposed to be like that, or if this is why they were half price. Either way, I decided to cook them before they had a chance to expire and then let them wait until I figured out what to make of them.

Obviously, I couldn't help tasting them right out of the frying pan to see if they're as magically special as their non-discount price suggests. And... they're more intense and savory than the cheaper mushrooms I've always gotten heretofore. They almost tasted like I'd added soy sauce. They didn't taste dramatically different, but they somehow were mushroomier.

This brings us to the recipe I used them in: Mrs. Mary Martensen's fish pie. Remember how I said "Imagine this with mushrooms"?

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

First, we had to make our lovely potato nest. 

I don't use the pressure cooker as much as I thought I would, but it's great for steaming potatoes-- especially when your recipe won't forgive them getting a little bit dried out as the microwave tends to do. This time, our rack tipped off its little improvised stand (an empty tomato paste can with both ends removed). Nevertheless, our spuds remained safely above the danger of getting sogged.

I know I said this last time, but I have to once again note that Mrs. Mary Martensen uses a lot of parsley in the gravy. And yes, today we're using premade gravy. It came on the side of some recent drive-thru chicken.

The pie nearly spilled out of the pan, but we got it into the oven with no sloshing whatsoever.

I wanted to write that despite the original recipe's high baking temperature, you can bake this at 350° (gas mark 4, 180°C) if you want to slide it next to something else in the oven-- or if you're trying not to abuse the air conditioning in the summer. Unlike tater tots or a frozen pizza, nothing about this seems like it needs to bake in an extra-hot oven. But I was unable to test that because the oven got commandeered for one of those frozen dinner-tray things that bakes at 450°. That's gas mark 8 or 230°C--- substantially hotter than the recipe's original oven by any measuring system. The pie didn't seem to mind.

I didn't think a pan of cheese and gravy could be so precisely calibrated for a specific ingredient, but this really tasted like it should contain fish. And while the scant pint gravy was right for the original recipe, it was far too much for the mushrooms.

I don't mind that it was a sloppy mess on the plate (some of the best foods are), but it's more of a casserole than a pie. The potatoes, in addition to making this better simply by being potatoes, did make our pan a lot easier to clean. None of the gravy or mushrooms made contact long enough to get burnt and stuck on. 

The mushrooms weren't bad in this, but it wasn't the best way to appreciate them. If I make this again (and I have a feeling I will), I will cut the gravy in half and omit the parsley. We already know that mushrooms and gravy go together like cranberry sauce and celery.

Apple Brown Betty: Best served outdoors

Don't tell anyone I made this just to get rid of the breadcrumbs in the freezer.

Apple Brown Betty 4 cups breadcrumbs 4 cups sliced apples ½ cup brown sugar ½ cup white sugar ½ tsp nutmeg 1 tsp cinnamon ½ tsp salt (if butter is unsalted) ½ to 1 cup water Juice and rind of ½ lemon Heat oven to 350°. Grease a large casserole pan. Mix the sugars, spices, and salt (if using). Sprinkle a third of the crumbs into the pan. Place half the apples on top, then sprinkle with half the sugar. Dot with a third of the butter. Repeat these layers, dotting again with butter. Sprinkle the last of the crumbs on top, then dot with the last of the butter. Pour in enough water to come almost up to the top. Drizzle with the lemon juice and rind. Cover the pan with foil (or a lid if you have one) and bake 45 minutes. Uncover the pan after the first 25 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream, hard sauce (see recipe here), or lemon sauce. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

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

Because I hate waste, I've been saving all of the bread that goes stale, letting it harden overnight in the refrigerator, pulverizing it in the food processor, and then dutifully freezing the resulting crumbs. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was saving all these lovely breadcrumbs for. We don't deep-fry a lot of things here, nor do we make innumerable casseroles that want crumbs on top. You can see why I might make a recipe uses a lot of crumbs.

Brown Betty seemed perfect for the weather. We're in that time of year when the temperature oscillates between late autumn and early summer from one day to the next. You go to bed with an extra blanket (there's no point in running the furnace for a single night), and you wake up gasping in sweat and flinging all the bedclothes to the floor. The next night, you go to sleep with the fan aimed right at you and wake up in shivers. (I also thought the leftovers would pass for a decent breakfast in the same way that extra pie does in the holiday season.)

Yes, we used an orange instead of a lemon. It's always more economical to use what you have in the house.

I have hazy memories of liking brown Betty on camping trips. (Yes, there was a time when I went camping, though it wasn't necessarily my choice.) When told this to some friends while slicing the apples, no one believed I ever went camping. One of them said "I would pay to see you camp." To this I replied that he didn't have the money to pay me enough. (I swore at age fourteen that I would never be more than five minutes on foot from a hot shower and a toilet that flushes.)

Even when cooking in the great indoors, I can see why someone might have made this when Mrs. Mary Martensen's book came out. This dessert is made for cooking on a Depression-era budget. After all, the main ingredients are stale bread, water, and apples. 

After trying this, I could see why I liked it when camping. It's the perfect carb hit for the end of a long day of swatting mosquitos in the great outdoors. And it's really easy to slap together when your "kitchen" is a wobbly picnic table and you have nowhere to wash dishes. But as much as I liked brown betty when it was served out of a cast iron Dutch oven that had been sitting in the campfire (or at least I think I liked it), it wasn't as nice in the house. It tastes like apple pie filling and breadcrumbs. It's not bad. But it is exactly what went into it and nothing more. 

Going back to how perfect this is for a 1930s budget (and quite possibly a 2020s one), I will note that this is very filling. And with a Depression on, going to bed full is worth a lot of money. 

Prune-Pecan Soufflé: It's better than you think

Spring is here, strawberries are in season, and we are stewing prunes!

Pecan-Prune Souffle 1 (8-oz) package prunes 3 egg whites Pinch of salt ⅓ cup granulated sugar ½ teaspoon cinnamon ½ teaspoon vanilla ⅔ cup coarsely ground pecans Cook the prunes in simmering water until very soft. Depending on the prunes, this can take anywhere from five to thirty minutes. When they're done, coarsely chop them in a food processor or hand-cranked grinder. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Heat oven to 325°. Grease a souffle dish (I used the insert from a rice cooker). Beat the egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form. Continue beating while you gradually sprinkle in the sugar. Beat until the whites are glossy and the sugar is dissolved. Fold the egg whites into the prunes in two or three additions. Then fold in the cinnamon, vanilla and nuts. Turn into the dish. Bake 20 to 30 minutes. Serve at once with whipped cream, hard sauce (see below) or a custard sauce made with the egg yolks. For extra presentation, place in sherbet glasses and top each portion with a pecan half. Serves six to eight. Miss Mary Crow, 511 5th ave, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia Inquirer Recipe Exchange; November 8, 1935; page 14

Hard Sauce ¼ cup butter 1 tsp. vanilla ½ tsp. lemon extract ⅛ tsp. salt 1 tbsp. boiling water About 1¼ cups sifted powdered sugar Cream butter, beating until very soft and light. Stir in the vanilla, lemon extract, salt, and water. (They won't quite incorporate yet, but get them as mixed as possible.) Beat in the powdered sugar a little at a time until you have a very thick mixture. (You basically are making buttercream icing that is too firm to spread on a cake.) Transfer to a plate and shape into a flat patty. Refrigerate at least half an hour. When serving, cut in thin slices and place on top of warm pudding. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Recipe Exchange; Philadelphia Inquirer; November 8, 1935

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

Now that we can buy cheap out-of-season produce (or at least, it was cheap-ish before the war), we have more or less forgotten how to turn dried fruit into lovely things. Sure, we still have a few recipes like oatmeal-raisin cookies. But given where global events are headed, we might want to collectively relearn how to expressively use dried fruits. Our half-century run of December blueberries may have been bombed to a halt.

So we meet again: boiled prunes!

At first I thought ramming wet prunes through a meat grinder would only yield a drippy mess on the floor. But (short of getting out and subsequently cleaning the food processor) I couldn't think of any other way. Would you want stewed prunes slithering all over a cutting board?

Just like last time, this step of our prune whip actually looked kind of pretty. I loved the contrast between the dark, shiny fruit pulp and the pure white meringue. I may make a prune pavlova next time the holiday season rolls around. As long as no one asks what's in it until after they've tried it, I think everyone would like it.

As I knew would happen, our beautiful study in color contrast turned into a sand-colored mess with brown stringy bits.

And now we get to our other featured ingredient: pecans! Miss Mary Crow thought we should use walnuts, but I am allergic to them. Walnuts make me break out in rants.

Our sample spoonful tasted a lot better than I expected. Our last prune whip was underwhelming and bland, but this was actually good. Unfortunately, it was about as ugly as the applesauce-date mallow.

The last time we made a souffle, we had to use the insert from a rice cooker. But these days, with a full complement of pans crammed into the cabinets, we were able to select the perfect baking dish for this. It was... wait for it... the insert from the rice cooker.

I made sure our souffle would have plenty of room to rise in its pan. No one wants to clean burnt prunes off the oven floor. (Also, I don't want to break my 7-month streak of not having to take down the kitchen smoke detector.) This souffle barely puffed up, which hopefully meant it wouldn't dramatically shrink.

Don't you love when your dessert matches the table?

Next, it was time to put on the "hard sauce," which apparently is a booze-free brandy butter. In other words, it's buttercream frosting that is too thick to smear onto a cake. 

I borrowed a recipe from our favorite World's Fair giveaway book, Mrs. Mary Martensen's Recipes. She says "The exact amount of sugar cannot be stated, but the sauce must be stiff enough to stand alone." So I added enough to make our tiny little mound of butter hold up a spoon.

Our hard sauce tasted like very lemony buttercream, and was delicious as it melted and soaked into the prunes.

The prune souffle tasted unexpectedly like oatmeal-raisin cookie dough. I shouldn't be too surprised. Prunes taste a lot like oversized raisins, and the pecans and cinnamon completed the flavor.

As an afternote, I put the leftovers in the refrigerator overnight. (We do not have "six to eight persons" eager for prunes.) By the next day, the souffle had shrunk to a little prune puck. 

It's a little hard to appreciate the shrinkage, so let's add a dinner fork for scale.

So if you want to make your prunes serve six to eight, you probably shouldn't make this ahead.

Fish Pie: or, Never underestimate potatoes and cheese

Anyone care for fish?

Fish Pie 3 tbsp. minced or dried parsley 1½ cups white sauce (from your recipe or mix of choice, or see below) 3 cups mashed potatoes 2 cups cooked, flaked fish 1 to 1½ cups grated cheese (I used Gouda) Heat oven to 425°. Mix the parsley into the white sauce, set aside. Chop or break the fish into small pieces. Grease a 9" square baking dish and line it with mashed potatoes. Make the potatoes come up about half an inch above the edge of the pan if you have enough to do it easily. Sprinkle half of the fish into the potatoes. Pour half the white sauce over the fish. Then sprinkle with half of the cheese. Repeat the layers with the remaining ingredients: fish, then sauce, then cheese on top. Bake for twenty minutes or until the cheese is browned. Leftover fish of all kinds can be used in this recipe. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Standard White Sauce 4½ tsp butter (aka 1½ tbsp) 4½ tsp flour 1½ cups milk ½ tsp salt Scald the milk and set aside. (This is easiest if you put it in a microwave-safe measuring cup, pop it in the microwave, and then let it cook until it just starts to bubble.) Melt butter in a saucepan or small skillet. Add flour, salt, and pepper; mix well. Add the milk one small splash at a time, beating very hard with each addition. The butter and flour will "seize  up" the first few times; beat out any lumps. After all the milk is added, bring to the boil, reduce heat, and simmer two minutes. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book again!

I really like pre-breaded frozen fish fillets when no one is around to whine about the smell. They're like fish sticks (or, as I hear they delightfully call them in the UK, fish fingers) but with slightly more dignity.

Pre-breaded fillets also mean I don't have to try to competently cook fish. Fish is the least forgiving of all meats. Dry chicken is passable even if no one likes it, miscooked beef is a still-edible disappointment, but badly cooked fish cannot be salvaged or choked down. But anyone can put frozen chunks of pre-breaded fish on an oven rack and set a timer.

I could have baked the fillets one dinner at a time, but I decided to cook the entire package (it was a small one) and make a fish pie the next day. 

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

I love how basic this recipe is, right down to the last sentence: "Left-over fish of all kinds can be used in this recipe." Mrs. Mary Martensen's recipes have such a realistic aspect to them. She and her staff knew that no one had the time for carving radish roses or the money to throw out last night's dinner with a depression on.  

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book

Because this recipe is clearly meant to economize, I figured Mrs. Mary Martensen wouldn't mind if I used dried parsley instead of paying for fresh. Besides, this cookbook came out during the Depression. Few people had the means to side-eye economization, even if it made our white sauce look like I was making the brownies of sin.

We're told to line a pan with mashed potatoes, "allowing the potatoes to come about one-half inch above the dish on the sides." I imagine this is so that you get a lot of crispy potatoes on the rim of the pie. Since I halved the recipe, I would have needed to get the potatoes about as thin as a pie crust. And I think we can all agree that trying to use a rolling pin on mashed potatoes is not worth the unrepeatable language that would ensue.

And now, as Mrs. Mary Martensen promised, here is the leftover fish!

This recipe both was and wasn't quick to make. On one hand, it is just a creative assembly of fish, potatoes, and white sauce (with some cheese to make it all better, of course). On the other hand, mashed potatoes and white sauce both put a lot of dirty dishes in the sink.

I'm not surprised this was good. I'm pretty sure you can put almost any protein in this and it would be delicious. (Imagine it with mushrooms...) The parsley sauce did wonders for the fish underneath it. I don't mean the parsley hid the fishy taste-- instead, it somehow made it work with everything else.

In full disclosure, we didn't always get nice slices of this pie. Some portions came out looking like messy glop.

Now, fish is somewhat infamous for befouling microwaves. This pie didn't make the kitchen air unbearable, but it did smell just as strong in the microwave as when it was in the oven. So I wouldn't reheat this in a breakroom (or any other shared microwave), but it's fine to reheat at home.

In closing, this is a lot better than I expected it to be. A lot of times, those leftover-based recipes are a bit underwhelming in a practical-minded way. But this was plain (very plain) good.

Graham Cracker Cream Cake: Every one of these is delicious in its own unique way

No matter where I travel, I always end up in the kitchen.

Graham Cracker Cream Cake 1½ cups graham cracker crumbs 1 tsp baking powder ½ tsp. salt 5 eggs, separated 1 cup sugar 1 cup chopped nuts, if desired 1 tsp vanilla Cream filling (made from the custard recipe or pudding mix of your choice) Icing or whipped cream for the top Heat oven to 350°. Cut parchment paper circles to fit the bottoms of two 8-inch round cake pans. Coat the pans with cooking spray and firmly press the paper into place. Then spritz the top of the paper with cooking spray. Even if you don't usually line your pans, you really want to with this cake. It did its damnedest to stick to the paper when I made it. Because I was prepared, the cake fell out of the pan and took the paper with it. You can easily peel stuck-on paper off of a cake. But if the cake sticks to the pan, it's all over. Mix the crumbs, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a very large bowl, beat the egg yolks until thick and pale. Add the sugar and beat until very pale and about the consistency of cake batter. Then change out the beaters in your mixer (if it came with a second set), or run the mixer in a cup of soapy water to thoroughly clean them. With a spoon or rubber spatula, stir in the crumbs, nuts, and vanilla. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then fold them in, about a third at a time. The mixture may seem too stiff for this to work, but it will be fine. Pour into the pans and bake for about 30 minutes (they may take longer), or until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pans and spring back when lightly pressed in the center. Put layers together with cream filling. When making the filling, reduce the milk (or whatever liquid the recipe or mix uses) to about three-fourths the original amount so it is thick enough to stay in the cake and not get squeezed out when you stack the layers and then cut it. You can either ice the cake, or leave it bare and serve with whipped cream on top. Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

After discovering graham cracker cakes from one of my great-grandmother's paper scraps, I don't know why they ever went out of style. They taste just like the crumb crusts underneath countless cheesecakes and pies, and a lot of people like those more than the cheesecake itself. 

Anyway, today we are making our first graham cake that's not from my great-grandmother's notes but from an outside source.

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

This comes from Mrs. Mary Martensen's cookbook. I've come to like this book a lot. After reading the scanned PDF on a screen wasn't good enough, I hijacked a friend's printer and bound it Coptic-style. (The board for the covers was lovingly swiped from an artist's scrap heap.)

If you don't want your book trimmed, anyone can do Coptic binding without buying specialized supplies. Really, you just need some sturdy string, an extra-large needle, a way to punch holes in the pages (I used a power drill), and a few clamps. I think most people already have everything except the extra-large sewing needle and possibly the clamps. Still, those are things you can get from most craft and hardware stores. You don't need to go to any specialized bookmaking shops. (It definitely helps to wax your string, but I simply pulled mine through a dollar store tealight candle.)

But if you want your book to have neat edges, you probably can't do that with things lying around your house. I had to take Mrs. Mary Martensen to a local binding shop. They were like "I don't even know how to charge you for this, so have a good day!"

So my honest advice is that you can make Coptic books at home in a leisurely afternoon. You don't have to glue them together and let them sit in clamps overnight. Nor do you need to spend a lot of money on book-specific tools unless you want the edges to be nice and even, in which case it's awfully nice to have a hydraulic cutter in the house.

Didn't Mrs. Mary Martensen come out cute!

 

All of this bookbinding chat is to say that my friend's kitchen has open shelves instead of cabinets. While I don't like exposing the dishes to airborne grease and other ickiness, it was nice to prop up the book at eye level.

Getting down to cake, this particular recipe starts off with a modern-day luxury: nearly half a dozen eggs.

Speaking of eggs, I looked up Mrs. Mary Martensen to see what other publications are still floating around. I didn't want to order any, but I did look through sample pages of various booklets just to see if any recipes were carried over from one book to the next. This cake made the cut at least twice, though they seem to have taken out half the eggs as the Depression wore on. (Also, I've got those cupcakes saved for a future dessert occasion.)

What Shall We Have For Dinner? Twenty Menus by Mary Martensen, ca. 1930s (via Ebay)

I didn't buy this book, but it made me like Mary Martensen even more than I already did. For one thing, the meal planning page tells us to serve dessert "once a day, sometimes twice." Also, among the household hints on the back cover, Mrs. Mary Martensen says that "Tests also prove that searing does not hold in more juices." 

Mrs. Mary Martensen was simultaneously of her time and ahead of it.

It's true that cooking advice from ninety years ago often gets debunked in the ensuing decades (unless they're telling you to serve dessert once a day, sometimes twice). But modern tests show that searing doesn't "seal in" anything. Also, given that steaks are generally considered man-territory for manly-men, I don't appreciate how many websites called it an "old wives tale." 

Towards the bottom of the list, under "Other Foods:" Dessert once a day, sometimes twice.

Setting aside our gender symposium and getting back to the mixing bowl, you can tell this recipe came out after handcranked eggbeaters got cheap. I can't imagine anyone putting a few linear miles on a whisk for the sake of pulverized graham crackers.

We only needed a minute with an electric mixer to get here, but a hand-whisk could easily have stretched this into multiple hours.

After our egg yolks and sugar were beaten until they looked like batter, we needed to move them to a bigger bowl. If you try this at home, you can start this recipe in a really big bowl and lower the dirty-dish count, but this one was made of cheap plastic that couldn't withstand an electric beating. The mixer gouged several pits out of the plastic when making a cheesecake and filled the batter with blue speckles.

Adding the graham crackers turned this into a really hard paste. I didn't see how we would ever fold in the egg whites without mashing the air right back out of them. But I figured that we still had some baking powder in the batter in case the whites failed.

I coaxed the whites into the batter in a few increments. To my surprise, the batter actually fluffed up.

I know that most cakes pull away from the sides of the pan when they're ready to leave the oven, but these shrank a lot. They also formed little filaments of hardened batter as they contracted. These would later unnerve the person I was visiting, who said "I feel weird eating a cake with strings coming off it."

Next, it was time to put the cream filling onto our masterpiece. I had planned to simply put icing in the middle, but the recipe says to "put layers together with cream filling." I didn't give that any thought until my friend looked at the recipe and asked "Why is it a graham cracker cream cake? There's no cream in it. It's just eggs?" So, I made a custard for the middle.

Also, I love how the cake fit snugly in the paper plate. It's like the two were made for each other.

If the filling is an odd color, it's because I couldn't resist adding something that practically suggested itself as it sat among the spices After all, one of the nice things about cooking in other people's houses is you can use things you don't have at home.

To further put the cream in cream cake, I put whipped cream on top of it. This conveniently meant I didn't have to attempt a decent-looking icing job.

Like the chiffon cake, it was almost impressively resilient, which was great until you tried to get a knife into it.

I thought this cake tasted wonderfully and deliciously like a graham cracker pie crust. My friend, on the other hand, pondered his slice (while rapidly inhaling forkloads of it) and said "This tastes like banana bread."

"I guess it does, but there's no bananas in it."

"I know, but it has the same spices as banana bread."

"The only spice in this is vanilla." (Only the filling contained root beer.)

"Then what is this?"

I thought this had the best flavor of all the graham cracker cakes we've seen on this blog (though our first one had the best texture). My friend took a fairly large hunk of it to work (but not too much-- apparently it was too good to send out of the house). I was informed that "everyone loved it."