Recipe # 8- Lemon Squares

This is a fairly easy recipe, I had the same issue as the last recipe in that the product did not come out as lemony as I would have liked. I also think I needed to whisk the top layer a bit more as it did not come out with the uniform yellow top that I am used to with this recipe.

Cost: $3 for the coconut

Prep Time: Under 10 minutes

Verdict: Easy to make, could add a bit more lemon juice. Make sure to mix well and grease the pan adequately as it will stick.

My Grandma’s Recipe

Lemon Squares

1 cup coconut

1 cup flour

2 tbsps. Sugar

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup butter

Cut in the butter with all the other ingredients and press into a 8x8 pan and bake for 20 min at 350 F until set.

For the topping

Mix vigorously

2 eggs

¾ cup sugar

2 tbsp. flour

¼ cup lemon juice

Pour over crust, bake another 20 min, cut into squares and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Recipe #7 Coffee Cake

Never having had much exposure to coffee cake I kind of always thought it had coffee in it or a flavor that sort of resembled coffee. This is not the case with this cake; rather it appears to be a cake you serve with coffee, when you have company over.

Prep time: Under 10 minutes

Cost: Under $5, it was just the raisins and the shortening that I did not have in my pantry.

Verdict: Not that exciting and kind of dry, I thought it might have been more exciting if I created a thicker topping by adding butter to the cinnamon sugar topping and I could have done without the raisins.

Here is my Grandma’s recipe

2 ½ cups cake flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground mace (I did not have mace so I substituted nutmeg)

8 tbsp. shortening (Here she goes with the shortening again)

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg

¾ cup sour milk

1 cup seedless raisins

2 tbsps. sugar

¼ tsp. cinnamon

Sift salt, mace, baking powder and soda.

Cream shortening and blend in sugar.

Add dry ingredients to make crumbly mixtures. Set ¾ cup aside for toppings. Beat egg add milk stir in raisins.

Put in greased pan and sprinkle with crumbs mixture bake at 350 F for 1 hour.

Recipe #6 - Lemon Bread

This was a simple recipe that resulted in a tasty product, although I would double the lemon as I thought it wasn’t lemony enough for my tastes.

Prep Time – Under 10 minutes.

Cost- Under $5.

Verdict – Cheap, simple and tasty, similar to lemon bread you would buy at a Portuguese bakery. Although I would try doubling the lemons or adding lemon juice.

Here is my Grandma’s recipe

½ cup shortening (this woman puts shortening in everything)

2 eggs

1 tsp. salt

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cup flour

½ cup milk

1 tsp. baking powder

Rind and juice of 1 lemon 

Lemon rind? - was a little confused as to if this meant I was supposed to put the entire lemon skin in, but all the recipes I read said the white pith was not very tasty so I settled for just the zest.

- Cream shortening and then add sugar and eggs

- Add dry ingredients with milk and lemon rind

- Bake 40 min at 350F

- As soon as the loaf comes out of the oven pour the juice of 1 lemon mixed with ¼ cup sugar over the loaf.

Recipe # 5 Husband's Cake

 

This recipe is for the famous tomato soup cake, I have heard of it in various incarnations before but always thought it sounded inedible. Through my research I found this to be a common depression era recipe, although I can’t seem to figure out the exact origin or reason behind it (was there a surplus of canned soup?). The best part of looking into this recipe was that all the recipes I found when looking into this were called “Darling” Husband’s cake, whereas my Grandma’s recipe was entitled simply “Husband Cake”, take from that what you will.

Prep Time: Around 20 minutes

Cost: Around 8 dollars – the soup, Crisco, nuts and raisins were items I did not have in my pantry

Verdict: The batter smelled vile, and did not look very pleasing either. However the result was a moist and flavorful spice cake with a taste similar to carrot cake even though there was nothing close to a carrot in the ingredients.

Here is the recipe

¾ cup Crisco (I took this to mean shortening)

1 ½ cup sugar

1 can of tomato soup with ¾ cup water

1 tsp. baking soda

3 cups of flour

1 ½ cups of raisins

¾ tsp. salt

3 tsp. baking powder

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

1 ½ tsp. cloves

1 ½ tsp. nutmeg

1 ½ cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)

Blend Crisco and sugar. Combine soup, water, add Crisco to mixture, alternatively with dry, stir in raisins and nuts.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour, I found this was way too long it only really need around ½ hour

Cream Cheese Fondant icing

-       To 1 package of cream cheese add 1 beaten egg and 3 cups of icing sugar, 1/8 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. vanilla.

Recipe #4 - Rhubarb Crunch

Recipe # 4- Rhubarb Crunch

A really easy recipe, the first one that was complete enough that I didn't have to rresearch it further.

Prep Time- 15 minutes

Cost – The only slightly expensive or hard to find ingredient is the rhubarb, frozen rhubarb works fine.

Verdict- Easy to make, I liked the contrast of the tangy rhubarb and the sweet crust but you really need to grease the pan well or its going to stick.

Crust

1 cup of flour

½ cup of butter

2 Tbsps. sugar

Combine and spread in a 8x8 pan and bake for 15 minutes at 350 F

Topping

2 eggs

1 ¼ cup sugar

pinch of salt

¼ cup flour

¾ tbsp. baking powder

2-3 cups rhubarb

Beat eggs with dry ingredients. Add rhubarb, spread over crust and bake about 25 minutes.

Recipe # 3- Boston Cream Pie

Boston Cream Pie

 

I was excited to make this recipe having been a long time fan of Boston cream donuts, I mean does Tim Horton’s do anything better? I was confused right off the bat as this was clearly a recipe for a cake and in no one was talking about why they were calling it pie . I used my extensive research skills (google) and eventually found that in New England colonialists would use pie tins when baking cakes as they usually only had pie tins, the first reference to Boston Cream pie was from a newspaper in 1855, that called it Boston pudding pie cake. I thought this was interesting because it links back to the last recipe I made which was called pudding which was clearly cake, clearly people have had a variety of ideas of what constitutes a pudding pie or a cake.

Prep time – A good hour

Cost – Whip cream and chocolate don’t come cheap probably around $12, plus what I already had in my pantry.

Verdict- A little time consuming and not that exciting a product, might be better off going to Tim Horton’s

So here is my Grandma’s recipe, which was almost unusable, as it seemed to just be a recipe for the cake and not the filling or the icing

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2/3 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla

1. Sift dry ingredients, cream butter, sugar.

2. Add egg yolks, flour milk and beat.

3. Add vanilla, beat egg whites, stiff fold into batter, beat.

This is the recipe I used

 Ingredients

6 Tbsps. butter

2 Tbsps. AP flour

11/2 cups cake flour

2 tsps. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

¾ cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup milk

½ cup cream

½ cup milk

¼ cup white sugar

4 tsps. cornstarch

2 eggs

½ tsp. vanilla extract

3 1-ounce squares semisweet chocolate

2 tbsps. butter

¼ cup light cream,

½ tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup icing sugar

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Grease 2 9 inch round cake pans. Mix the AP flour, the cake flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

2. Cream 6 tbsps. of butter with ¾ cup sugar. Beat in 2 eggs, and then add the vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternatively with ½ cup milk, beat until smooth and pour into pans. Bake for 15 minutes or until cake begins to shrink from sides of the pan.

3. For the filling combine ½ cup cream with ¼ cup of milk and cook over medium heat until bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan. Add the ¼ cup of sugar and the salt, stir until dissolved and remove from heat.

4. In a bowl combine ¼ cup of milk with the cornstarch and whisk to remove lumps, whisk in 2 eggs. Add the hot cream mixture and return to the saucepan and bring to a boil and cook over a low heat stirring constantly until custard thickens. Remove from heat and add vanilla.

5. For the chocolate frosting melt your chocolate in a heavy saucepan over low heat with 2 tbsps. of butter. Once melted remove from heat and add ¼ cup cream, add icing sugar beat vigorously and then stir in ½ tsp. of vanilla.

6. Once everything has cooled assemble your cake by placing custard in the middle and chocolate frosting letting it spill over the sides.

Recipe #2 - Ginger Pudding

-->

Recipe #2 Ginger Pudding

When I first read this recipe I was really excited thinking that the end product would be a homemade version of instant Jell-O pudding, which I think is where most Canadians’ minds go when one brings up pudding. It had clearly slipped my mind that my grandmother was British and that not only do most Brits call all desserts pudding they tend to call a moist cake that we seldom see on this side of the pond pudding as well. The pudding that this recipe is referring to is similar to Christmas pudding, which I remember my Grandma making and my experiencing a similar disillusionment when I realized that we not about to eat a special chocolate Christmas pudding but rather a weird cake with fruit in it (you think I would have learned from this). It appears that Canadians seem to have forgotten the steamed pudding, as in looking for additional instructions the majority of the recipes I found were from Britain, Australia and South Africa.

Here’s my Grandma’s recipe

   -->

Ginger Pudding

½ cup butter

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

½ cup molasses

1 cup raisins

1 ½ cups flour

2 tsp. ginger

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup milk

Mix, put in coffee tins, steam greased 1 hour.

So from these instructions I was really unsure of where to start so I started googling steamed ginger pudding like crazy.

By the way, you are also going to need two cereals bowls, tin foil, parchment paper, 2 elastics, string and two large pots.

1. I decided to go with her ingredients minus the raisins because I am not a fan and I doubled the ginger and used fresh because I really like ginger.

2. Every recipe I found referred to a "pudding basin", in all of the photos it just looked like a cereal bowl so that is what I used and it worked quite well.  The recipe made so much that I had enough for two full bowls. I greased the bowls first with butter and then poured the mixture in, I left a few inches at the top which worked out well as the puddings rose quite a bit as they were steamed.

3. Then came sealing the pudding which was the complicated part, I read a lot about this but only grasped the concept when I watched the video below. I took a piece of parchment paper about twice the size of the top of my bowl and greased one side of it and then put a piece of tin foil on the ungreased side. I then folded a pleat in the tinfoil/parchment combo down the middle so there was a vent as the pudding expanded. 

I covered the top of the bowl with the parchment and foil with the foil side up. The video below used string to seal it but I found that an elastic band worked a lot better; I then tucked the remaining edges of foil under the elastic band so it was completely sealed. I then used string to create a handle so that I could get the bowl out of the boiling water. If you still have no idea what I’m talking about check out this helpful link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/1060/steaming-a-pudding

4. I then placed the sealed bowls in a larger pot on the stove filled with water up to about two thirds of the way up the pudding bowl. I brought the pots of water to a boil and then turned them down to low. Most recipes said it should take around 1 and half hours, but mine took at least two hours. Avoid the temptation to peak at your pudding; they work a lot better if they stay sealed.

5. The result was an incredibly delicious moist cake; I recommend you eat it right away, as the pudding does not taste the same the next day.

Prep time – Active – 15 minutes Inactive- 2 hours

Cost – Pretty cheap under $10 (I already had all the ingredients in my pantry).

Recipe #1 – Fish Cakes

-->

Like the majority of her recipes the fish cake one was lacking in details, I filled in the blanks with a Jamie Oliver recipe that can be found here:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/recipes/SALMON_FISH_CAKES

Here is her recipe

Fish Cakes

2 cups of mashed potatoes

1 lb salmon

2 tbsp of chopped parsley

½ tsp onion juice

1 well beaten egg

salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Mix well and form into cakes.

2. Roll into cakes

3. Fry until golden brown.

For the life of me I could not figure out what she meant by onion juice, so I substituted lemon juice and some lemon zest as suggested by Mr. Oliver. I also skipped the parsley.

1. I cooked my mashed potatoes first, she makes no mention of cooking the salmon so I am guessing she would have used canned salmon, canned meat of any kind really grosses me out so I used 2 of the Captain Highligner frozen fillets that I normally eat. I cooked them using the ingenious method suggested by Jamie, by putting my fillets in a colander on top of my boiling potatoes so the steam from the boiling pot can be used to cook the salmon at the same time.

2. Once my potatoes and salmon were cooked I put the fish aside and put my potatoes in my freezing cold stairwell to cool them off quickly.

3. Once the potatoes were fairly cool I added the rest of the ingredients and broke up the salmon fillets and mixed them in.

4. I formed the mixture into cakes and rolled them in flour.

5. I am fairly skeptical of any recipe that requires you to roll things into cakes or balls and fry them (ie: crab cakes) as I rarely have any luck keeping these so called cakes together and end up with something that could be described as crab hash. Surprisingly though with this recipe they actually stayed TOGETHER! I Then fried my salmon cakes in about 2 tbsps. of olive oil for 2- 4 minutes on each side on a medium to high temperature, until they were nice and brown.

6. The result is a really hearty meal that makes good leftovers, is easy to reproduce and delicious.

Cost of this meal  - If I skip the parsley I will usually have everything in my pantry except the salmon (which goes for around $6 for 4 fillets).

Prep time – Active under ½ hour, overall around 45 min to 1 hour

Getting to know my Grandma through her recipes

My Grandma died last year and in her eulogy I talked about how there were a lot of things we didn’t have in common. She had a green thumb and loved to make quilts. I can’t keep a plant alive for the life of me and I can’t sew at all. There were a lot of other things I didn’t talk about because they weren’t so easily defined or easy to say. My Grandma was born in1921 and by the time she was my age she had two kids and another one soon to come. My Grandma was a product of her time, never was this more clear than when she would come out with a comment that was blatantly racist or sexist without seeming to notice that anyone was taking offense. Some of things she said were even harder to stomach than her openly racist attitudes whether they were a part of her generation or not; such as her opinions on the appropriate size of a female, leading her to often declare that she thought my mom and I were getting fat.  She was also blindly devoted to any and all males who were related to her, believing they could do no wrong. Whereas the women were under constant scrutiny, never quite getting anything right. However the more I look for differences between my Grandma and me, the more I run into the similarities. I know there are many things in my life that she would not approve of such as my tattoos and perpetual singledom, but there are a number of ways that we are similar. I see her strength in myself both emotionally and physically when there is a job that needs to be done. I also see myself in her, in our mutual ability to stretch a dollar. She lived through the depression and raised a family on almost nothing and I see same trait in myself when I manage to support myself on very little. Finally I see a similarity in our use of good food to bring people together.  She was a good cook and used both familiar nostalgic recipes and fresh new ones to bring her family together, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without scalloped potatoes and ham with pineapple. Her food was  good, hearty and simple, something which I think is true about a lot of the things I like to cook. When I was home at Christmas I started going through her recipe box and realized there was a number of recipes I wanted to try. I want to use this space to share my attempts at some of her recipes - both successes and the mistakes ( I mean there’s a recipe for an aspic in there) in the hope that I might get to know her better and perhaps myself in the process.