Cookbook #101: Bake-Off 34th Contest Cookbook, The Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1990.

The earliest Bake-Off cookbook I covered in this blog was published in 1959; I discuss these cookbooks more thoroughly in my blog post covering the 1964 Bake-Off Cookbook. By 1990, Pillsbury was producing monthly Bake-Off or Classic Cookbooks, known as “magazine cookbooks”, as I discussed in this post.

This booklet was my mother’s. She only marked one recipe: “Praline Pecan Cheesecake”, “yummy!” and “rich!”. The ingredients of this cheesecake are: a Pillsbury Cake Mix, butter, cream cheese, sugar, eggs, toffee candy bars, brown sugar, pecans, and caramel ice cream topping. If you cut this 9-inch pie into 16 slices, each has 520 calories. I’ll never make this cheesecake, it is too rich and yummy for my style of eating.

The Bake-Off 34th Contest Cookbook offers recipes for salads, breads, brunches, main dishes, cookies, and desserts. Although some are from-scratch, many of the recipes include canned or frozen veggies (I prefer fresh), refrigerated biscuits or crescent rolls, or packaged pie or pizza crusts. Some of the cookie and cake recipes call for brownie or cake mixes. Since I prefer recipes from scratch, I am not going to keep this cookbook, although I saved a couple cookie recipes to try sometime. (Cookies are a weakness of mine!)

For this blog, I will try Tropical Oat Bran Muffins. This is a from-scratch recipe. It calls for whole bran cereal, bananas, macadamia nuts, coconut, and pineapple. These should be great for breakfast!

Note that the recipe calls for either “whole bran cereal with oat bran” or “fortified whole bran cereal”. I have a box of Kellogg’s™ All Bran cereal, and it doesn’t have oat bran in it, so I’ll call my version “Tropical Muffins”. I made two-thirds of the recipe (so it would yield 12 muffins), used more banana than called for (I had 2 ripe bananas), and used a little less flour (high-altitude adjustment). I didn’t make the “fruit spread” (a mixture of lite margarine and jam). My version of this recipe is below.

Tropical Muffins
makes 12 muffins

• 1 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
• 1/2 cup bran cereal
• 1/2 cup coconut
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2-3 ounces macadamia nuts, chopped
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• scant 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• generous 1/2 cup mashed banana (about 2 ripe bananas)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2/3 of an 8-ounce can of crushed pineapple

Prepare a 12-cup muffin pan, either by lining with paper cups or lightly greasing.

Stir together the flour, cereal, coconut, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and macadamia nuts. Set aside.

Use a mixer to beat the butter with the white and brown sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and banana and blend well. Stir in the vanilla and crushed pineapple.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Fill the muffin cups 2/3 full.

Bake at 350˚ for 25-30 minutes.

Excellent muffins! I want to make them again already. These have a denser texture than some muffins, since they are chock full of fruits, nuts, and coconut. We both liked them.

Cookbook #72: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 4, Cre-Fin. Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1966.

This is the fourth in a series of 12 food encyclopedia volumes. I discussed the first three volumes here: Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3.

The first entry in this volume is “Creole Cookery”. I marked a couple recipes to try, especially “Louisiana Pecan Cake” with 3 1/2 cups pecans and a whole cup of whiskey! Next come crepes, croaker (a fish that makes a grunting noise), croissants, and crumpets. The curry recipes look interesting, as they do not rely solely on American curry powder. Czechoslavakian and Danish cooking follow. Devil’s food cake! James Beard contributed an article on desserts.

Following James Beard’s essay is one entitled “Dinner-Party Desserts from a Jittery Cook”, by Margot Sandler. Jittery!

“Well, jittery or not, I like to give dinner parties, and I have learned to avoid some of the more common pitfalls. I have found, for instance, that there is nothing better for soothing the nerves than the thought of the good dessert waiting calmly in the refrigerator.”

I stop and read the section on “Diet”, an essay titled “The Truth About Diets” by Fredrick J. Stare, MD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health. An excerpt:

“. . . with the automobile, the outboard engine, electric golf cart, and now the motorized toothbrush, there seems to be a conspiracy against adults securing any physical exercise.”

I hardly think my “motorized” toothbrush robs me of exercise! (The rest of the essay is totally sensible though, encouraging a varied diet, small portions, and lots of exercise. He also mentions “electronic cooking” which is probably a reference to microwave ovens.)

Dinners, Duck Cook Book (looks useful), dumplings, durum wheat, Dutch cookery. The éclairs entry includes a good recipe for a from-scratch vanilla cream filling. Eels! Eek! I doubt I’ll ever make “Matelote of Eels”.

Eggs, eggplant, elderberries, English cookery, an Entertaining Cook Book, escarole, fair (“Country-Fair Dinner”), fermentation, fiasco (an Italian wine bottle), fiddlehead (a fern), figs. “Fines Herbes” ends the entries in this volume.

I decide to make “Date-Nut Muffins” for this blog. I have a handful of dates in my pantry that are getting pretty dry and need to be used, and muffins are always great for breakfast.

The recipe doesn’t call for a lot of sugar (1/4 cup) but has a bit of butter (1/4 cup). Is that legal for breakfast? When does a muffin become dessert? I’m not the only one who wonders about this. From Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen blog:

“We all know that muffins teeter precariously on a razor-thin line that divides the food categories of “Acceptable for Breakfast” and “Nope, This Is Dessert” and one must maintain firm boundaries during the breakfast hours lest the day that follows devolve into a full-on bacchanal of Resolution decompensation that ends with one passed out amid scatters of Cheetos, ketchup packets and French fry grease with a side of cronut.”

“Whole grains and oats = breakfast!
White flour = cake.
An egg or two = breakfast!
Lots of eggs = cake.
Natural sweeteners = breakfast!
White sugar = cake.
Unsaturated fats = breakfast!
Butter = cake.”

The recipe for “Date-Nut Muffins” leans towards “dessert”. I would add another criteria to Deb’s list: “fruits and nuts = breakfast”. I’m willing to use whole wheat pastry flour and a bit of honey, teetering these back to “breakfast”. But I want the butter in these!

Below is my version of these muffins. I added some vanilla and honey, and used brown sugar instead of white sugar. I was out of fresh milk, so I used water and dry milk instead. Since my dates were dry and hard, I warmed up the 1 cup of water, added the dates, and let it stand until the water cooled. Next time I’ll add more dates, and that change is reflected in my version below.

Date-Nut Muffins
makes 10

• 1 cup milk (can substitute 1 cup water and 3 tablespoons dry milk)
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup chopped dates
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

Beat the milk, egg, brown sugar, honey, and vanilla. Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder, then add to the milk mixture and stir to combine. Add nuts and dates, then butter, and mix only enough to blend.

Fill 10 muffin cups (paper-lined, or greased, or use a non-stick pan) and bake at 400˚ for 20 minutes, until browned.

I had to try one as soon as they were baked! They are excellent. I like the whole wheat flour in them. I consider them healthy enough to be called a breakfast food!

Cookbook #66: Lyons Elementary Cookbook. Lyons Elementary PTA, Lyons, Colorado, 1989-90.

Lyons. My community. We have lived in unincorporated Lyons since 1981. Both of my kids went through grades 1-12 in Lyons, first at Lyons Elementary and then at Lyons Middle-Senior High School. The Lyons Elementary Cookbook was put together by parents and teachers at the elementary school when my son was a student there. And yes! I contributed recipes.

So far, I’ve covered two other community cookbooks, one from my sister and one from my mother-in-law. I enjoy them as a reflection of how people really cook in their homes as they raise their kids.

Turning the pages of the 1989-90 Lyons Elementary Cookbook takes me back to the sweet days when my kids were young, and all those years in Lyons schools. I recognize so many of the names at the bottom of the recipes! Lyons schools are small, I think there were less than 300 students at the middle-senior school when my kids attended. A lot of the families still live here; our town is like that.

So how did we cook in our homes in the 80s? We were busy, so the recipes in this cookbook do not require a lot of time to cook. Ingredient choices reflect both our hippie influences (whole wheat flour, wheat germ, tofu all that) and our mom’s influences (canned soups, seasoning mixes, bisquick and all that). The result, lots of tasty, comforting main dishes. Lots of yummy cookies and quick breads and desserts. This little Lyons Elementary cookbook is a keeper for a lot of reasons!

I could have opened this cook book at random and chosen any of the recipes for this blog. (Well almost, not “Rattlesnake Stew”: Remove rattle, cut snake into small pieces. Add remaining ingredients, except rabbit . . . “) My choice is: Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. A healthy-ish treat for me, on May 11, Mother’s Day 2014! And look, right above the muffin recipe is one of my own contributions:

I still make Banana Blueberry Bread regularly (and should enter my latest version into this blog).

The Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe was contributed by Mindy Tallent, who along with her husband Sam now own the Stone Cup in Lyons. Ah, the Stone Cup! A lovely place to meet friends and enjoy wonderful coffee and sweet treats: “made from scratch using only organic and natural ingredients”. Just like the muffin recipe in this cookbook!

When the town flooded last September, the Stone Cup was just above the flood level, and Mindy went in early to open up. Soon stranded townspeople came until there was a crowd, and the Stone Cup opened its doors. Thank you Mindy and Sam, for being there for our community when it needed you the most, and for toughing it out through the long weeks when the town was evacuated and the roads closed. Everyone, if you are ever in Lyons, stop by the Stone Cup!

I plan to make these muffins pretty much as per the recipe. I don’t have oat bran, but I do have oat flour, so I’ll use that. I suggest putting a half-cup of oatmeal in a food processor if you don’t have oat flour or oat bran, or substitute with flour or even wheat bran. I think that “2 teaspoons of safflower oil” is just too little oil. There was a phase when we all tried to eliminate all fat from recipes; today I feel like we need a little fat in our diets. And more oil will give these a better texture. As to the directions to use “safflower” oil, well, opinions on the “best” oil to use changes with time; I say, use whatever you have in your cupboard. Chocolate chips – my current crave is for 60% cacao Ghiradelli’s chocolate chips. And if a few more chips than called for fall into the batter – well, too bad! These are for my Mother’s Day!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
makes 12; downsized from the original recipe that made 18

• 1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat)
• 1/3 cup wheat germ
• 1/2 cup oat bran (see my suggested substitutes, above)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup lightly mashed bananas
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (my addition!)
• 1/3 cup honey (4 ounces; and I used local Colorado honey)
• 2/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips (or more!)

Combine the dry ingredients and set aside.

In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the bananas with the egg, oil, and vanilla until smooth. Add the honey and vanilla.

Mix wet and dry ingredients quickly, then stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips, being careful not to over mix. Spoon into lightly greased muffin tins or use paper baking cups.

Bake at 400˚ for 18-20 minutes. (Test with a toothpick for doneness.)

Comments

Yum! These are perfect. I made them the day before and we enjoyed them for breakfast.

My only dilemma the next morning was whether or not to microwave them briefly before heating. Un-microwaved, you bite down on big crunchy chunks of chocolate. Microwaved, creamy chocolate oozes out. Hmm. Tried them both ways and still can’t decide which is best.

Cookbook #50: 1989 Best-Recipes Yearbook. Better Homes and Gardens, Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa, 1989.

Admissions of a recovering recipe clipper . . .

I bought this cookbook in 1989. Back then I loved to buy women’s magazines and pore over the recipes. But I could not just let the magazines go straight to the recycling bin, I held onto old issues until I first clipped recipes to try. Eventually it got done. Eventually I read each clipped recipe and entered its information into a database. Eventually the cut up magazine went into the recycling bin. The clipped recipe went into a file folder. I still have these file folders and the database. That project is now finished.

Tired of my compulsive recipe-clipping addiction, I vowed never again to buy a women’s magazine. That was in about the early 1990s. I have stayed true to my vow. But, as a leftover, I have this book of Better Homes and Gardens magazine recipes.

I will now recycle this book. In the whole dang book, not a single recipe is marked by me. Although I did have a post-it with a seafood dinner plan on it, tucked on a page with a recipe for shrimp in a tarragon, garlic, sun-dried tomato vinaigrette recipe. I now have a much better version of a shrimp vinaigrette in my repertoire, so I can let this go.

The layout of this book glares at me like the glossy magazines I used to pore over. Promises of great food shown in fancy dining layouts with happy people. But the recipes in this book are mediocre. Today I saved only a couple recipes, one for a sweet-potato-chocolate swirled quick bread, and one for a seasoned ground meat mixture over home-cooked polenta.

And what did I decide to cook from the pages of this soon-to-be-discarded cookbook? “Orange Streusel Muffins”. I’m always up for another muffin recipe. Muffins are part of my daily eating plan! And these are a tiny bit unusual, with a jammy surprise inside.The above version says to make 12 muffins. As I was filling the muffin cups, I felt that I needed to fill them a little fuller, so I only made 8 muffins. My new 12-muffin tin from King Arthur Flour is great – it does not require any grease or paper liners and does not complain when I leave a few of the muffin cups unfilled. Next time, I’ll add more marmalade, so I incorporated this, too, into my version, below.

Orange Streusel Muffins
makes 8 muffins

Muffins

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1/4 cup (or more) orange marmalade

Streusel topping

• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon softened butter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons chopped pecans

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Beat together the egg, milk, and oil. Combine wet and dry mixtures, stirring just until moistened.

Spoon a generous tablespoon of the batter into 8 muffin cups, then put a generous teaspoon of marmalade on top of each. Next, spoon another generous tablespoon of the batter atop the marmalade in each cup. Finally, sprinkle with Streusel topping.

Bake at 400˚ for 20-22 minutes or until golden. Cool in the pan a few minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yes, these are good. My dining partner loved the built-in jam. I liked warming them briefly in the microwave so the marmalade was warm. We both wanted: More marmalade!

My breakfast, awaiting only eggs and coffee:

These satisfied my New Year’s resolution: Everyday, I should eat something that makes me say “wow, I just have to have another bite!”

My kitty helping me to set up the shot:

Hey, this is my 50th cookbook! I’m 20% of my way through this project!

Cookbook #36: Light Cooking – Low Fat, Low Calorie, Low Cholesterol. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL, 1994.

Well, dang. This is a big book that takes up a bit of space on my shelf. I picked it up thinking I could get rid of it, but I paged through it and wrote down about ten recipes that I wanted to try. So, I’ll have to keep it. Oh well.

This is a “brand name” cookbook. Right on the cover is Crisco, Dannon, Jell-o, Perdue, Egg Beaters, Borden, Dole, and Hershey’s, all with the ® next to them. I bought it from a check-out display at Safeway for I think $20. The introduction is only two pages, just a short guide to healthy eating. The recipes have no personal notes from an author. I’ve always felt that the main purpose of this cookbook is to advertise their products, since recipe ingredients often include brand names. But in its 515 pages of recipes there are some very good ideas for cutting calories and fat and controlling portion size.

Most of the recipes in this book are plain, simple, and easy to prepare. Each recipe has calorie, fat, cholesterol, and sodium content. Other than the brand name issue, the recipes rarely call for odd ingredients. It’s a very “American” cookbook.

The recipes that I marked now to try include muffins, fruit crisps, beef, pork tenderloin, and chicken recipes. Common menu items that I cook a lot, with just enough twists to make me keep this book. I found a lot of pages marked with slips of paper from the last time I used it, probably over a decade ago. I still like those recipes.

Guess I have re-discovered a useful cookbook!

For this blog, I decided to try Banana Yogurt Muffins. Seems I always have an old banana laying around, and great non-fat Greek yogurt. They call for Special K® cereal, one I used to eat often but it somehow fell off my radar. Time to buy a box and try it again, both in the muffins and as a breakfast cereal.

I plan to make these pretty much like the recipe. I don’t have vanilla yogurt, so I’ll use plain yogurt and add some vanilla. And cinnamon, I think these need a little spice in them.

Banana Yogurt Muffins

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg white
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 banana (or more: I used 1 1/2 bananas)
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt (or use flavored and skip the vanilla)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 cups Kellogg’s Special K® cereal, crushed to 2 cups (I used a rolling pin)

Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Using a mixer, blend the egg white, banana, yogurt, vanilla, and oil. Mix until there are no longer big chunks of banana in the batter. Add the cereal and let stand about a minute until the cereal softens.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients just until combined. Fill 12 muffin cups, either paper-lined or use a non-stick pan.

Bake at 400˚ for 25 minutes.

These turned out pretty good, for a low-calorie muffin. I’d make them again – it’s a good way to use up aging bananas and have a tasty, healthy weekday breakfast treat.