Cookbook #61: Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes, 17th annual. The Pillsbury Company, 1966.

This is another of my mother’s Bake-Off Cookbooks. So far I’ve done three Bake-off years: 1964 (Cookbook #4) and 1959 (Cookbook #10) and 1963 (Cookbook #27). I refer you to the 1964 blog post for a more thorough discussion of these booklets and an explanation of Mother’s rating system for recipes.

Looks like my mother barely used this Bake-Off Cookbook. She marked two recipes, “Macaroon Cookie Cake” and ”Nutty Fudge-Wiches” as “Good“, but that’s it. None of the recipes look familiar to me.

“Busy Lady” is the theme throughout the book. Look at this:

The busy lady of 1966 took care of the baby, golfed, served a cake, and shopped. Always in a dress!

Shortcuts abound for the busy lady. Dessert recipes in this cookbook employ self-rising flour, cake mixes, packaged frosting, pudding mixes, canned pie filling, and even ice cream to shorten time spent in the kitchen. Main dishes include canned corned beef, canned chicken, frozen french fries, gravy mix, canned vegetables, and canned and dried soups. This is not a “from scratch” cookbook.

I am a “from scratch” cook, and I had trouble finding a recipe I liked enough to try in The Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes cookbook. I will keep this cookbook only for the sake of nostalgia!

For this blog, I decided to try “Apple Pan Walnut Cake”. It is semi-nutritious, with apples and walnuts, and the sugar and fat content is not terrible.

I will make my own apple pie filling from scratch (I want this to be good, not fast!), and I will cut the recipe in half.

Apple Pan Walnut Cake
serves about 6-8

For the apples:

• 2 large apples, such as Granny Smiths or any tart cooking apple, peeled, cored, and sliced into fairly thin slices
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 tablespoons boiled cider, or apple juice (optional)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons flour

For the batter:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup (generous) chopped walnuts

For the topping:

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Slice the apples into an 8- or 9-inch round pan or a 8×8-inch square pan. Add the brown sugar and mix it into the apples with your fingers; let the mixture set a few minutes. Add the cinnamon, boiled cider (if you are using it), and the two tablespoons flour and mix.

Combine the 1 cup flour, white sugar, baking soda, and salt. Sprinkle this mixture over the apples.

Whisk together the eggs, vanilla, oil, and most of the walnuts (save a few for the top of the cake). Pour the mixture in the pan. Take a big spoon or spatula and gently mix it all up, only until just blended, like when you are making muffins.

Meanwhile, combine the topping ingredients (sugar, sour cream, baking soda) in a saucepan and stir and heat just until it boils.

Bake at 350˚ for about 35-40 minutes, until the cake springs back when you touch it in the center. Make fork holes in the cake and pour the topping over it. Sprinkle the reserved walnuts on top.

Comments

Success! This is a good, homey dessert. I will add it to my repertoire of apple-nut semi-healthy desserts.

I used granny smiths and after I peeled them, I cut them into quarters and cored them. Then I sliced them thinly crosswise (not lengthwise) across each quarter, so that each apple piece is small. I thought this would better resemble “canned apple pie filling”.

I didn’t use the entire two apples, because I felt the pan was full enough when I got to this point:

Turns out I was right, because when I baked the cake, it almost overran the pan. Next, I added the brown sugar and rubbed it into the apples. This macerates the apples, drawing out some of the juice and softening them.

I looked at the apples in the pan and thought: boiled cider! They begged me to pour a couple tablespoons over them. Cinnamon too. I stirred in a couple tablespoons flour before I added the dry flour mixture and the wet batter mixture. This is pretty much how I’d prepare apple pie filling if I were making it from scratch. Why pull a can from the shelf, containing preservatives and sugar and who knows exactly what, when I can make it using fresh apples?

Below is after the wet and dry ingredients were added and mixed with the apples. This is why it’s called a “pan” cake: the mixing is done in the pan and not in a mixing bowl. That busy lady needs to go out and play golf, no time to mix up a batter in a bowl.

Here is my baked cake, after the topping was added. Not terribly pretty. As I said, it almost overran the pan. Next time I would use fewer apples or an 8-inch square pan with a touch more capacity.

In spite of its looks in the pan, Apple Pan Walnut Cake looked pretty darn good in the  depression roseware that I inherited from Nana, my father’s mother.

I learned from my previous cookbook that this roseware was given away – not sold – during the depression. They put it in boxes of oatmeal as a sales tactic. Movie theaters had “Dish nights, collect a complete set of fine dinnerware completely free. Anything that was free in the 1930s received a warm welcome.”

This dessert was certainly a warm welcome. Nutty and apple-y and almost like a pudding. Yum.

Cookbook #55: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 3, Bea-Cas. Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1968.

This is the third in a series of 12 food encyclopedia volumes. I discussed the first two volumes here: Volume 1 and Volume 2. I pick this volume from the shelf and settle into a cozy chair and start reading.

Catfish, a Mississippi Valley favorite, is the first entry. The oldest records for cauliflower date to the 6th century BC, from the area around the Mediterranean, near where we visited Turkey last spring. Cheese was made and eaten in Biblical times, and when the Pilgrims set sail for the new continent, they took round Dutch cheeses with them. This encyclopedia includes a useful chart of different cheeses and a “Cheese Cook Book” with recipes ranging from soups with cheese to creamy macaroni and cheese to Swiss fondue to desserts.

Cheesecakes. I am halfway through a good article on the history of cheesecakes when I think to look back to see who wrote it: James A. Beard! I have two of his cookbooks and have always enjoyed his writing (Beard on Bread was my 5th entry in this series). The article begins:

“If you’re as fond of cheesecake as I am, you might like to join me in honoring its inventor. It seems to me that anyone who could think up such a fantastically wonderful concoction deserves a statue in his memory. The only difficulty in memorializing cheesecake’s originator is that no one has the faintest idea who he, or she, was. It might have been an ancient Greek, for they made cheesecakes of a simple kind.

Cheesecake isn’t at all new. Its’ a rediscovery. When I was twenty years younger, cheesecake wasn’t so widely known as it is today, and the art of making it was pretty much of a specialty in restaurants serving German, Austria, or French cuisine. Nowadays, it has grown so popular that it rivals apple pie as an American favorite.”

And I come to the entry for “chef”. “In French, the word means ‘chief’, but in both French and English it has become a culinary term for a superior male cook, head of his kitchen.” The article continues with the emphasis on “he” and discusses several famous male chefs. It ends with “As for trying to explain why great, creative cooks have practically always been men and not women, prudence dictates an unbreakable silence.”

That was 1968. We’ve come a long way, ladies!!

On to cherries (I learn the origin of maraschino cherries), chicken (a section called a “Chicken Cookbook”), and Chinese food. My mother marked several recipes, and I found some recipes I’d like to try in the Chinese section.

Chocolate and Christmas cookbooks, citrus and clams, coconut and coffee. Cookies! The section on corn reminded me that I should make double corn sticks in my cast-iron corn stick pan. Crabs and cranberries. The final entry is crême brûlée.

I marked several sections and recipes for my personal notes.

My mother’s note of “don’t panic!” on the black bottom pie recipe made me smile:

I remember this pie from childhood, so I checked my recipe index card box. Yes, I was right! When I moved out from my childhood home, this is one of the recipes I copied and took with me. It is slightly different from the above recipe, so my guess is that Mother included improvements in her version.

For this blog, I decide to try a dessert cake using sour cherries. Why? I bought a jar from Whole Foods quite a few months ago (forget why) and they need to be used.

Here is the scan of the recipe for Cherry Upside-Down Cake:

This recipe is a bit high in calories, but we usually treat ourselves to something special on Saturday nights. I recall that sour/tart cherries are supposed to be good for you. I googled and found this 2013 article in Medical Daily that touts tart (sour) cherries as “America’s super food”, reporting that they are beneficial for: arthritis, blood sugar levels, lowering risk of heart disease and colon cancer, and improving memory. And, they help you get a good night’s sleep!

I made a few changes in the recipe as I went along. I was taking the photo of the jar of cherries and the bottle of vanilla that my daughter-in-law brought me from Mexico caught my eye:

Hmmm, I think I’ll add some vanilla to the batter! And then I thought of cinnamon – yes, I’ll add cinnamon too. For the cherry sauce, I decided to reduce the cherry juice before I added the sugar and cornstarch. This should deepen both the flavor and the color of the sauce.

The following is my version of Cherry Upside-Down Cake.

Cherry Upside-Down Cake
serves 6, generously

• 3/4 cup butter, divided (1/4 cup and 1/2 cup)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 16 ounces water-packed pitted red sour (tart) cherries
• lemon rind, grated (from 1 lemon)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• Cherry Sauce

Melt 1/4 cup butter in a 9-inch square baking pan. (I used a metal pan and did this on the stove top; you could use a glass pan and melt the butter in it in a microwave oven.) Sprinkle the brown sugar over the melted butter in the pan.

Drain the cherries, saving the juice for the sauce. Spoon the cherries evenly over the brown sugar, then top with the lemon rind and cinnamon.

Cream the 1/2 cup butter, gradually add the sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add these dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Spread the batter on the cherries. (The batter is thick; I put big dollops of batter on the cherries and used my fingers to spread the batter to cover the cherries.)

Bake at 375˚ for 30 minutes. Top with Cherry Sauce.

Cherry Sauce

• 3/4 cup reserved cherry juice
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch

Boil the cherry juice until the volume is reduced by about a third and the color is a rich red. Cool. Mix the sugar and cornstarch, then add this mixture to the reduced cherry juice. Put back on the stove and heat until it boils and thickens.

Here are the cherries in the pan:

The cake, baked:

And our one-sixth portions (they are big!):

Yum yum yum! This dessert is way too good. The tart and flavorful cherries under the brown sugar and cinnamon and vanilla-laced cake – perfect. A homey dessert that I would love to have a lot if it weren’t for the calories.

I slept really well after eating this dessert, though! Cherries, the perfect sleep aid.

Cookbook #15: Baking Without Fat. George Mateljan, Health Valley Foods, Inc., Villard, NY, 1996.

I like cakes and muffins and quick breads. In order to fit these treats into a healthy eating plan, I always keep my eye out for recipes that are low calorie or low fat, and that add nutritional punch. Hence I picked up Baking Without Fat in the late 1990s. I think I found it on a cold and hungry January day, near the check-out counter at McGuckins in Boulder. (I am always watching calories in January!)

The author of this book is George Mateljan, founder of Health Valley Foods. A Google search reveals that he sold that company and now runs a not-for-profit called The George Mateljan Foundation for the World’s Healthiest Foods. He is the author of a book titled “The World’s Healthiest Foods” (2006).

I admit, I don’t remember cooking any recipe from Baking Without Fat. The recipes call for ingredients I do not keep on hand – for instance, frozen concentrated apple juice, and baby food jars of carrots, sweet potatoes, or prunes. Reading the recipes now, I know I am going to have to go to the store to make any of the recipes in the book.

I take some time to read the introductory chapters. Matelian explains some of the functions of fat in baking. Fat adds a creamy texture and pleasing mouth feel, acts as a carrier for flavor, and can alter the way the flavor is perceived. Fat makes baked goods moist and tender. To make baked goods taste good without fat, the author and others at Health Valley Foods spent “hundreds of hours” in the kitchen to develop a “whole new method” of baking. Here is the basic plan:

• use nonfat dairy products instead of full-fat ones
• substitute pureed fruit for fat
• use egg whites instead of whole eggs
• highlight natural flavors to make up for the lack of fat

Well, it’s worth a try. I’m a bit hesitant because I’ve clipped and tried a few recipes employing these same strategies over the years, and usually have not been happy with the results. I do like my my Irresistable Low-Fat Brownies but those use non-fat sweetened condensed milk – not pureed fruit – to provide a good mouth feel. Pureed fruit would be a healthier choice because it will add nutritional punch.

The baby food purees called for in the recipes do not appeal to me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mateljan gives instructions for making your own purees from apples, apricots, carrots, prunes, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes. This will add more cooking time, but I’m retired! Instead of sugar, the recipes are sweetened with fruit juice concentrates, honey, maple syrup, and molasses. Whole grain flours are advised. Cheesecakes and frostings employ non-fat yogurt and/or yogurt cheese. Fruit crisps are topped with non-fat granola. This all sounds great to my healthy-food conscience, but do these recipes have a chance of tasting good?

For this blog, I chose the recipe “Coco Garden Cake”, which includes chocolate, carrots, zucchini, applesauce, honey, and spices. Mateljan states that pan size is important for good baking results, so I go ahead and make a full recipe for the just two of us. I might have to waste some, but heck, this is like a chemistry experiment! So I gathered the many, many ingredients for this recipe (including a huge jug of honey) and went for it.

Note the two book excerpts (above). For each recipe in this book, the recipe is on the right page, and a discussion of the recipe, including nutritive information, is on the left. This makes the book feel friendly and personal, like the author really cares that each recipe is well-received.

Coco Garden Cake

•  3/4 cup coarsely grated zucchini
• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1 1/2 cups honey
• 1/2 cup frozen apple juice concentrate (defrosted)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel (the rind from one lemon)
• 2 egg whites, unbeaten
• 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3/4 cup grated, peeled carrots
• 2 egg whites, beaten to soft peaks

Preheat the oven to 325˚. Set the grated zucchini between paper towels and press to remove excess moisture.

Stir together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

In another bowl, combine the honey, juice concentrate, vanilla, lemon peel, 2 unbeaten egg whites, applesauce, and grated carrots. Stir this mixture to combine (I used the hand mixer to beat the other 2 egg whites, then used the same beaters to combine the honey mixture). Combine the honey mixture with the flour mixture and the drained zucchini and the beaten egg whites. Gently but thoroughly fold the mixtures together; be careful not to over mix.

Pour batter into a 10-inch nonstick fluted tube pan and bake at 325˚ for 55-60 minutes. Cool at least 30 minutes before removing from the pan.

Comments

The above photo is not too impressive; I had a little trouble with the cake sticking to my non-stick pan. Honestly, when I took my first bite of this cake, served as our dessert after a Saturday night dinner, I thought it was a failure. Neither of us commented on it at the time, either favorably or non-favorably. But the next day, I took a little bite mid-day and then had to have another bite. The texture is moist and tender, it’s sweet but not too sweet, and the flavors of chocolate and spices are wonderful. When dessert time rolled around again, my dining partner opted for the cake instead of a low-fat yogurt ice cream cone. I did too. Hmm, this cake is really good! I think it’s better the second day.

And even better the third day, when I decided to take more photos, to show the good texture of the cake. The slice below is 1/16 of the cake, so about 200 calories; it’s a nice hefty chunk of cake for that many calories. (I should have this for breakfast!) I kept grabbing cake crumbs as I was trying to make the “perfect” slice for my photo. That’s when I decided to enter this recipe officially in this blog. It is good! And I’ll try more recipes from this book in the future.