Cook like it's 1945

I'm the world's best blogger.  Said me, never.  I have had great intentions of posting something new at least once a week on this blog and of doing series of dishes and meals so the blog isn't just a random compilation of recipes.  I had intended to and promised my faithful handful of followers I would follow along with America's Test Kitchen's "The Feed" and complete all of the "Cooking through the Decades" challenges in order as they came.  I didn't.  Once I saw the recipe from 1933 for Chicken in  Pot, I hit a wall.  I just couldn't bring myself to prepare a chicken that looked as anemic and bland as the one in the picture.  So, I skipped it.  Also, five months into motherhood, I just wasn't quite getting the hang of doing it all like so many super-moms somehow manage to.  With the title of 1945's challenge being "Wacky Cake," it just seemed to fit my life at the time, so I went ahead and made it.

If you ever did one of those volcano experiments as a kid, you'll understand the science behind Wacky Cake.  You mix all of the dry ingredients together in the pan and then make three holes where you pour the oil, vinegar and water.  When you mix it up, the vinegar combines with the levener in the recipe, which causes the cake to rise.  The recipe originated in wartime America, when rationing was at its high point.  Thus, the cake has no eggs or butter.  That makes it completely healthy, right?



















 


In the end, I thought this cake was pretty good.  It didn't have intense chocolate flavor, but it was a great quick and easy cake to put together, and it is all mixed right in the pan you bake it in, so you save yourself from having to do extra dishes.  Score!  Despite the fact that the cake is lacking eggs and butter, it was moist and fluffy.  I might just turn to Wacky Cake when I need a quick dessert in the future.  It would be great with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

If you're pinching your pennies, avoiding eggs and butter, or have a chocolate cake craving, give this recipe a try and let me know what you think.  If you can't access the recipe, leave a comment or send an e-mail to delicious.dairyland@gmail.com and I'll send you a copy.

Next stop:  1983 - Chicken Nuggets


I know, I skipped the 50s, 60s and 70s.  The recipes all looked great, but I didn't get to them in time and didn't feel compelled to go back and make them.  I had some extra time on my hands (how the heck did that happen?) when the 80s challenge rolled around, which was great because who can resist chicken nuggets?  I also skipped the 90s if anyone is keeping track.  I'm hoping 2013 will find me being a better or at least more consistent blogger.

If you want to complete the challenges yourself, you can access them on "The Feed":
1933 - Chicken in a Pot
1956 - Grasshopper Pie
1968 - Cheese Fondue  
1977 - Herbed Baked Goat Cheese Salad
1999 - Thai Shrimp Scampi Sauce

Cook like it's 1905

I love America's Test Kitchen.  Love it.  Their recipes may not always be the easiest, but they never disappoint.  Until recently that is, when I tried to make a Cold-Oven Pound Cake.  One of America's Test Kitchen's websites, "The Feed" is doing a "Cooking Through the Decades" series.  They are exploring the 20th century, 100 years worth of American cuisine, one decade at a time, through weekly challenges to the site's visitors.  The first challenge was Cold-Oven Pound Cake, a recipe from 1905.   

What the heck is Cold-Oven Pound Cake you ask?  I asked that too, with my initial thought being "How can you cook something in a cold oven?"  According to The Feed, when gas ranges were initially being sold, they didn't appeal to women who were used to oil and coal ranges.  So, as a marketing technique, these new ovens were billed as time savers, because you didn't have to preheat the oven to start baking.  As was the case with this cake.  You just throw it in the oven, turn the oven on and check on it when the time is up.  So I resisted the urge to preheat my oven and started whipping together the recipe.

 

America's Test Kitchen cake

The recipe itself looked delicious, loaded with butter and sugar, with the appearance of a chiffon cake but without all of the effort.  I mean, look at that photo.  Doesn't it look amazing?

I followed the directions perfectly, but in the end, I was disappointed.  I can't quite describe the "crumb" that I ended up with.  The center was like hardened gelatin or something, the whole cake was far too dense and it ended up being a squat cake instead of the high, fluffy one pictured.  I knew I didn't do anything wrong, so why would my cake have turned out this way?

Delicious Dairyland cake

One of the things I love about America's Test Kitchen is that when something doesn't work out, you can e-mail them, Tweet them, Facebook message them, whatever, and you actually get a response.  From a real person.  Here's what Belle at America's Test Kitchen had to say regarding my failed attempt at the recipe:
"We have not had similar experiences with this cake so I cannot tell you for certain what may be going wrong, but I think it may have something to do with the heating cycle of the oven you used. Some ovens cycle very high and then shut off to maintain a constant temperature of say, 350 degrees. If this happens the cake will overbrown on top and will “set” before it has time to cook through, thus the heavy, flat cake you described.  Unlike most of our recipes, the novelty of this cake’s cooking method, ie beginning in a cold oven, does present an unknown variable that cannot be avoided...And in this case, you can blame your oven, not your baking skills."

Okay, so the cake didn't technically turn out, but that didn't stop me from eating pretty much the whole thing within a couple of days.  The flavor was awesome (it can't be all that butter and sugar, can it?), so I am sure I will try to make this again sometime down the road.  Maybe after I have bought a different oven.  So now, I implore all of you, try the recipe and let me know what kind of results you get.  And don't forget to bring me a slice!  If you can't access the recipe, leave me a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I'll share it with you.

As for me, I plan to try every historical recipe in this series.  Next stop:  1917 - Chicken A La King.

Flag Cake - My Way

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and there is no better reason to make a dessert inspired by Old Glory.  There are tons of recipes out there for various flag cakes, but I didn't feel like making a standard rectangular sheet cake, I instead wanted a layer cake with a berry filling, so there would be red, white and blue throughout the cake.  I found a great filling to use on YumSugar using fresh blueberries and strawberries.

Then I had to figure out what cake to make.  I feel like if you are making a layer cake, you have to make it from scratch. Every time I have tried to use a boxed mix to make a decorated cake, it falls apart because the structure of boxed cake mix is just too weak.  I chose my grandmother's recipe for white cake.  I was lucky enough to get a handwritten cookbook from her as a wedding shower gift a couple of years ago and couldn't wait to give her cake recipes a whirl.  I think there are members of my family who don't even have my grandmother's cake recipes, so hopefully I won't tick anyone off by posting it online for the world to see.  It ended up being one of the easiest cakes I've made.  In so many cake recipes, you have to cream the butter and sugar, then add dry ingredients alternately with liquids.  This one uses vegetable shortening instead of butter and sort of just gets dumped together, so you don't end up with a bunch of extra bowls unnecessarily dirtied.  The most difficult part of the recipe was separating the eggs since I decided to make a white cake which doesn't have egg yolks.

Now, for the frosting.  I'm not a huge frosting fan, I'm always the one asking for a middle piece of cake because I want as little frosting as possible with my cake.  I really didn't want a cake that was sickeningly sweet, so I made a little whipped cream to layer with the berries, and then a cream cheese frosting for the outside of the cake.  I love cream cheese and I really think the tanginess of it cuts through some of the sweetness in a standard buttercream.

Decorated with blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, the cake looked almost too good to eat.  Once I brought myself to cut into my masterpiece, I was so glad I did, because it was probably one of the best cakes I have ever made.

Triple Berry Flag Cake (printable recipe)
















For the Cake
Ingredients:
2 1/2 C. cake flour
1 2/3 C. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 1/4 C. milk
2/3 C. vegetable shortening
4 1/2 tsp. baking powder
5 egg whites
1 tsp. vanilla

Method:
Preheat oven to 360 degrees.  Grease and lightly flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine cake flour, sugar, salt, 3/4 C. milk and shortening.  Beat vigorously for 2 minutes.  Stir in baking powder.  Add egg whites, remaining 1/2 C. milk and vanilla.  Beat for 2 minutes more.  Evenly distribute batter between prepared pans.  Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.  Let cake cool completely before filling and frosting/decorating it.


For the Filling
Ingredients:
1 C. heavy whipping cream
4 T. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 C. fresh blueberries
1 C. fresh strawberries

Method:
Place 1/2 C. of each berry along with 2 T. sugar in a medium saucepan.  Using a fork, roughly mash the berries.  Cook the mixture over medium heat until it starts to simmer, stirring often, for about 5 minutes.  Set a mesh strainer over a medium bowl and pour mixture through it, using a rubber spatula to push as much of the mixture as possible through the strainer.  Stir in the remaining berries and set mixture aside to cool.
Beat whipping cream with remaining 2 T. sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form. Set aside.


For the Frosting
Ingredients:
1 C. butter, softened (2 sticks)
1 pkg. cream cheese, softened (8 oz.)
3 C. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1-2 T. milk
1/2 C. fresh blueberries
1/2 C. fresh strawberries
1/2 C. fresh raspberries

Method:
Combine butter and cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment.  Cream together on medium speed, then add vanilla.  Turn speed to low and gradually add powdered sugar.  Add 1 T. milk and beat on high speed until mixture gets fluffy and and is perfect spreading consistency, adding more milk if necessary.


Assembling the Cake
Trim rough edges from cakes using a serrated knife.  Place first layer, bottom side up, on a serving platter. (*Tip - put strips of parchment paper under cake edges for easy clean up without ruining your platter).  Using an offset spatula, spread cake with whipped cream.  Spoon the berry mixture over the whipped cream.  Top with remaining cake layer, bottom side up.  Using about a cup of frosting, spread a thin layer over top and sides of cake (this is a crumb coat - it is a must unless you want little pieces of cake poking through your final product).  Refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight.

Spread entire cake with about 2/3 of the remaining frosting.  Place remaining 1/3 into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip.  Use a toothpick to outline the shape of a flag on the cake.  Just before serving, fill the upper left corner with a layer of blueberries, then place a row of raspberries across the upper edge of the cake and pipe one row of frosting below it.  Repeat process, alternating raspberries and strawberries until you have covered the cake.  I didn't worry about making sure there were 13 stripes.  Depending on the size of the strawberries and raspberries you find, you may get more or less than I did.  Pipe a row of frosting around top and bottom of cake, just to finish the edges.

Enjoy!

Feast Like You're On Vacation: Dessert

In May of 2011, I took an amazing vacation to West Palm Beach, Fl. that included a cruise to Grand Bahama and Nassau.  The beaches were beautiful, the food and drinks were spectacular, and it was great to be able to relax with my family.  Even though that trip was a year ago,  my husband and I are constantly trying to relive it through food and drinks.  We have cloned the Goombay Smash from the Iguana Cafe in Nassau and the guacamole from Rocco's Tacos in West Palm Beach.  We've learned how to cook plantains two ways, and made a delicious main course of jerk chicken and Bahamian peas rice.  What could possibly be missing, you ask?  Only what I deem to be the best part of any meal...the dessert!

One of my memories from our cruise was when we stopped in at the Tortuga Rum store in Nassau.  The store was packed with so many different flavors of rum and rum cake, I didn't even bother to count them all.  We purchased multi-packs of varying flavors and then rushed back to our ship, kicked off our shoes and dug in to the little cakes (expertly carved into five equal pieces by my brother with a plastic knife).  They were so good!  When we returned to the states, we wished we had purchased more.  After every crumb of Tortuga rum cake had been eaten, we set out on a quest to find a recipe that would give us the perfect rum cake (or, as perfect as we could get without going back to Nassau).

First, for the perfect rum cake, you need the perfect rum.  After searching the internet and doing a little (or a lot) of taste testing, we arrived at a clear winner.  This cake cannot be made with anything but Cruzan Coconut Rum.

So now, after months of waiting...without further ado...

Coconut Rum Cake (printable recipe)
 

Ingredients:
For cake:
  1 box Betty Crocker Butter Recipe cake mix
  1 box vanilla pudding mix, cook and serve type (not instant!)
  4 eggs
  1/2 c. Cruzan Coconut Rum
  1/2 c. vegetable oil
  1/2 c. water
  1/2 c. shredded coconut
For glaze:
  1/2 c. butter (1 stick)
  1 c. sugar
  1/4 c. water
  1 c. Cruzan Coconut Rum

Method:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine cake mix and pudding mix in a large bowl.  Add the eggs, rum, oil and water.  Using an electric mixer, mix the ingredients until well blended (about 3 minutes).  Prepare a bundt pan by spraying it with cooking spray and sprinkling coconut on the bottom and sides of pan.  Pour batter into pan and bake for 50 to 60 minutes.  Cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

Remove cake from oven and immediately begin the glaze.  Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the water and sugar.  Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and let the mixture sit for a few minutes to cool.  Slowly stir in the rum.  If it starts to bubble, let the mixture cool a little more before adding the rest of the rum.

Remove the now slightly cooled cake from the pan and use a skewer to poke holes all over the cake.  Pour half of the glaze into the bundt pan and then carefully place the cake back in the pan.  Pour the remaining glaze over the cake and let it soak in.  Once all of the glaze has been absorbed by the cake, turn the cake out of the pan and let it cool completely.

Grab a fork and go to town!