Monthly Archives: September 2016

250 Cookbooks: Baker’s Book of Chocolate Riches

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Cookbook #175: Baker’s Book of Chocolate Riches, General Foods Corporation, Golden Press, NY, 1983 (second printing, 1985).

Baker's Book of Chocolate Riches cookbook

I have three Baker’s cookbooks on my shelves. In blog post #118, I enjoyed looking through the 1932 one, Baker’s Best Chocolate Recipes, largely because it is so old. My other Baker’s cookbook is Baker’s Chocolate and Coconut Favorites, 1977.

I once tried the brownie recipe in this 1985 Baker’s Book of Chocolate Riches, and the recipe is exactly the same as the 1932 version! Good recipes hold up for years.

Fudgy Brownies recipe

This 1985 Baker’s Book of Chocolate Riches is definitely a cookbook I will keep. I know that each cookie, pie, cake or dessert recipe would cook up great. It’s one of my go-to books for when I need a good dollop of chocolate.

For this blog, I decide to make Crackle-Top Cookies. I’ll keep a few at home, but take most to a potluck meeting I have tonight. (Along with a bottle of wine, what is better than chocolate and wine!)

Crackle-Top Cookies recipeThis recipe is very similar to my recipe for Chocolate Chews. The differences are that this recipe has less flour, adds cinnamon, uses brown sugar instead of white, and has more nuts. Plus the baking time: these are cooked 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes.

Crackle Top Cookies
makes about 5 dozen

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 2/3 cups brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 squares unsweetened baking chocolate, melted
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 2/3 cup chopped nuts
  • powdered sugar

Mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Beat the shortening with a mixer, then beat in the brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, then stir in the chocolate and mix well.

Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk, beating after each addition until smooth. Stir in nuts.

Chill a few hours in the refrigerator. Shape into 1-inch balls, then roll each in powdered sugar. Bake at 350˚ for 10 minutes if you like chewy cookies, or 20 minutes if you like crisp cookies. (My recommendation is 10 minutes.)

Crackle Top CookiesThese are excellent! I cooked the first batches 20 minutes, and I thought they were too crisp. The last batch I cooked only 10 minutes, and they were soft and chewy. We like the soft and chewy ones a lot better!

250 Cookbooks: Encyclopedia of Cookery, Volume 8

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Cookbook #174: Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 8, Moi-Pec, Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1966.

Encyclopedia of Cookery Volume 8

I have a set of twelve Encyclopedia of Cookery volumes and this is the eighth of that set – I covered the first seven in previous posts. I’ve enjoyed all of them so far! This volume covers curious and helpful information about foods from moi(sten) to pec(an).

I begin my recipe and curiousity search on the first page. “Molasses” is the entry following “moisten”. I learn that molasses made from sugar cane. When we were in Costa Rica, we saw a demonstration of how they press sugar cane to get out the juice:

volcano region moonshine

But in Costa Rica, that sugar cane juice became moonshine! To make molasses, the cane juice is boiled down to a thick mass of syrup and crystals of sugar. Next, the brew is strained to isolate solid sugar crystals and syrupy liquid. The syrup from this first boiling process is sold as “light molasses”. “Dark molasses” results from a second boiling/straining of the syrup and “blackstrap molasses” results from a third boiling/straining. Light molasses can be used as a syrup on pancakes; dark molasses is less sweet (and darker in color) and is used in baking and candy making. Blackstrap molasses is generally used as cattle food – or as a health food. Molasses was the most widely used sweetener in America until the Civil War.

I like molasses, but none of the recipes in this section intrigue me. So I go on to moussaka (mid-Eastern eggplant casserole) and muffins (surprisingly – no recipe there I liked) and a Mushroom Cook Book. Wow, I’d love to make “cream of mushroom soup”. It would be delightful in a casserole instead of the over-processed canned mushroom soup that we get in the stores. (Someday.)

The Near Eastern Cookery section brings back memories of our trip to Turkey. Nesselrode? I remember it from childhood, but I think it was an ice cream. Perhaps it was:  I learn that “nesselrode” refers to an iced pudding made from egg yolks, sugar, cream, chestnuts, orange peel, currants, and candied cherries.

The  article “New England: Character and Cookery” was written by Louise Dickinson Rich. I find a recipe in this section for muffins using molasses called “Anthelias’ Sour-milk Gingerbread Cupcakes”. Could make those. Still, I search on for a recipe to make for this blog.

“Noodle” derives from words meaning “food paste”. In “Norwegian Cookery”, I find recipes for marzipan (from almonds, sugar, and egg whites), Puss Pass (a lamb stew), and cold cherry soup, made from fresh cherries (including ground pits), sugar, water, and lots of sherry.

Nutmeg, nutrition (interesting to read a 1966 view of this topic), and oatmeal. Oleomargarine was first prepared in 1870 by a French Chemist, Mège-Mouriès from beef oil, milk, and water, with annatto for coloring. Oleo derives from “elo” (oil) and margaric acid (an animal fat). Annatto seeds are used today in anchiote paste, a deep red seasoning from Mexico.

Olive oil should be “golden or straw yellow”, and “greenish oils are inferior”. My staple, green extra virgin olive oil, is not even mentioned! Next, oranges and oregano. An essay on “Outdoor Cooking” by Craig Claiborne and one on “The Delectable Oyster” by James Beard. Pancakes are the oldest form of bread and are made around the world. Oriental versions of pancakes have been made for “untold Oriental ages”. Next, pasties (meat pies) and a Pastry Cook Book.

“Patty” is a “small, round, flat mass of food dough, cereal, potato, or other vegetable, ground meat fish, poultry, or nuts”. Hmmmm.

Peas, a Peach Cook Book, peacock (yes, people eat them), peanuts, peanut butter – Peanut Butter Muffins! Pears and pecans finish off this volume.

I want to make Peanut Butter Muffins. I haven’t made muffins with peanut butter in them for years!

Peanut-Butter Muffins recipe

I decide to leave the jam out of the muffins, add a bit more sugar, and combine the wet ingredients with a mixer, but otherwise will follow the recipe.

Peanut Butter Muffins
makes 10 muffins

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons wheat germ
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
  • 1/4 cup (2 3/8 ounces) peanut butter
  • 3/4 cup milk

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

Using a mixer, beat the egg. Mix in the shortening, then the peanut butter, then the milk. Stir in the dry ingredients only until the mixture is moistened.

Fill 10 mufffin cups (each should be 2/3 full). Bake at 400˚ for 20-22 minutes.

Peanut Butter Muffins

These tasted very peanut buttery, but were a little dry. With a lot of jam on them, I really enjoyed them. But looking at the original recipe, these are more like scones: the shortening and the peanut butter probably should be “cut in” with a pastry blender. I was reluctant to do this because it would be so messy! But mixed as in the original recipe, these might have been sort of flaky, like pie crust or scones.

I found my old recipe for “Super Chunk Muffins” in my index card recipe file. I’ll make them soon and let you know if I like them better. This old recipe also calls for using a pastry blender to cut in the butter and peanut butter.

Super Chunk Muffins
makes 12 muffins

  • 1 cup oatmeal (quick)
  • 3/4 cup flour
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk

Stir together the oatmeal, flour, sugar baking powder, and salt. Cut in the peanut butter and margarine with a pastry blender to fine crumbs.

Mix the eggs and milk, stir into flour mixture. Fill 12 muffin cups.

Optional: mix 1/2 cup oatmeal and 2 tablespoons butter and sprinkle over the batter.

Bake at 400˚  for 20-25 minutes.

Super Chunk Muffins

250 Cookbooks: The Crockery Cook

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Cookbook #173: The Crockery Cook, Mable Hoffman, Fisher Books, Tucson, AZ, 1998.

The Crockery Cook cookbookA crock pot has been a staple in my kitchen for a very long time. I have 10 crockpot cookbooks! I even have another cookbook written by Mable Hoffman, Crockery Cookery. (See my first crockpot blog entry for a little on the history of crockpots.)

I picked this book off the shelf because a long-cooking meal fit into my schedule one day. Lately I just use the crockpot to cook pots of pork green chile and shredded beef. Time to shake up our meal times with a new recipe.

The Crockery Cook is nicely formatted and illustrated, with a large variety of recipes. I think I could always find something to cook from this cookbook, so I decide to keep it. And for this blog? I decide to make “New-Style Pozole”.
New-Style Posole recipe

I like hominy, and the bacon should add a nice twist. I have some hot peppers (my daughter grew them!) in my refrigerator, and we like things hot, so I’ll add them to the pot.

It’s best to prepare this recipe the day before to allow time for cooling the pozole so that you can skim off the fat.

Crockpot Pozole
prepare the day before

    • 1 pound boneless pork, cubed
    • 1 pound chicken thighs (bone-in or boneless)
    • 2 slices bacon, chopped
    • 1 onion, chopped
    • 1 clove garlic, chopped
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 2 cups chicken stock
    • 1 teaspoon chili powder
    • 2 16-ounce cans hominy, drained
    • dried pepper flakes (1/4 teaspoon or to taste)
    • fresh hot chili peppers to taste, chopped (optional)
    • garnishes such as: cilantro, avocado, sliced radishes, chopped red bell peppers, chopped red onions, chopped tomatoes, paprika

Mix all ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low 6-7 hours or on high for 3-4 hours. Add water as necessary to keep it soupy. Check seasonings and add salt and peppers to your own taste.

Let the pozole cool, then remove the chicken thighs. Bone them (if necessary) and chop into small pieces.

Put the pozole in the refrigerator overnight, then skim any fat from the top. Re-heat and serve with garnishes of your choice.

Crock Pot Posole

This was good, but not perfect. I thought the hominy was overcooked, too mushy. I couldn’t decide if it was a soup or a stew, but that doesn’t really matter! We like our Mexican food spicy, so if I make it again, I’ll add more peppers.

I served it with grilled quesadillas and it was a satisfying meal.

250 Cookbooks: Putting Food By

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Cookbook #172: Putting Food By, Ruth Hertzberg, Beatrice Vaughan, Janet Greene, The Stephen Greene Press, Brattleboro, Vermont, 1973.

Putting Food By cookbook

The following is a quote from my own blog a couple years ago, when I covered the Complete Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Freezing USDA.

“I used to put up tomatoes, hot salsa, jam, and pickles each year. I’d go to local vegetable stands and buy vegetables and fruits by the bushel. Why? So that I’d know the ingredients in my food, and I enjoyed doing it.”

And this is a quote from Putting Food By:

“Putting food by is prudence, and it’s involvement. It’s also a meaningful return to old simplicities and skills. Above all, it is deeply satisfying. We know what is added to food we put by for our families.”

Seems like the authors and I are in complete agreement! Putting Food By also gives a heads up to the USDA-produced pamphlets (like the Complete Guide to Home Canning) in the acknowledgements:

“The authors are grateful to all the anonymous dedicated people in federal- and provincial- and state-run projects in the United States and Canada who are constantly researching better and safer ways to handle our food.”

As I stated in my 2-year old blog post, these days I only put up jams. Well, that is, at least until I wrote that post and made dill pickles – I’ve made them several times since. Home made pickles are wonderful.

Both of these “canning” books are 1973 editions. I must have bought them In the mid-1970s, where for a year we rented a “quaint” old house on Walnut Street, called  “Walnetto” by our circle of friends. Somewhere in that house I found (and kept) two books: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and the Whittier Wildcat Cookbook. Walnetto had a long backyard that went all the way to the creek that runs east between Walnut and Canyon. We used to have volleyball games there. And – we had a garden! The only time my husband and I really had a vegetable garden. He was the real gardener, I have to admit. I might have helped plant seeds but was lame on maintenance, like weeding and watering. But I loved having that garden, going out and picking fresh lettuce and carrots for salads. Lots of tomatoes, and of course overgrown zucchini. (There was even a shed with a fenced yard where we had a few chickens. The last chicken we had was the meanest thing . . . but I digress.)

I probably bought Putting Food By and the Complete Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Freezing USDA in that era, and used the information to put up the overflow from our garden. We even had an ancient canning-pressure cooker. Ah, the memories.

Putting Food By is still in print! It’s in the 5th edition, published in 2010, with the same three authors. My copy is the first edition (and I’d love to see a copy of the 5th sometime). The chapters are: Canning, Freezing, The Preserving Kettle (jams, marmalade, fruit butters, relishes, pickles, mincemeat), Drying, Root-Cellaring, Curing (salting and smoking), The Roundup (rendering lard, pasteurizing milk, making soap, sausage, and cottage cheese), and Recipes. (There are also recipes throughout the book, the “Recipes” chapter covers using the canned/preserved foods.)

I think it’s the chemist in me that makes this all fascinating. And the fact that I love fooling around in the kitchen. Alas, time and the easy availability of good canned and preserved foods makes delving too far into putting food by . . . well, I’d say I have tons of other things I like doing too. And I don’t have a vegetable garden.

The canning directions and recipes in Putting Food By are clear, and cover the gamut of anything I ever might want to put up. I have no trouble finding something to try for this blog: “Corn Relish”. It’s corn season here in Colorado, and a corn relish sounds like a nice accompaniment for Mexican food.

Corn Relish recipeCorn Relish recipeThis corn relish requires a “hot pack”. When I put up jam and such, I always use the popular 2-piece canning lids. To hot pack this type of canning lid, you put the hot vegetable or fruit mixture into hot sterilized jars, put a hot “dome” lid (the flat part) on top, screw down tightly with a hot metal screw band, and place the jar into a hot water bath that covers the jar to process. I refreshed my memory on this process by reading pages 10, 19, and 31.

I decide to leave out the turmeric and add a California green chile, but otherwise follow the recipe.

Corn Relish
makes 4 pints

  • 8-9 ears corn (you need enough for 4 cups corn kernels)
  • 1 cup diced sweet red peppers
  • 1 cup diced sweet green peppers
  • 1/2 cup California (Anaheim) green chile, diced (these are the long, milder green chiles)
  • 1 cup celery, chopped fine
  • 1/2 cup onion, chopped fine
  • 1 1/2 cups white vinegar
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
  • 1 teaspoon celery seed
  • a few drops of a hot sauce, like Tabasco
  • 2 tablespoons flour mixed with 1/4 cup flour (optional)

Shuck the corn and cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Let cool, then cut the corn from the cob to make 4 cups. Set aside.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add 4-5 pint glass canning jars to sterilize them while you prepare the relish. Also have a small amount of boiling water to sterilize the dome lids.

Combine in a big pot: peppers, celery, onion, vinegar, sugar, dry mustard, celery seed, and hot sauce. Bring to a boil and boil 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

If you want the relish thickened, at this point, add the flour and water mixture.

Add the corn to the pot and boil, stirring frequently for 5 minutes.

As the relish boils, remove the jars from the boiling water bath. (This water bath is used in the next step, so don’t empty the pot yet!) Drain the jars on a clean cloth.

Immediately pour the cooked, hot relish into the drained, sterilized jars. Top with a sterilized dome lid, then add the screw-top band and tighten. Put the capped relish jar back into the boiling water bath, making sure the level of the boiling water is above the level of the top of the jars.

Process in the boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Remove the jars and let them cool. They will keep at least a year in your pantry, but always check the jars before use to make sure the seal is not compromised.

In the photo below, I have the relish boiling and the empty jars sterilizing.

cooking the relish and sterilizing the jars

Next, the filled, sealed jars are in their 15 minute boiling water bath.

hot packing the relishAnd here are the jars of canned relish!

corn relish

Comments

This relish is good. It is sweet and sour and hot. I will use it mostly as a garnish for Mexican food.

I will definitely keep Putting Food By. Along with Complete Guide to Home Canning, it is a great reference for when I come upon a lot of produce or have a hankering to play around in the kitchen.