Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Vintage Christmas pudding recipe

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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Thursday will be Christmas Eve, so I am posting Vintage Recipe early in hopes to make it easier on all our busy Christmas schedules, but feel free to link anytime during the week.

Next Thursday will be New Year's Eve, so I will do the same.

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

Uploaded to Flickr by Douglas Coulter


Vintage Christmas Pudding Recipe
1 cup ground suet
1 cup molasses
1 cup milk
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup finely chopped citron

Combine suet, molasses, and milk. Sift flour. Measure. Reserve 1/3 cup for dredging the fruits. Sift remainder of flour with salt, spices, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Combine with first mixture. Add dredged fruits. Mix thoroughly. Fill well-oiled 1-pound cans 2/3 full. Cover. Steam 3 hours. Serve hot with any desired pudding sauce. 12 servings. Florence Taft Eaton, Concord, Mass.

Use this MckLinky if you are participating in
Vintage Recipe Thursday.
Please leave a link to your post, not your homepage,
and be sure to link back to this post or blog.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Vintage coconut cookie recipe

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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I'm sharing more cookies for the holiday season. Just as you probably do, I have lots of cookie memories, from the ones my grandma used to bake for me, the ones my friends and I would bake in high school, the ones my best friend shares each Christmas, or the cookie exchanges at church. Cookies are part of our Christmas traditions. I hope you'll enjoy this coconut cookie recipe, and many others, with loved ones this year as you create new memories and traditions.

Next Thursday will be Christmas Eve, so I will be posting Vintage Recipe on TUESDAY, December 22 in hopes to make it easier on all our busy Christmas schedules, but feel free to link anytime during that week.

Enjoy the holiday season!


Coconut Cookies
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup water
1 cup coconut
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Mix thoroughly. Add vanilla extract and coconut. Sift flour, measure, and sift with baking powder and salt. Add alternately with milk and water to first mixture. Mix thoroughly. Chill several hours. Turn onto lightly floured board. Roll in sheet 1/2 inch thick. Cut with floured cutter. Place on well-oiled baking sheet. Bake in hot oven (420 F.) about 10 minutes. 72 servings. Mrs. L. H. McConnell, North Vernon, Ind.

This recipe is also linked to Our Krazy Kitchen's Christmas Party.

Use this MckLinky if you are participating in
Vintage Recipe Thursday.
Please leave a link to your post, not your homepage,
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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Add to Christmas gift list: Chocolate, A Love Story

Chocolate, A Love Story: 65 Chocolate dessert recipes from Max Brenner's Private Collection is the latest toy to consummate your love affair.

There's even a 66th bonus recipe, and don't expect this cookbook to follow trends with visual "food porn" or other cookbook conventions.

Brenner has taken the lead. He shuns food styling and photography for original work by his friend, Israeli artist Yonatan Factor. He shuns the index found at the end of other cookbooks, too.

Brenner takes readers into his imagination with fictional writing prompts to introduce the culinary adventures of each chocolate creation.

The cast of characters in this romantic play:

  • Himself, Max: "At the age of twenty, I thought that in order to find inspiration for my first novel I needed to be alone. I needed to walk in narrow streets, sit in a dark room with a candle, feel the longing, and write. I went to live and work in the Seventh Arrondissement in Paris with a French chef who looked like Gepetto. I was an apprentice for six years. He taught me how to make toffee, marzipan and nougat. He told me stories that are only passed on from teacher to pupil. I was lonely and did not write."
  • The artist, Yonathan: He has "a huge tattoo running up his leg that had been covered with a tattoo of a blue rectangle, because he was sick of what he'd loved the day before....The body of the most muscular Irish boxer you can imagine, ... spiky blond hair of a newborn chick. And even though you couldn't see it, stuffed inside was the romantic soul of a starving Russian poet."
  • The inspiration, Chocolate: A romantic commodity, precious and addictive, the sexy, nostalgic, "fantasy object for children and grown-up children."
Each act or chapter has its creative title like Serious Stuff: Some Fun Chocolate Games, and Sugar Rush: Straightforward Chocolate Drinks.

Each scene or recipe has fun names like Innocent Meringue Kisses, Kinky Pavlova, and the Jealous Almond and Pistachio Marzipan Balls.

There are creations for every taste like Spy-Thriller Chocolate Black Forrest Cake, or Soap Opera Chocolate Cappuccino, and for every lifestyle too -- Politically Correct Sacher Torte, Eco-Friendly Chocolate Bread Pudding, or Revolutionary Rice Pudding.

Add this chocolate cookbook to your Christmas list for all your chocolate lovers, and for yourself, too.

Every good home library needs at least one chocolate cookbook, and this Chocolate, A Love Story will develop into a lasting relationship with its sense of humor; taste of culture; rugged tall, dark looks; and decadent lifestyle.

Category: COOKING
Format: HARDCOVER BOOK
Title: Chocolate, A Love Story: 65 Chocolate dessert recipes from Max Brenner's Private Collection
Author: Max Brenner
Publisher: Little Brown
Publish Date: 11/2/2009
Price: $29.99/$35.99
ISBN: 9780316056625
Pages: 144
Size: 9" x 12"

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Vintage graham butter-scotch cookie recipe

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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This is a great recipe for Christmas cookie exchanges, large families, church gatherings or anytime cookie monsters gather. It makes about 75 cookies.

Graham Butter-Scotch Cookies
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs, well beaten
1 cup chopped raisins
1 cup graham flour
2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs. Beat thoroughly. Add raisins and lemon extract. Sift cake flour, measure, and sift with baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add graham flour. Add to creamed sugar and shortening mixture. Mix thoroughly. Form into rolls 2 inches in diameter. Chill overnight. Slice thin. Place on slightly oiled baking sheet. Bake in hot oven (400 F.) about 10 minutes. 75 servings. Mrs. Otto Christopherson, Beldenville, Wis.


Use this MckLinky if you are participating in
Vintage Recipe Thursday.
Please leave a link to your post, not your homepage,
and be sure to link back to this post or blog.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Corn syrup "more deadly than terrorism"; eat maple

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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The other day we were at the grocery store looking for maple syrup. My husband spotted a pancake syrup marked in large red letters "no high fructose corn syrup." I rejoiced at the thought of pancake syrup being made with real sugar, real honey or real maple. My husband was almost ready to put it in the basket, but being doubting Thomases, we looked at the ingredients.

Well, my hopes where dashed quickly! The very first ingredient listed was "corn syrup"!!! You see it must not have been "high fructose," but it was still CORN SYRUP!!! I can't put in enough exclamation marks. I can't type in any more upper case than upper case! But I'm mad.

I'm mad that these big companies pull the wool over our eyes. They weren't successful with us, but I know they are with so many other people, or they just wouldn't even try it. Here they were, specifically targeting people who DO NOT WANT CORN SYRUP!! And tricking them with technicalities or semantics. This syrup might not have been "high fructose," maybe it was "low fructose" or "medium fructose," or "whatever fructose," but corn syrup is corn syrup.

Corn syrup is a man-engineered product. It may start out as natural corn, but by the time these people are done processing it, manipulating it, it is a chemical, not natural in the least. There is no corn syrup tree out there. According to studies, it makes us, and lab animals too, fat and sick; it causes tumors, sometimes it even kills.

As you can watch and listen to the video below, even the Vice President of the United States, then Senator Joe Biden, tells us that corn syrup is more deadly than terrorist attacks, and that "hundreds of thousands of people die and their lives are shortened because of coal plants, coal-fired plants and because of corn syrup."

The Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters, U.S News and World Report, Fox News and many other news organizations have been reporting all year that studies are finding detectable levels of mercury in corn syrup.

"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of two of the studies, said in a prepared statement in January 2009.

So beware of the tricksters who mark their foods in large red letters as having "no high fructose corn syrup," because it DOES have corn syrup, and it is the very first ingredient! They know we are onto the evils of corn syrup, but we will be on to their tricks, too! We are not as stupid as they take us to be. We may have been naive and trusting once upon a time, but we are not stupid, and we do read labels, even the fine print!

To promote natural foods that do grow on trees, or in this case IN trees, I'm offering you a good, old-fashioned maple syrup parfait recipe.

Maple Parfait
4 eggs
2 cups whipping cream
1 cup maple syrup
1/8 teaspoon salt

Beat eggs until yolks and whites are blended. Add salt. Heat syrup to boiling. Pour slowly, stirring constantly, over eggs. Cook over hot water until thick. Cool. Carefully fold in stiffly whipped cream. Fill mold. Pack in ice and salt. Let stand 4 hours. 8 servings.




Thursday, November 19, 2009

Traditional pumpkin pie - Vintage Recipe Thursday

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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Thanksgiving is next Thursday, so let's take a one-week hiatus from Vintage Recipe Thursday to celebrate this great holiday with family and friends. I wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving with great food, great company, and great fun and entertainment.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Vintage Recipe Thursday will resume the following Thursday, on December 3!

In anticipation for Thanksgiving, I am sharing a traditional pumpkin pie. It is easy. The housewife who owned this book was a messy cook, and I can tell she loved to use this cookbook. The cookbook is well-worn, and there are many stains throughout. But the page for pumpkin pie is stained and splattered more than the rest, even partially torn. As I have an active imagination, I can picture her in her kitchen preparing these delicious dishes for Thanksgiving through the decades. I can see her in the early '40s as a young newlywed, hosting her first Thanksgiving. Is she nervous, or already a seasoned cook having helped her mother and taken home economics classes? I see her in the '50s and '60s, her children at her apron strings watching every movement she makes, asking more questions than parents have answers for.

I see her in the '70s and '80s still preparing family favorites, perhaps to bring to her grown children's homes, perhaps to teach another generation how to cook. I can see her in the '90s and the early part of this new century. The decades have flown by, her well-loved cookbook has earned as many scars and wrinkles as she has. They have been earned. Each one is a sign of dedication and love.

It is time for the book to find a new owner. Did she give it to the Friends of the Library herself, now that she no longer cooks, so that a new owner would cherish it as much as she had for some 60 years? Or did her children simply discard some old, stained book, not realizing or caring what a family treasure it was?

Either way, it came into my hands, and I am thankful for it. It is filled with wonderful recipes from housewives across the country, all family-favorites, many prize-winners, and I have yet to find one our family did not enjoy. It is filled with a soul. These vintage pages speak to me from one housewife to another, across the miles, and across time. I treasure them as I imagine the original owner treasured them. They remind me of times past, and yet of the present too. Past and present intertwining into one. They remind me of families, of how generations pass, how children grow, and how they have children of their own. Time flies by, and yet it almost stands still, repeating itself over and over again.

Pumpkin Pie
1 1/2 cups cooked pumpkin, fresh or canned
1 cup rich milk
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tablespoon butter

Combine ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Pour into pastry-lined pie pan. Bake in hot oven (425 F.) about 25 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Serve with whipped cream. If desired, 1/2 cup raisins may be added to pumpkin filling. Virginia Cooper, New Orleans, La.


Use this MckLinky is you are participating in
Vintage Recipe Thursday.
Please leave a link to your post, not your homepage,
and be sure to link back to this post or blog.


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Desserts and a Thanksgiving party, too

I'm hosting Save Room for Dessert at Our Krazy Kitchen today. Stop by and link your dessert recipes.

We also have a Thanksgiving party right through Thanksgiving, so stop by to give and receive ideas, recipes, pictures, anecdotes, etc. Let's all have fun together.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

You make the blogging world a friendly place!

I've received another beautiful award. This one is from Emily, a very nice blog friend who writes Marvelous Recipes. Thank you, Emily!! We also need to answer why we love blogging.

Emily wrote "I love to blog because I enjoy meeting new people and making new friends. And I enjoy keeping up with all the different things going on in my friend’s lives. I have a passion for cooking and I love to share my recipes and cooking ideas with others who share my passion. But the biggest reason I love to blog is: “It’s Fun”!!"

I second all of those thoughts and feelings, and also because I like to both teach, and learn from others. I learn so much from blogging and from the Internet in general. Blogging provides an outlet for my writing and creativity. It has challenged me to try new things, and grow. I see blogging empowering many of us, like the mommy bloggers who might otherwise have no adult company most of the day, or the seniors, the handicapped, or those ill who might otherwise be housebound, or those who are busy working hard all day long to make some uncaring company richer. It gives all of us a voice and a vote, because we all have our 2 cents' worth to say, and we all have an important story to tell.

I was surprised when I first started blogging at how many friendships so many of us were making via blogs. Friendships have become a very important component of my blogging, so I'm glad that this particular award is to be used "as a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging." I could never include all of my blog friends, even just the ones with whom I feel a closer bond -- just look at how long my blog rolls are! -- so don't feel bad if you are not getting an award this time around, it's nothing personal, even the Academy Awards limits all the thank yous to 3 minutes these days.

These bloggers are extra special, AND encourage friendships through their blogs. Here is a great big thank you to all of you for making the blogging world a friendly place.

Tamy @ 3 Sides of Crazy

Twinkle Mom @ Sunflower Faith

Bella @ La Bella Vita

Grandmother Wren @ Grandmother Wren

Grandpy @ Grandpy and You

Snowhite @ Joy in my Kitchen

Liz @ Hoosier Homemade

Kristen @ Frugal Antics

Michele @ Frugal Creativity

Bean @ Coyote Craft

Gudrun @ Kitchen Gadget Girl

Chaya @ Sweet and Savory


Neno’s Award—-Rules and Regulations

1. As a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging.

2. To seek the reasons why we all love blogging.

3. Put the award in one post as soon as you receive it.

4. Don’t forget to mention the person who gives you the award.

5. Answer the award’s question by writing the reason why you love blogging.

6. Tag and distribute the award to as many people as you like.

7. Don’t forget to notify the award receivers and put their links in your post.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Don't miss out on these dessert and baking tips, plus these other dessert articles


I just posted some dessert and baking tips on my dessert column. There's great information on flavors, nuts, getting children to eat their fruits, using alcohol in desserts, and more.

Plus San Francisco chef and flavor authority, Emily Luchetti shares her walnut and maple syrup cookie recipe, more tips, and how she replaces corn syrup in pumpkin pies.

New York executive pastry chef and author of "Spiced," Dalia Jurgensen tells us her 10 favorite reasons for being a pastry chef.

Don't miss my Fall and Winter dessert articles like five-minute, easy recipes for pumpkin pie cups and pumpkin pie milkshakes. The milkshakes even have variations for those on diets.

You can access all my Examiner dessert column articles, too.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Raisin bread recipe -- Vintage Recipe Thursday

Vintage Recipe Thursday is meant to preserve your own original vintage family recipes, or out-of-print, copyright-free recipes from old cookbooks, magazines, newspapers. You're invited! Get the details by clicking to the Vintage Recipe Thursday Homepage. I post recipes from the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, first published in 1931. My 16th printing is from 1943. What will you post?

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You have through Sunday to post more bread recipes for the roundup which I'm happy to say has been quite a success. All together, we have gathered close to 100 recipes! Yoohoo! Tamy and I are so pleased. A few of you even shared a dozen recipes in one post, and I'm not even counting your links to so many more bread recipes in your archives. Thank you all.

For this week's Vintage Recipe Thursday, I'm sharing a raisin bread recipe. I love raisin bread for breakfast, and for after-school snacks. It can be the base for great bread pudding, for a warm and tasty winter dessert, too. This one has a nice flavor from the molasses. If you try not to use shortening, don't forget my trick -- replace half the shortening with applesauce. That trick also works with recipes calling for oil.

Raisin Bread Recipe
2 cups milk, scalded
2 tablespoons melted shortening
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cake compressed yeast
6 cups flour
3/4 cup raisins

Combine milk, salt, shortening, and molasses. Cool until lukewarm. Add yeast to cooled milk. Allow to stand 5 minutes. Add raisins. Add flour, a little at a time, beating well after each addition, until dough is just stiff enough to knead on a lightly floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover with a warm, damp cloth, and allow to double in bulk. Knead down, allow to double in bulk again. Form into loaves. Place in well-oiled pans. Cover and let rise until double in bulk. Bake in hot oven (425 F.) about 45 minutes. Mrs. I. M., Denver, Col.

Use this MckLinky if you are participating in
Vintage Recipe Thursday.
Please leave a link to your post, not your homepage,
and be sure to link back to this post or blog.