March 1, 2009

Caramel cake is a Southern favorite, one of those cakes that if you notice one on a church buffet table, you might have to strong-arm your way past the preacher and head deacon to get a piece before it gets gone.
The cake dates at least to the last quarter of the nineteenth century; the earliest published recipe I hace been able to find is in The Dixie Cook- Book by Estelle Woods Wilcox, published in Atlanta in 1883.
This recipe is typical; it comes from Eudora Garrison’s Favorite Carolina Recipes. Mrs Garrison was a longtime food editor of The Charlotte Observer.

Yield: 1 9-inch Layer Cake

1/3 cup plus 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar, divided use
1/4 cup boiling water
3/4 cup butter or margarine
3 eggs
3 cups sifted cake flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Caramel Frosting (recipe below)

Melt the one-third cup sugar in a heavy skillet, stirring constantly until deep-brown syrup is formed - a process called caramelization. Remove from heat and slowly stir in boiling water, being careful that steam does not burn your hand. Set syrup aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease two 9-inch cake pans, place parchment paper in the bottoms, then grease and flour the bottoms and sides.

Cream butter in bowl of electric mixer. Add 11/4 cups sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until each is well-incorporated. Stir in 4 tablespoons of the reserved syrup.

Sift together the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Combine milk and vanilla. Add flour mixture to the batter alternately with the milk mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Beat until smooth. Divide batter evenly among the two prepared pans and bake 25 minutes, or until wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove pans from oven and let stand about 10 minutes, then turn out cakes onto wire rack, peel off paper and cool completely.

Frost cooled cake, stacking layers.

Caramel Frosting

3 cups (light) brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons half and half
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix sugar and half and half in a heavy saucepan and cook, stirring over low heat until syrup reaches the soft-ball stage, 235 degrees on a candy thermometer. If lacking a thermometer, check doneness by dropping a tiny bit of syrup into a cup of cold water. When the syrup can be gathered up in fingers and will almost hold its shape, it has reached the soft-ball stage.

Remove pan from heat. Stir in butter, then let syrup cool. Add vanilla and beat until frosting reaches spreading consistency. A little cream (or half-and-half) may be added is mixture is too thick.

February 10, 2009

“Kill your hogs when the wind is from the north-west. The night before you salt the meat take a string of red pepper and make a strong tea. (Let it remain on the stove over night.) Put in the tea 2 heaping tablespoons of saltpetre to every 2 gallons. Take this strong tea and pour on the salt. Salt the meat lightly the first time to run off the blood. Let the meat lie packed 3 days–longer, if the weather is very cold. Then overhaul the meat and put 1 teaspoon of pulverized saltpetre on the flesh side of each ham and rub in well. Then rub with molasses mixed with salt. Pack close for 10 days. After this overhaul again, rubbing each piece, and pack close again. Hang the meat in 3 weeks from the time the hogs were killed. Before hanging, wash each piece in warm water, and while wet roll in hickory ashes. Then smoke with green hickory wood, and tie up in cotton bags in February.”

—Minerva C. Fox, The Blue Grass Cook Book. New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1904

February 9, 2009

2 cups corn meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
1 whole egg
l /2 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons onion, (grated fine)

Mix all dry ingredients, add onion, then enough buttermilk
to make a stiff dough, add the egg, mix well then drop by spoonsfull in hot deep fat, when done they will float, lay on paper and serve with fried fish.
In Florida they fry the Hush Puppies in the grease in which
they have just fried the fish. Mrs. Jessie E. Lawson
—The American Legion Auxiliary, Beppo Arnold Knowles Post No. 32 (Greenville, MS). The Delta’s Best Cook Book. Greenville, MS, privately published. ND, probably late 1940s-early 1950s.

January 30, 2009

“One calf’s head, mashed throughly; then boil four hours; take head out; cut meat off; strain the soup; add one pint of veal, chopped fine and fried in butter; a hard boiled egg, two boiled potatoes, both chopped fine; six tablespoonfuls of flour, browned in butter. Add butter balls, size of pea, made of one cup flour, tablespoonful of butter and little salt. Season soup with salt, pepper, sweet marjoram, all-spice and cloves to taste. Everything to boil in ten minutes.”

– Ladies’ Aid Society, Freemason Street Baptist Church, Norfolk, VA: Jamestown Cook Book. Norfolk, VA: Burke & Gregory, Printers, 1907

January 26, 2009

“One cup of preserves, one cup of butter, one cup of sugar, one cup of flour, five eggs. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the flour and eggs well beaten ; lastly the preserves. Bake in a quick oven. Serve hot with sauce.”

–Mrs. W. A. Horne, Echoes Of Southern Kitchens. Compiled and published by the Robert E. Lee Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy No. 278, Los Angeles, 1916

January 22, 2009

“Take five pounds of sugar, one quart of vinegar, one and one half ounces of stick cinnamon, one and one half ounces of cloves, one ounce of white mustard; boil all together. Pare and quarter eight pounds of apples; put in boiling water; let boil till tender. Then pour the boiling vinegar and spices over the apples.” ––Mrs. Amanda Clay

–The Ladies of the Presbyterian Church, Parish, KY. Housekeeping in the Blue Grass: A New and Practical Cook Book. Cincinnati: Geo. E. Stevens & Co., 1875.

January 21, 2009

Henry “Harry” Heth was a Confederate Major General in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, commanding a division in General A.P. Hill’s Third Corps.

Heth’s war record was solid but not outstanding, so  he’s not as well known as Lee, Jackson, Pickett and other Confederate icons. Heth’s main claim to fame was that he accidentally started the battle of Gettysburg when he sent some of his men into that sleepy Pennsylvania town to look for shoes.

According to the story that accompanies the recipe, General Heth made this drink in honor of president Grover Cleveland’s election in 1884, then bottled the remainder and served it again when Cleveland (who was the only president ever elected to two non-consecutive terms) returned to the presidency in 1892.

“For 1 gallon, bake well and crisp 8 well flavored apples of medium size. When cool, place in a bowl. Mix 1 qt. of brandy, 1 pt. of arrack, 1 pt. of maraschino; pour the mixture over the apples and add 2 qts. water. Sweeten to taste, grating a little nutmeg. Stir well, but try not to break the apples.”
—Jacquieine Harrison Smith and Sue Mason Maury Halsey, Famous Old Receipts Used A Hundred Years and More in the Kitchens of the North and the South, Contributed by Descendants. Philadelphia: John C. Winston and Co., 1906.

January 17, 2009

The name for this early bread comes from the Algonquian Indian word apan, meaning, “baked.”

“Six or eight potatoes (according to size), two eggs, half a cup of sugar (brown), a cup of syrup, a little orange peel and a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Wash and grate, without peeling,  the potatoes. Beat sugar, and eggs together, mix syrup with potatoes, then sugar and eggs and orange peel and cinnamon. Put all in a dish and bake.”
—Laura Thornton Knowles, Southern Recipes Tested by Myself. New York: George H. Doran, 1913.

January 10, 2009

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse. This page is from the original 1747 edition.

To make Apple-Fritters

Beat the yolks of eight eggs, and the whites of four well together and strain them into a pan; then take a quart of cream, make it as hot as you can bear your finger in it; then put to it a quartter of a pint of sack, three quarters of a pint of ale, and make a posset of it.When it is cool, put in nutmeg, ginger, salt, and flour, to your liking.  Your batter should be pretty thick, then put in pippins sliced or scraped, and fry them in a deal of butter quick.

—Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria, VA, 1805 Edition.

January 9, 2009

Scripture cake was also known as “Bible Cake,” “Scriptural Cake” and “Old Testament Cake,” and was extremely popular in the latter part of the nineteenth century, especially in the southern Appalachians. The cake was meant as a way to teach young girls baking and Bible verses; the original recipes didn’t include the ingredients out to the side as provided on this one. The earliest recipe for this cake I have been able to find was published in the Atlanta Constitution on June 27, 1897. Some researchers believe the cake dates to the late 1700s in England or Ireland, while others claim the cake a favorite of Dolly Madison, wife of U.S. president James Madison.

Recipes differ on amounts of ingredients and occasionally the Bible verses used to find them; this recipe is based on one found in Key to the Pantry, published by the ladies of the Church of the Epiphany in Danville, Virginia in 1897. This cake may also be baked in two 9-by 5-inch loaf pans, with a reduction in cooking time of about 15 minutes.

For the cake:

3/4 cup Judges 5:25 (butter)
1 1/2 cup Jeremiah 6:20 (sugar)
5 Isaiah 10:14 (eggs, separated)
3 cups sifted Leviticus 24:5 (flour)
3 teaspoons 2 Kings 2:20 (salt)
3 teaspoons Amos 4:5 (baking powder)
1 teaspoon Exodus 30:23 (cinnamon)
1/4 teaspoon each 2 Chronicles 9:9 (spices-nutmeg, ginger, allspice)
1/2 cup Judges 4:19 (milk)
3/4 chopped Genesis 43:11 (nuts)
3/4 cup finely chopped Jeremiah 24:5 (figs
3/4 cup 2 Samuel 16:1 (raisins)
Whole Genesis 43:11 for garnish (almonds)

In a 4-quart mixing bowl or the bowl of an electric stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and spices.

Beat flour mixture into butter and egg mixture, alternating with milk, until flour is just blended in.  Beat egg whites untill stiff; fold into batter. Fold in chopped nuts, figs and raisins. Turn into 10-inch tube pan that has been greased and dusted with flour.

Bake at 325 degrees F until a cake tester inserted into cake comes out clean, about an hour and ten minutes.
Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. After fifteen minutes, turn cake out from pan onto wire rack to cool completely. Drizzle with Burnt Jeremiah Syrup.

Burnt Jeremiah Syrup:

1 1/2 cups Jeremiah 6:20 (sugar)
1/2 cup Genesis 24:45 (water)
1/4 cup Genesis 18:8 (butter)

in a 2-quart saucepan over low heat, melt sugar, stirring ocasionally to prevent sticking. After sugar melts, continue cooking, stirring continuously, until it is a deep golden brown. Add water and cook, stirring frequently, until smooth. Remove from the heat, add butter and stir till until it melts; allow to cool.

Drizzle over cooled scripture cake and garnish with whole almonds.

« Older Posts — Newer Posts »