More apples

How about some more apple ideas for those of us regretting how many we schlepped home from the orchard. It's like planting ten zucchini plants...what was I thinking?

This time from the Antioch Cook Book, no date, but I'm guessing 1920s. It appears to me to be a community church project. I love how very succinct the recipes are; most of merely a list of ingredients. Clearly the woman reading is supposed to have ample knowledge of what to do with them.

Here's an apple recipe written in pencil on the back flyleaf, it comes with a few more instructions:

Spiced Apple Salad
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 cup cinnamon drops
1 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (get your Menu Magic every day)
mayonnaise

Heat sugar, water, and cinnamon drops slowly until candy is dissolved. Put peeled and cored apple in syrup and cook until tender. remove and chill. Fill centers with cheese and nuts mixed with mayonnaise. Serve on lettuce.

Mrs. Pearl McDonald supplies a recipe for Apple Dumplings:

1 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
3 T shortening
1/2 c milk
4 apples
4 T sugar
2 t butter

Sift flour, baking powder, salt, add shortening, and just enough milk to make a dough. Divide into four parts, roll, place one apple in each part after paring and slicing, add 1 t sugar, 1/4 t butter in each apple, fold dough around apple. Place in pan, sprinkle remainder of sugar and butter on each dumpling, also remainder of milk. Bake 20 minutes in hot oven in a covered pan. Serve with hard sauce or rich cream.

I've seen other dumpling recipes in which you mix up the ingredients for the sauce and pour it in the pan, then the apples and sauce bake together so I was surprised to see this dry version. I think I'd like it better, I always imagined the bottom half would be squishy otherwise.


Mrs Clarence Tompkins is no-nonsense with her recipe for Apple Salad:

3 c apples, 1 c white grapes, 1 c nuts, 1 c marshmallows, 2 c celery, mayonnaise dressing.

That's it, just the list.

People ate a helluva lot of mayonnaise in the past.

Salad No. 1

I have tons of apples and a new rule to use walnuts every day to make my menu magic. That means turning to this book from the Culinary Arts Institute, 1951, for a ham and apple salad for lunch.

Ham and Apple Salad
1 1/2 cups diced ham
1 1/2 cups diced apple
1/2 c chopped celery
1 head lettuce or romaine, shredded
mustard French dressing

Combine all ingredients, adding enough dressing to coat, toss together in salad bowl. Serves six.

What is mustard French dressing? It's this:

1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 t salt
few grains cayenne (don't get carried away here, one extra grain and you might taste it)
1/4 t white pepper
2 T chopped parsley
2 t prepared mustard

Combine and beat or shake thoroughly before using. Makes 1 1/4 cups. Rub the bowl with a crushed clove of garlic before adding salad. (Then chew the clove so that you'll actually get some garlic flavor in your salad.)

Or in my case, it's something out of a bottle with a little mustard added--for the sake of speed--that probably bears as little resemblance to the real thing in taste as it does to any real food substance, given the list of ingredients on the label.

And it's not a bad combination at all, notice I threw in some walnuts. Mmmm, I can taste Tinkerbell dancing on my tongue. Apparently she hasn't taken a bath in awhile. Thank you Culinary Arts Institute for giving me 482 new salads. I won't say 500 because 18 of them are for molded salads. In my book, if you mold it, it isn't salad. It's either sweet and fruity which makes it dessert, or it's got vegetables and/or meat in it which makes it an abomination. And I'm highly suspicious of the frozen salads too.

Orchard a la mode

Nothing warms your heart like your darling child coming downstairs exclaiming, “What are you cooking, Mom? Ug, I hope the house doesn’t smell like this all day.”

But things got better ‘cuz it was apple orchard day! We went with the whole tribe and took the hayride out to the orchard to pick our own. Ground apples were cheaper so I came back with a mess of those to immediately process into an apple pie, applesauce, and apple muffins. I’ve still got about 15lbs, plenty for more apple adventures tomorrow.

I made The Ultimate Pie Crust this morning in anticipation: 2 ½ cups cake flour, 1 cup European butter, a pinch of salt, and iced vodka. The pie was no nonsense, what I’d do on my own, but by chance, exactly what’s listed in the Household Searchlight Recipe Book, 1936. I had my daughter help me: her first pie!

Apple Pie

Fill a pastry-lined pie pan with thinly sliced apples. Sprinkle generously with sugar which has been combined with flour in the proportion of 1 cup sugar to 1 T flour. (I used much less sugar because these apples were very sweet.) Sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon. Dot with butter. Cover with top crust. Bake 425°F  about 45 minutes. A few drops of lemon juice may be added if the apples lack flavor. (Nope, these are very flavorful, sweet honeycrisps.) If desired, omit the top crust, and cover the pie with marshmallows after the apples are tender. (Not!) Brown in slow oven.

I made these spice muffins from the same book but with chopped apples added. When you take muffins and cupcakes out of the oven, you should immediately tilt them on their sides if you're going to let them cool in the pan, otherwise the steam will make the bottoms mushy.

Spice Muffins

2 cups flour

1 egg, well beaten

½ cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 t ginger

1 t nutmeg

1 t cinnamon

3 t baking powder

1 t salt

Sift flour, measure, and sift with spices, baking powder, and salt. Combine egg, sugar, shortening, and milk. Add dry ingredients. Beat only until smooth. Fill well-oiled muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake in hot oven (425° F) 15-20 minutes. 1 dozen.

September and cinnamon

I live in an old house with window air conditioners and September is that odd time of year when I can’t decide if today is the day to put them in storage or if it’s going to be too sultry to sleep upstairs by nightfall. There’s a lovely breeze thru the main floor when all the windows are open plus I’m cheap, and I’d rather get by with open windows for cooling and warming the house up by turning on my oven than turning on the heater.  Consequently, fall tends to bring on a spat of baking fever. Sounds like the perfect time to check in on the 1964 Pillsbury 15^th Grand National Bake-Off and see what was cooking.

Starting with what the previous owner of the cookbook has marked:

French Pear Pie

Drain 1 can (1 lb. 13 oz.) pear halves. Arrange pears cut side up, in an unbaked pie crust in a 9 inch pan.

Combine and mix well:

 3 T flour

½ cup sugar

¼ t ginger

1 ½ cups sour cream

Pour over pears.

Combine:

½ cup flour

¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ t nutmeg

Cut in ¼ cup butter, sprinkle over filling.

Bake at 400° for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

I have a very similar recipe that is one of my go-to’s for a simple but seems like you fussed dessert. It uses milk and butter in place of the sour cream and didn’t have the topping, I added that on my own. I like it because I always have these things on hand so I can whip it up quick. (Yeah, I usually have pie crust in my freezer. I’m saving the search for the ultimate pie crust for a future post.) I’ve tried apples and peaches, fresh and canned instead of the pears, as I’m sure would work here. A little oatmeal in that topping too. I think I’ll try this sour cream version the next time, I might have to switch!

Parmesan Biscuits

Sift together:

1 ½ cups flour

2 t baking powder

1 t celery seed

½ t salt

Cut in ¼ cup shortening and ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese until particles are fine.

Combine 1 egg with 1/3 cup milk. Add to dry ingredients. Stir until dough clings together. Knead on floured surface 10 times.

Roll out to ½ inch thickness. Cut into rounds with floured 2 inch cutter. Place on top of casserole or on baking pan. Bake 450° for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Sweet Applets

Sift together:

1 ½ cups flour

2 t baking powder

½ t salt

½ t nutmeg

Add ½ cup sugar to 1/3 cup shortening, creaming well. Blend in 1 egg.

Add 1/3 cup milk alternately with dry ingredients.

Stir in 1 ½ cups pared, shredded apple.

Fill well-greased muffin cups 2/3 full.  Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Remove from pan, let cool 10 minutes.

Dip in ¼ cup melted butter and roll in ½ cup sugar and 1 t cinnamon.

Anyone else smell the cinnamon baking right  about now?

Eggs and biscuits

Sometimes one acquires leftover odd ingredients from an experiment that isn’t likely to be repeated. In my case, it’s a box of sugar cubes leftover from building a replica of the Washington monument for a 5^th grade project. (Used a sander to shape the sides--powdered sugar flying everywhere. It was sure fun getting that tower glued to wobbly poster board into the building. Ever notice that when your kids have a project, YOU have a project? We got an A on that one.) 

So it’s been awhile, and I still haven’t had enough ladies over for afternoon tea to put a dent in it, and sugar doesn’t go bad, does it? So I think I’ll be trying this recipe from the Glenwood Cook Book, 1933. Maybe for an evening snack tonight with some caffeine-free tea. 

Orange biscuits

2 cups flour

4 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

2 T shortening

1 T grated orange rind

3/4 cups cold water

orange juice and cube sugar

Sift dry ingredients, work in shortening and add grated orange rind moistened with 3/4 c water. Roll to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into biscuits. On half the rounds place a cube of sugar which has been moistened with orange juice. Cover the sugar with another round of dough and press together gently. Spread the tops with powdered sugar slightly moistened with orange juice, sprinkle a fine grating of orange rind over them and bake at 450 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.

Here’s another recipe from the same cook book I want to try. I do essentially the same thing with shrimp and feta cheese in place of the eggs and American. That with some nice crusty homemade rosemary bread to sop it up with. Hmmm, maybe that would be good tonight too. Could sneak some zucchini into it.

Spanish Eggs

2 T salad oil

1 onion

1 green pepper

2 c tomatoes

1 t sugar

1 T Worcestershire sauce

4 T dry bread crumbs

American cheese

1 t salt

Put oil into saucepan and in it sauté, until golden brown, the onion and pepper, finely chopped. Then add tomatoes and bring to boiling point. Add remaining ingredients and cook until onion is soft. Pour into an oiled shallow baking dish, and break into it as many eggs as desired. Season eggs. Cover with grated cheese and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes.

Here it is: with summer squash added to the vegetable saute, and feta instead of American cheese.

curds and whey

You can't possibly get easier than this. One ingredient. One.

BUTTERMILK CREAM CHEESE.--A slight variation from the cottage cheeses just described is buttermilk cream cheese. This cheese is formed from the curd of buttermilk, which is finer in texture and not so likely to become tough as that formed from ordinary sour milk. To prepare buttermilk cream cheese, warm the buttermilk slowly, being careful not to allow the temperature to rise beyond 100 degrees Fahrenheit. As the milk is heated, the curd will form and will gradually sink to the bottom of the vessel. After this occurs, remove the whey and mix the curd with a little thick cream. The result will be a mixture having a delightfully creamy consistency.

Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2, 1918.

I used a double boiler cuz I figured that would be the easiest way to control the heat. Sure enough, the buttermilk  curdled like a dream leaving behind a slightly sour/tart soft version of cottage cheese. I skipped adding the cream and cut up a very juicy sweet peach over it instead. It might have warranted a touch of sugar too but it made a lovely dinner as is. I guess that's really two ingredients. Just two.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

When she had to pack all our family belongings into a few trunks to move overseas, space was at a premium, so my mom chose to take a small paperback novel sized edition of the red plaid Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. This is the book I used through my teen years. When I was a young adult, my mom gave me a larger, nicer copy. I think each one of my siblings in turn received one as a cooking bible. It would be hard to choose just one cook book to take to a desert island, but if I had to, like my mother, I think I might chose this one. It doesn’t have the glossy pictures of food porn that make many cook books more like coffee table books than useful kitchen tools, but it does have a wealth of simple familiar recipes that everyone loves.

This is all that’s left of the page that held the Pineapple Upside Down Cake recipe. I folded it up again and tucked it back between the pages when I was done with the photo. The bottom half is missing but I still remember what to do. Works with canned peaches or pears too. Maybe add a touch of cinnamon or nutmeg. When recipes are loved too much do they become Real too?

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

1 8 ½ oz. can sliced pineapple

3 T butter

½ c brown sugar

4 maraschino cherries, halved

½ c shortening

½ c granulated sugar

1 egg

1 t vanilla

1 c flour

1 ¼ t baking powder

¼ t salt

Drain pineapple, reserving syrup. Halve pineapple slices. Melt butter in 8x8x2 inch baking pan. Add brown sugar and 1 T reserved syrup. Add water to remaining syrup to make ½ c. Arrange pineapple in bottom of pan. Place cherry half in center of each pineapple slice. Cream shortening, add sugar, then egg and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with reserved syrup. Pour into pan. Bake 350° for 30-45 minutes. Let cool a few minutes, then place a plate over the bottom and invert. Serve warm.