Chocolate Toffee Bars

Several years ago I stumbled on a book sale at the local library on the last day of the sale.  You could buy an entire bag full of books for something like two dollars, but the only thing I found that looked interesting to me was a battered 1970s edition of The Settlement Cookbook.  I think it might have been a book club edition because it was very compact with extremely small print.  Some of the recipes looked interesting, but it was so tedious to read that I never used it.

A few months back, I came across a much nicer 1965 edition.  It is also a book club edition, but it is much easier to read (and has much less tape holding it together).  Since the librarian had made me a good deal (twenty-five cents) on the original book sale copy, I felt like I could justify spending one whole dollar on this much nicer copy. (Have I ever mentioned that I am cheap??)

After buying this copy, my sister lent me the book, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, which is a history of how women have cooked and lived in North America from the time of the Native Americans through the early 2000s.  The Settlement Cookbook was mentioned as having been originally published in the early 1900s as a cooking textbook for new Jewish immigrants at Milwaukee's Settlement House and it still remains the best-selling charitable cookbook of all time.  Fun fact! 

Now, on to the food...

I wanted to make something for a potluck dessert last week.  After flipping through several books, I noticed this recipe for Chocolate Toffee Bars and thought it met my requirements of 1) chocolate and 2) easy.

Since I didn't want a 9x13" pan of bars to tempt me for the rest of the week, I decided to halve the recipe, using another recipe on the same page for baking guidance.  Melting the chocolate also seemed like too much work, so I baked the bars partially, then sprinkled chocolate chips on top and returned them to the oven for a few more minutes, then used a spoon to spread the melted chocolate around.  Melting the chocolate first would have resulted in a smoother chocolate topping, but once the walnuts were sprinkled on top, you couldn't really see the texture of the chocolate anyway.  Laziness for the win! 

These were very tasty, although softer than I expected.  They are also very rich, so I suggest cutting them into tiny bars.  One made it home with me and I had it for second breakfast the next day.  I thought it was even better then, which made me sad that I had given the rest away!

Chocolate Toffee Bars (Printable recipe)

Adapted from The Settlement Cook Book, 1965

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 egg, beaten well
• 1 cup flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 4 ounces chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup toasted chopped nuts

Directions

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla, well-beaten egg, flour and salt.  Mix well.  Spread in greased 8" square pan (or equivalent).  Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.  Sprinkle with chocolate chips.  Return to oven and bake for 5 more minutes or until chocolate chips are soft.  Smooth the chocolate chips with a knife or the back of a spoon, then sprinkle with chopped nuts.  Cut at once into bars, then cool.

Apple Crisp

Last Thursday I had lunch out with my mother and one of my sisters.  Dessert was included, so I made a beeline toward what I thought was apple crisp, but turned out to be bread pudding.  Don't get me wrong, I love bread pudding, but since I had already set my taste buds for apple crisp, I was sorely disappointed.  So disappointed that I sought solace from the chocolate pie instead. 

On Saturday I noticed that the Granny Smith apples in the crisper were not quite as crisp as they had once been, which made me think I should bake something with apples.  That decision was heavily influenced by the Thursday of Apple Crisp Despair, I am sure. 

I turned to Baking with Brother Boniface (1997) for inspiration.  I hate to think that a book from 1997 might be considered vintage, but I'm going to cheat a little here by pointing out the cover photo: both the tree and Brother Boniface would definitely qualify.

This is a nice little baking book with mostly-from-scratch recipes (there are a few that call for cake mixes) ranging from the very simple, like this apple crisp, to more challenging recipes such as the Mepkin Abbey Cinnamon Buns.  The recipes use ingredients that are easy to obtain and the instructions are clear without being overwhelming.  I think it would be a great book for someone just learning to bake. 

Now on to the crisp!

I didn't weigh the apples, but I'm pretty sure I had less than three pounds, possibly a little less than two pounds.  In all, I had three large Granny Smith apples, plus two Honeycrisp apples.  Pink Lady apples are my favorite eating apples, but I haven't been able to find them lately.  Someone recommended Honeycrisp apples, but they are too sweet for my taste. I like my apples like I like my friends: a little on the acidic side.

Because of the sweet Honeycrisp apples, I substituted lemon juice for half the water.  I also wanted oats and cinnamon in the topping, so I used some of the cinnamon in with the apples and mixed the rest in with the topping, adding 1/2 cup of oats to the mixture.

The house smelled so good while this was baking!

Mmm-mmm!  This really hit the spot!  The only things I would do differently next time would be to make sure I have some vanilla ice cream on hand to serve with it.


Apple Crisp (Printable recipe)

adapted from Baking with Brother Boniface, Recipes from the Kitchen of Mepkin Abbey, 1997

Ingredients

• 3 pounds of cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 Tablespoons water
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup rolled oats

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease a 9-inch round baking pan.

Toss apples with lemon juice and water.  Place in the prepared pan and sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon.  Using a pastry cutter or fork, mix the butter, flour, sugar, oats and remaining cinnamon together until crumbly.  Spread over the apples.

Bake at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes.  Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.

Cinnamon Logs

Last week there were seven estate sales, which is a big number for this area.  I didn't find many things, but I did nab this 1952 cookbook at one of the sales:

A quick internet search tells me that "Prudence Penny" was a recipe request column for Hearst newspapers.  I always enjoy storing a new bit of trivia in my brain.  I just wish I could remember the name of someone I met five minutes ago as easily as I remember the useless information!

The book seems to be composed of several of the old Culinary Arts Institute regional cookbooks, plus sections for "General Auxiliary Recipes" and the "Cosmopolitan America Cook Book."  The Cosmopolitan section is only fourteen pages long, so apparently not many regions were considered cosmopolitan back in the day.

I am so going to have to make oliebollen sometime!

The estate sale companies don't divulge much information about the estate owner, but I noticed that several of the cookbooks were written in Japanese.  I know this only because one of them  had both Japanese and English versions of each recipe and stated that the other language was Japanese.  I had to wonder how the cook ended up in our smallish Texas town.  I'm sure that is an interesting story.

Okay, on to the actual cooking...

The last time I posted about Cookies by Bess, a grandchild of Bess Hoffman was kind enough to comment on my blog and to suggest that I try the Cinnamon Logs recipe. I wanted to try them immediately, but I accidentally misplaced the book for a few months.  It somehow ended up mixed in with the gardening books and I didn't stumble across it until I needed to look up something plant-related.  I feel really bad about interrogating Mom so harshly now...

These are really nice - delicate, not too sweet, with a nice cinnamon-sugar flavor, almost as if someone had combined Mexican wedding cookies and cinnamon toast.  The small size and light texture keep them from being filling, so it is easy to nibble several without feeling guilty (because really, who can eat one cookie? Not I!). They also seem to get even better on the second day and store well for several days. These are going straight onto my "make again" list.  Thank you for the recommendation, PSherm!


Cinnamon Logs (Printable recipe)

from Cookies by Bess (1980) by Bess Hoffman


Ingredients

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 cups flour

Directions
Preheat oven to 300F.
Mix well in order given.  Shape in rolls about 1/2 inch in diameter.  Cut in little logs about 1 1/2 inches long.  Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 25 to 30 minutes.  Cool slightly.  Roll in sugar.

Chambers Thermowell Creole Fish with Vegetables

This recipe comes from a pamphlet that Chambers published to promote the Thermobaker, which allows you to use the deep well as a small oven.  The Thermobaker is really just a heat shield that protects foods from the direct heat of the well burner, with the addition of a handle that lets you get the hot pans out easily. 

The Thermobaker was introduced with the model C Chambers and had to be purchased separately, so they are a little hard to come by.  When we went to pick up a freebie Chambers cooktop (which is destined to one day be part of an outdoor cooking cart, aka the Great Outdoor Baconator), the guy asked me if I wanted "one of those pie baker thingies" that he had sitting in his garage.  I had to restrain myself from galumphing into his arms like an overgrown puppy.  I managed to mostly maintain my poker face and croaked out a subdued, "Yes," then screamed like a banshee when Farm Boy and I got back in the pickup. 

Ahem.  Perhaps I need to get out more.

Mostly I use the Thermobaker to bake small cakes or pies because it adds no noticeable heat to the kitchen, which makes a big difference in our Texas summers.  However, I have been wanting to utilize it for more main dish or entire meal cooking.  Enter Creole Fish with Vegetables:

The writers of the Chambers literature were "really" into quotation marks

 

I used cod for the fish, because that is what we had in the freezer.  I replaced the garlic salt and basil with Howie's Cajun Dust, which a local Cajun restaurant keeps on the tables to sprinkle on the free coleslaw.  They sell the seasoning mix at the checkout, which I'm sure offsets the cost of the coleslaw! 

Colorful!

Before.  All stacked up and ready to go.

After.  Although the sweet potatoes don't look that much different than before!

Both Farm Boy and I really liked this.  I wasn't sure about fish cooked with such a large quantity of tomatoes, but it really worked.  I might go a little lighter on the celery next time, but that's just my own anti-celeryite tendencies showing. 

Fruit-filled Meringue or Angel Pie

Last summer my aunt pointed out Angel Pie in the 1950 Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book and told me that I needed to try it.  I promptly forgot about it and didn't think of it again until we went grocery shopping last week and came home with a ridiculous amount of raspberries and strawberries.  The raspberries we managed to mostly consume during the week, but we still had an unopened giant container of strawberries when the weekend rolled around.  I thought of making an angel food cake to serve with them, but then remembered my aunt's recommendation of the meringue shell "pie".

Good ol' Betty Crocker!

While I have attempted a few meringue-topped pies, this was my first time to make a crunchy meringue.  I really liked it!  I think I could eat the meringue all by itself, without the berries and whipped cream.  (Farm Boy looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears when I said that - he says that the whipped cream is required.) 

I'm assuming that any topping/filling that doesn't require baking could be used to make an angel pie, but the recipe does specifically call for a lemon curd filling. Perhaps I am committing meringue blasphemy by filling it with berries, but I think it is worth the risk. 

The one problem I encountered was that the meringue stuck to the pie pan.*  I think next time I will just mound the meringue onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and form a higher ridge around the edge to form the "bowl" shape, like the heart-shaped one in the recipe photo.  I think that would make serving it a lot easier and a lot less messy. 

*Incidentally, I just noticed that the recipe calls for a 9" round layer pan instead of a pie dish.  I must have read this recipe 25 times and I missed that every time.

Angel Pie  (Printable recipe)

Adapted from Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (1950)

Ingredients

• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon lemon juice

Directions

Preheat the oven to 275F.  Line a 9" round cake pan or a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Beat egg whites until stiff (holds a point).  Gradually beat in 1/2 cup sugar, then beat in remaining sugar, alternating with lemon juice. Continue beating until very stiff and glossy.  Spoon the meringue into the pie dish or onto the baking sheet into desired shape.  Bake until delicately browned and crusty, 60 minutes for one large meringue or 40 minutes for smaller, individual meringues.  Cool completely.

Fill with whipped cream or ice cream and fruit or pre-cooked filling of your choice, such as lemon curd.

The Oddly Named Mocha Squares

It has long been told in family lore how my mom used to make "mocha squares" when my oldest sister was a kid and everyone loved mocha squares.  Until Oldest Sister had an unfortunate bout of foodborn illness after eating chow mein and mocha squares.  After that, she refused to eat them ever again.

This was long, long before my time (let's see if Oldest Sister reads this...), so I had only heard of mocha squares, but never tasted them.  I asked Mom what they were and she described a vanilla cake with white frosting and peanuts.  Um, where is the chocolate?  Where is the coffee?  This made no sense to me.  Until I borrowed Mom's cookbook.

Tried Recipes, Grafton Lutheran Ladies Aid (1961)

There in the tattered book was the recipe for mocha squares. 

I did internet searches for mocha squares and found recipes for bars that involved chocolate and coffee, which is exactly what someone would expect from the name.  Finally, in desperation, I searched for "cake squares frosted peanuts" and saw that the rest of the world calls these peanut squares or peanut cake squares.  That makes so much more sense!

Because I am such a good sister, I whipped up a batch of so-called mocha squares to share with Oldest Sister at our weekly tea and crumpets.

Lily lends a paw to the baking process

They were fairly easy to make and tasted delicious while fresh.  I gleefully arranged them on a cute 1950s platter and drove them to my mother's house where I waited for Oldest Sister to arrive so I could tell her I made her most-hated food*.  And she had the nerve to not show up that day.  Drats, foiled again!

Mocha squares!

I think I will leave the recipe off this time because while these were quite delicious initially, the cake became... gummy... once refrigerated.  I think there is probably a better recipe for peanut squares out there.  I will try again sometime in the future because the combination of the sweet frosting and the salty peanuts was really nice.  I just didn't care much for this particular cake recipe.


*Lest anyone think that I am more evil than I really am, I have a similar story involving cherry pie with canned cherry pie filling, which I cannot stand to even smell to this day.  Oldest Sister has made several things with cherry pie filling, so this was an act of revenge, not outright aggression.  Too bad it didn't work out. <sigh>

Pineapple and Marshmallow Dessert aka Pineapple Marlow

A few weeks ago I watched the following promotional video for electric appliances 1934:

Mrs. Mortimer Jones Prepares "Dinner for Eight"


I was fascinated by all the old appliances in their shiny new states and thought they must have been a welcome change from having to do everything by hand.  Of the foods Mrs. Mortimer Jones prepares, the one that caught my attention was the orange marlow for dessert.  Well, to be perfectly honest, I couldn't understand what the narrator was saying, but I did get "orange" and "dessert".  After some searching, I figured out that he was saying marlow.  More searching revealed that a marlow is a frozen dessert made with melted marshmallows.

Shortly after learning about marlows, my mom let me borrow one of her older cookbooks, Tried Recipes by the Grafton Lutheran Ladies Aid, Grafton, North Dakota (1961).   My grandparents lived in Grafton, so I looked through every recipe in the book hoping that there would be some from my grandmother, but apparently she didn't contribute any.   Grandma was known for her cooking, but apparently not into sharing her recipes!  I did find a few a few recipes contributed by her sisters, though, which was fun.

While looking through the book - which is comprised almost entirely of recipes for sweets! - I found several recipes for marlows, although most were simply called frozen desserts by the 1960s.  The pineapple one caught my eye, so I decided to give it a go.

The recipe came together fairly easily.  I was a little pressed for time, so I chilled the pineapple juice and melted marshmallow mixture in the refrigerator, but this resulted in it setting into a loose gelatin.  It mixed up fine, but I was surprised when I took it out and it was starting to set.

Since most of the other recipes I looked through called for the marlow to be placed in the freezer, I froze mine for two hours before serving. 

The verdict: This is a nice, not-too-sweet dessert that is perfect for a hot summer day.  The combination of the heavy cream and the marshmallows makes it fairly rich, so I would plan on much smaller servings next time.  Most of the recipes I found did not call for the graham cracker crust, but I thought it added a nice contrast and cut some of the richness.  Plus, graham cracker crusts are just darned good!

Daisy says she likes pineapple marlow, too!

Pineapple Marlow  (Printable recipe)

from Tried Recipes by the Grafton Lutheran Ladies Aid, Grafton, N.D. (1961)

Ingredients

• 1 cup pineapple juice
• 1 cup crushed pineapple
• 30 marshmallows
• 1 cup whipping cream, whipped
• 16 crushed graham crackers
• 1/4 cup melted butter

Directions

Put juice in double boiler, add marshmallows, stir until dissolved.  Cool, add whipped cream and crushed pineapple.  Put in 9" square pan lined with cracker crumbs which have been mixed with butter.  Sprinkle more crumbs on top.  Place in freezer until firm.