Variety Corn-Cake

This little book has been in the bookshelf for a while, but hasn't had much - if any - use.  I told Farm Boy that he could help it earn its keep by choosing between two recipes: Sweet Potato Biscuit and Variety Corn-Cake.  

Fortunately for me, he chose Variety Corn-Cake.  I say 'fortunately' because after reading through the biscuit recipe, it seemed like kind of a pain to make.  

Variety, as it turns out, means coconut (and a boatload of baking powder). As I've said before, I am all about the coconut, so I was excited to try this.  Reading through the recipe, it seemed like a pretty standard cornbread recipe, except it is fairly sweet and contains no eggs.  

My slight deviations from the recipe: I used unsweetened coconut and baked it in an 8" cast iron skillet, (a #6 Wagner).  I also placed the pan in the oven while it was heating.  Just before baking, I added about a tablespoon of butter to the pan to melt before pouring in the batter.  This makes for some crusty goodness.

So let me just explain the greige-ness of the following photos...  The last time I purchased cornmeal, my choices were a blue cornmeal milled and packaged by a local company or a yellow cornmeal that is labeled as "medium grind" that I know from past experience is really better suited for use as concrete aggregate than for eating.  So I chose blue.  And let me tell you, it is the best tasting cornmeal I have ever had!  It has a really nice, intense corn flavor and is much softer than the gravel yellow cornmeal.  But I haven't quite adapted to the color.

Okay, this one isn't too greige.

There's some definite greige going on here.

I had some concern that it would be a crumbly mess without the egg, but while it is slightly more crumbly than a standard cornmeal, the overall texture is very light and fluffy.  The flavor of the unsweetened coconut really came through.  I think a sweetened coconut would be too much, although you might be able to cut the sugar a bit, if that's all you had.  I also now think you could add some sugar and coconut to any regular cornbread recipe and get something pretty tasty.  

Farm Boy and I both really liked this.  It was good warm, cold and even waffled!  With lots of butter and honey, of course.  We will definitely have this one again.

Mmmm, waffled Corn Cake!  And look, it's less greige!

Chocolate (and coconut) Marble Bars

I received a request in a comment to look for a recipe for chocolate marbled coconut bars.  In addition to being really excited about getting a request (yay!), I can't resist a good search challenge.  (One of my grandmothers was a librarian, so I think it's a genetic issue.)

After looking through a few books, I came across Chocolate Marble Bars in my copy of Pillsbury's Best 1000 Recipes: Best of the BAKE-OFF Collection.  This book was originally published in 1959 and contains the recipes from the first ten years of the Pillsbury baking competition.  These recipes pre-date the use of the convenience foods seen in later competitions, but instead call for Pillsbury flour and other pantry ingredients.  My copy is a facsimile printing from 2009.  The pages are nice quality, but the binding is about two page turns away from disintegrating.  I saw an original copy at an estate sale a few months ago, but I decided to leave it for someone else.  I'm kind of regretting that now...

The recipe says it was the Senior Second Prize Winner by Mrs. William Sawdo, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, but it doesn't state what year.  Fortunately with a quick search, Google News tells us that it was 1951.

As an aside, I've often wondered why women had to give up using their first names after they married.  None of the three contestants mentioned in the article has her first name listed, but the woman who awarded the prizes does.  Interesting...

These came together fairly easily.  My first attempt at melting the chocolate resulted in an oily, chunky mess.  The second time around I used cream instead of water and got a more ganache-like mixture.

I don't think I've ever 'marbled' anything before - that was kind of fun!

We initially tried these bars while they were still warm, but in my opinion they are much better when completely cooled.  The texture is that of a dense cake and the coconut flavor was more pronounced when cooled.  The chocolate is very "dark chocolate" tasting, which I like, but one of my tasters found it off-putting.  Semi-sweet or milk chocolate might have a wider appeal.

Chocolate Marble Bars (Printable recipe)
from Pillsbury's Best 1000 Recipes: Best of the BAKE-OFF Collection

Ingredients
2 squares unsweetened chocolate (2 ounces)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup hot water (or cream)
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 cup softened butter
3 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup coconut

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375F.  Grease a 15.5x10x5x1" jellyroll pan or two 9x9x2 inch pans.

Melt the chocolate, 1/4 cup sugar and hot water or cream in a double boiler.   Cool.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

Cream together the butter, 1/2 cup sugar and brown sugar.  Add the eggs, milk and vanilla; beat well.  Gradually add the flour mixture and mix well.  Stir in the coconut.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan.  Drizzle chocolate mixture over the batter in a diagonal pattern.  Cut through batter with a knife in opposite direction to give a marbled effect.

Bake at 375F for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Coconut Bars

A local medical association has a twice yearly book sale to raise money for medical field scholarships.  Despite the fact that I'm in danger of being crushed to death by my cookbook hoard, 9 books followed me home from the fall sale.  Most of them came from the clearance room, so my total cost was $11.50, with the big splurge of $5 for the Julia Child book.

Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapes by James Beard, Austrian Cooking & Baking by Gretel Beer, The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken, Eat Great, Lose Weight by Suzanne Somers, Homemade Cookies Cook Book from Better Homes and Gardens, The Way to Cook by Julia Child, Magic Chef Cooking, Lorain Cooking, Southern Plantation Cooking by Corinne Carlton Geer

Don't ridicule me for the Suzanne Somers book.  It violates my rule against diet books and she can be a little "out there" sometimes, but she knows tasty food.  I had copied a few recipes out of that book in the past, so I couldn't pass it up for a quarter.

Interestingly (to me, at least), the Magic Chef cookbook is a later edition of the Lorain cookbook beside it. From my brief searching, it looks like Lorain made oven regulators that were used on many different stove brands, much like my Chambers stove has a Robertshaw oven regulator.  I would guess at the time the Lorain book was  published (1928), temperature-regulated ovens were a modern marvel.


I wanted to justify adding more books by baking something from one of them for Sunday tea and crumpets.  Alas, I had a serious craving for these coconut bars and since I hadn't blogged about them before, I decided to go for it.

Cookies by Bess (1980) by Bess Hoffman

This book did come from one of the previous book sales, so that counts for something, right?  Right?  It has also become one of my favorite books for cookies and bars.  Bess Hoffman knew a good cookie!

These are really good, with a brown sugar shortbread base, topped with a gooey butterscotch/coconut filling that becomes brown and crisp on top. It's been a hit every time I have made it.

Snowflakes!

Coconut Bars (Printable recipe)
from Cookies by Bess (1980) by Bess Hoffman

Crust
1 cup sifted flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/8 teaspoon salt

Topping
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups chopped shredded coconut

Directions
For the crust: Sift together the flour, brown sugar and salt.  Cut in the butter.  Press  mixture into greased 8x8x2 inch pan.  Bake at 375F for 10 minutes.

For the topping: Beat eggs slightly; add sugar.  Add flour, soda and salt to eggs.  Fold in vanilla and coconut.  Spread evenly over hot baked crust.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes longer at the same temperature.  Cool and cut into squares.