Baked Alaska and a Book

July 9, 2020July 9, 202016 Comments

This month’s recipe was inspired by a book. Recipe for a Perfect Wife, by Karma Brown, is a quirky look at the lives of two newly married women living in the same suburban house sixty years apart – Nellie, a typical 50’s housewife, who is trying to get pregnant, and Alice, a reluctantly transplanted New York City writer, who is trying not to. Told in alternating voices, Nellie 1956 and Alice 2018, with quotes of outdated advice at the beginning of each chapter and lots of 50’s recipes, it’s an interesting look at marriage, then and now.

Link to the publishers/GoodReads review.

This book appealed to me because of it’s unique format, plus I thought it would nice to read about what life was like for my mother’s generation – my mother had 4 children under the age of 7 by 1960. (It’s exhausting just thinking about that.) The book was immensely readable, but not quite the light fluffy read I had expected. While it started out okay, it soon took a dark turn and ended up with a strange ending. I didn’t really like any of the characters, dishonesty seemed to be a common trait – hard to base a marriage on that, even back then when people often didn’t know each other well before becoming engaged. Of course the author was trying to make a point, and it would make an excellent choice for a book club discussion. You could even make some of the 50’s recipes like Baked Alaska. I always like it when the book club dessert matches the book club selection.

My recent Hermit Cookies blog, sparked a discussion about family cookbooks, Betty Crocker and Fannie Farmer being old favorites, although my mother’s bible was the Purity Flour Cookbook. Growing up on a farm in the 60’s, my family meals were invariably our own home-grown vegetables and meat, and of course no meal was complete without a potato. No rice or noodle casserole dishes for us, and spaghetti was simply pasta doused with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. My mother did not experiment with recipes like Tuna Noodle Casserole or Chicken A La King because my dad and brothers would simply not have eaten them, and I myself was a picky eater, although she did make a good meatloaf and macaroni and cheese with bread crumbs on top.

garnish with a layer of potato chips?

For many modern housewives that era saw the ushering in of convenience foods, instead of made from scratch. Although we had boxed cake and brownie mixes, my mother made enough homemade pies and tarts to feed a threshing crew and just once that glorious Sixties Desert – Baked Alaska.

Perhaps I remember this momentous event because of it’s rarity. It was not for a special occasion, but simply on a summer evening, a couple of hours after supper to ensure that no one was too full for dessert. If you go to all that trouble, you want to make sure your masterpiece is appreciated.

For those of you unfamiliar, Baked Alaska is basically a mold of frozen ice cream and cake, smothered with a layer of toasted meringue.

Although both my (2009 reissued) Purity cookbook recipe and the one in the book, call for white sponge cake and strawberry ice cream, my mothers version was reminiscent of this Martha Stewart creation, with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.

It was a marvelous sight to behold, with the meringue all puffy and peaked, and who would believe you could put ice cream in the oven! Perhaps I also remember it as chocolate cake was always my birthday choice growing up.

Baked Alaska can be complicated, if you want to mold it into a perfect dome shape, or use tea cups to make individual portions as in this Martha Steward recipe which calls for strawberry and vanilla gelato and of course, being Martha, she’s making the cake from scratch. What exactly do you do with all those separated egg yolks?

But it can also be easy if you just cut your cake and ice cream in a slab, layer it up, freeze it hard, and then smother it with meringue, as per this recipe in my mother’s 1965 version of the Purity cookbook.

Maybe not as fancy as the dome-like creation, but wouldn’t it be the same thing? I even wondered about using a carton of liquid egg whites but some sources said the heat from the pasteurization process would negatively affect the egg proteins. (Cream of tartar is included as an acidic stabilizer to keep the proteins in the egg whites from sticking together thus enabling a smoother stiffer consistency. Alternatives are lemon juice or white vinegar.)

So, I did a grocery run yesterday and bought a carton of liquid egg whites, and decided to experiment last night, and they whipped up just fine. I used lemon juice as I couldn’t find any Cream of Tartar at the store.

I forgot to buy cake, so I used two portions of Mug Cake mix from the pantry, not the best idea as the shape was not ideal and there wasn’t enough cake.

I froze two portions of vanilla ice cream in teacups (a la Martha above), and assembled them over the cake, and then added the meringue.

It wasn’t bad, but plenty sweet. I made the mistake of putting the assembled product including the meringue in the freezer for about ten minutes (as it said you could), while I cleaned up the mess, but I wouldn’t do that again, as it made the meringue hard and cold, and then it took too long to brown and by the time I took it out the ice cream was melting. Better to just put it in the oven as soon as it’s assembled. Of course I also stopped to take a few pictures, so that didn’t help.

If I was to make it again for a crowd, I’d do the slab cake, and maybe strawberry and chocolate gelato, which isn’t as sweet. Maybe when I can have people over again and hold a book club under the trees. It’s so brutally hot here this week, 35 C (95 F) and 42 (106 F) with the Humidex, that any ice cream served outside would melt lickety-split.

Despite my love of all things vintage, especially fashion, I don’t think I would have wanted to live in the fifties – it seemed very much a man’s world. I posed that question to my mother, and she said – it seemed okay at the time. Like many things, some decades are best viewed through a veil of nostalgia. I’ll leave you with some marriage advice quotes from the book – relics from the past….

Postscript: Have you ever made Baked Alaska?

Hermit Cookies – A Pandemic Recipe

May 28, 2020May 28, 202031 Comments

Since many of us are still living like good little hermits these days, I thought Hermits cookies would be a good topic for this weeks blog – which might also be my last blog for awhile depending on how well it goes with the new WordPress editor next week. I didn’t like the new Block editor when I tried it last spring (see Blockheads post) and am not in the mood for a new learning curve. Wordpress might think this is a good time to switch (or begin the migration as the Happiness Engineer called it), because we are all stuck at home, but call it computer fatigue or lockdown fatigue or whatever, I need less not more screen time right now.

Back to the Hermits – Webster’s dictionary defines a hermit as: “a) one that retires from society and lives in solitude especially for religious reasons : recluse, b) a spiced cookie.

Hermits are an old-fashioned recipe dating back from to the mid-1800’s in North America, or even earlier, possibly originating in the hermitages of the middle ages. They refer to any kind of spiced cookie containing dried fruit such a raisins, currants or nuts. They may have white or brown sugar and come in either bar, square or drop cookie format. They’re made from ingredients you might already have in your pandemic pantry, which along with the addition of cinnamon, cloves and spices produces a soft cookie which keeps well. Nutritionally, their sweetness comes from raisins and dates, and nuts are a good source of omega-3’s and protein.

There are various theories about the origin of the name. Some sources say they were called hermits because they looked like a hermit’s brown sack cloth, (the ones containing molasses). Others say the spices become more distinct with age, making the cookies taste better if they have been hidden away like hermits for several days. Very likely the oldest recipe goes back to the 12th or 13th century religious hermitages, where the basic ingredients would have been in common use at bakers’ tables. The terms for those abodes— “hermite” from the Old French or “heremita,” from the medieval Latin — may have been assigned to this treat by their inhabitants. Another possibility is that the Moravians, a German Protestant religious group known for their thin spice cookies in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, were sometimes called “herrnhutter” in German or Dutch, and that might have sounded like “hermits” to an English-speaking cook. At any rate, they are spiced cookies based on raisins and nuts…..so let’s get to it!

My recipe today will be from my mother’s bible of country cooking, the Purity CookBook, first published by the Purity Flour Company in 1911. Her edition dates from 1945 and is well stained, and is in fact held together with that old Canadian standard – duct tape.

As well as main courses and desserts, it contains a large section on canning vegetables and making various jams and jellies. Nothing of course is low in fat or calories as those were not deemed important back then. When it was re-issued in 2009, I bought a copy for myself, which you can see is still in quite pristine condition.

Here’s the recipe:

This did not make 5 dozen….more like 30 cookies….

and the ingredients…nothing fancy, although this version includes dates.

I used butter instead of shortening, and not as much, 1/3 cup. My Allspice container said it was a mixture of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, but allspice can also be a spice (from a plant berry) on its own. If Allspice is not in your spice rack, Google has plenty of references for substitutes, including one on one cloves, but I find cloves strong, so best not to overdo it.

The finished product:

My mother was not much of a cookie baker, as my dad preferred pies and cakes, so I don’t remember her making these very often when I was growing up but I always enjoyed them when she did. (She was more likely to make peanut butter or chocolate chip). Back in the 1990’s, I worked at a rural hospital where the dietary department still made much of the hospital food from scratch. Hermits were often on the cafeteria menu for morning coffee break, as were scones and homemade cinnamon buns. I hadn’t had hermits in years, so imagine my delight on seeing them at the bakery in my local grocery store last year. They’re baked up fresh, although from a mix ordered in, according to one of the staff, and they have regular customers, mostly older folks like me who remember them from childhood.

Of the three versions I’ve sampled, they’ve all have been a bit different, mainly in the spices department, but I think the bakery’s is the best, and probably comparable in price to homemade, ($5.49 for 12 large cookies), nuts and raisins being fairly expensive here unless you go to one of those bulk bin places. The key is the right combination of spices. Despite buying two dozen from the bakery, we ran out before the next grocery run, so I had to resort to making them from scratch. Mine did not taste the same as the last time I made them but I suspect my nutmeg was too old. That would have required a trip to the store, and I’m more like a hermit crab these days, scurrying around doing my essential errands quickly so I can return to the safety of my own home.

Stay in your home and stay safe!

We all might be getting a little crabby these days from too much sheltering in place, but a sweet treat always helps! Remember to savor – according to the Petsmart website, hermit crabs take small bites and eat very slowly, usually at night. Enjoy!

Postscript: Do you have a favorite cookbook you use or may have inherited?

Home Alone Chocolate Pudding

April 9, 2020April 9, 202027 Comments

What to write about when you’re home alone, especially when your secret stash of chocolate has run out? Like many bloggers I get most of my blogging ideas from my daily activities, but since my calendar is now as clear as the newly recovered Venice canals, such planned activities as the apple blossom orchard tour, the Jane Austen tea party or the visit to the Van goth exhibit are all off the table for the unforeseeable future. But we all have to eat…..and chocolate has an excellent reputation for cheering people up.

I was moaning about the Easter Bunny not visiting my house this weekend, so a chocoholic friend send me a recipe for a microwave chocolate pudding just like mom used to make. This makes one large portion, or two small ones. You can repeat for how ever many family members you are stranded with on your COVID life raft. The best thing is you probably already have all the ingredients in your kitchen, so no need to risk your life by going to the grocery store, although I did add cornstarch to my list – does cornstarch have an expiry date?

Mix together 2 tbsp cocoa powder, 1 tbsp cornstarch, 3 tbsp sugar, either granulated or icing sugar, and add 3/4 cup of milk. I used regular sugar. Whisk until well blended.

Microwave, COVERED, 90 seconds on high. Remove, whisk again, microwave another 90 seconds. Add 1/4 tsp vanilla after cooking. Best served warm, but refrigerate if not eating right away.

This makes one large portion but was very rich so I split it into two ramekins.

If you want to double the recipe, then microwave the whole thing for an additional 90 seconds, or just make a separate batch. Adjust the cooking time for the size of your microwave – 90 seconds for an 800W microwave, for 1000W microwave try 75 seconds at a time.

Adjust the amounts of sugar and cocoa to your liking, depending on your brand. My initial recipe called for 3 tablespoons of cocoa, but it was way too chocolatey, so I decreased it to 2 tablespoons, and even that was more than sufficient with my fancy French cocoa. I might try a bit less next time. I also used a LEVEL or calibrated tablespoon measuring device to measure the dry ingredients (something I seldom do), so I would know for the future what proportions worked best. Whisk well or you will have lumps of cocoa in the final product.

The COVID Easter Bunny

As my friend, who has surely forgotten my lack of cooking expertise, did not specify re covered and as I’m always one to admit to my cooking disasters, my first attempt, using a large cereal bowl covered by a paper towel resulted in the pudding spilling all over the sides onto the microwave plate, requiring much swearing and many paper towels to clean up, so make sure you use a large enough ie a quart size bowl. (I made this same mistake the first time I made microwave strawberry jam so I should have known better). The next time I used a Corning-ware casserole dish with a glass lid and put the cover on slightly ajar – no mess.

Yummy, quick and so easy, especially on the days you’re craving chocolate, plus unlike a box of chocolates, there are no left-overs to tempt you later.

PS. I much prefer butterscotch pudding but the brand I bought for years, which required heating on the stove and was the staple of many a Sunday night supper, was discontinued long ago, so I tried to make this same recipe with butterscotch ice cream topping and light brown sugar but didn’t get the measurements quite right – it looked and tasted like a very sweet very pale caramel glue. Oh well, lots of time to experiment these days. Must remember to add Easter Bunnies to my next “mission impossible” list – they’ll be on sale too! Happy Easter, or Passover, or just have a good weekend!

PS. I’m only doing a grocery store run every three weeks now. If we run out of something, we just improvise or do without, mostly the fresh produce, milk etc. I really stock up but I’m also buying for my mother who still lives in her own house at 94, and I am grateful she decided she wasn’t ready to move yet as many of our COVID deaths have been in nursing/retirement homes. My mother grew up during the (1930’s) Great Depression and WW2 remembers people being out of work and getting ration coupons for sugar, meat etc. Her family always had enough food to eat, but she had classmates who did not. So although we may be frustrated with the current situation, we’re all safe in our own homes with food on the table. A small dose of perspective…..

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!” – a Depression era saying.

Easy Strawberry Trifle

February 14, 202022 Comments

Chocolate and strawberries are traditional Valentine’s Day desserts, so here’s an easy strawberry trifle to make if you are craving something light, fruity and not too sweet – and it’s much better than my low-fat chocolate brownie disaster. As an added plus, it’s not so much made as assembled, requiring only three ingredients, cake, instant custard and strawberries.

Grocery store strawberries are not so good this time of year in Canada, so I mixed them with some strawberry freezer jam from last summer. (Click here for blog link). As I use No Sugar Pectin in my freezer jam, it’s more of a strawberry puree than a sweet jam, but you can also mush up the strawberries and add sugar to taste.

For the cake you can use those mini golden cakes from the grocery store or angel food cake, but I had some leftover cake which had been in the freezer for awhile but when thawed it was just as fresh as the day I made it.

The last time I made this dessert I used French vanilla pudding cups, but this time I decided to use the more traditional custard. I bought a package of instant custard from The British Shop, a brand recommended by the owner as I figured the British must know their custards (she also told me last year the shop spent $20,000 on import fees).

Just add 360ml of BOILING Water and stir for a minute and Voila – a nice and creamy custard. (Next time I might add a teaspoon of Vanilla extract as it was fairly bland).

As I’ve just spent a fairly productive week cleaning out the basement storage areas and reorganizing things, including some old family heirlooms and crystal, I decided to use my grandmother’s parfait glasses.

I never met my grandmother as my dad’s parents both died before I was born, but I’ve often wondered what her life was like. She married in 1919 and as an older mom had her kids at 37, 40 and 41 and died fairly young at age 65, after breaking a hip. So it’s possible these glasses are a hundred years old – maybe they were part of her wedding trousseau? My mother said they were in the old farmhouse when she got married in 1952. Or they may even have been from my great grandmother Ellen farther back in 1900, part of a collection of crystal from the Edwardian age, of which I have several pieces. I remember my mother using the matching glasses at family dinners along with her good china, but they are so thin and delicate they require hand-washing. There are only seven parfait glasses left, plus two with small handles which look like they might be hot toddy glasses. Anyway, I felt they deserved an outing sometime this century!

I crumbled the cake in the bottom, then layered the strawberries and custard, then cake again (I could have used more cake), custard and more strawberries on top. You can also garnish with whipped cream and a strawberry, but I ran out of room.

The parfait glasses seem tiny, so I suspect portion sizes were smaller back in the days of Downton Abbey. The same with plates – compare this new red Rachel Ray plate to the older pink plate from the thrift shop.

The same with supersized restaurant plates. While it’s customary to want to fill your plate, maybe that isn’t such a good idea anymore?

This makes a nice light dessert after a big meal. There’s something to be said for moderation and family tradition, and strawberries in the middle of winter!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

PS. For those of you who are mad for plaid like I am, the plaid charger plates are from Michael’s craft store, after Christmas sale – $1.50 each vs regular $8. (600 words)

Low-Fat Chocolate Brownies

February 12, 2020February 23, 202030 Comments

Last week’s Books and Brownies blog left me craving something chocolatey and as Valentine’s Day is fast approaching I decided to make brownies. I’m not one to say no to convenience food if it tastes good, being perfectly content to bow to the expertise of Betty Crocker, but my favorite mix had turned out dry the last few times I made it. I used to take brownies to work for birthdays and my brownies had always been a hit, the secret ingredient being butter not oil – I was raised on a dairy farm where butter ruled. It was always a treat getting off the school bus if my mother had made a big pan of brownies, chewy, no icing but walnuts in them, usually still warm from the oven, but even back in the sixties she used a mix. After a family member was diagnosed with gallbladder problems, I switched to a low fat mix which eliminated the added oil/butter, but then it too was discontinued.

What’s up Betty Crocker?

After wasting more time than I care to admit pouring over low-fat recipes in cookbooks, online and on that food vortex otherwise known as Pinterest, I discovered that both applesauce and strained prunes can be substituted for some of the fat in a recipe. I settled on one that called for strained prunes, the baby food kind was okay it said. So I set out for the grocery store which apparently doesn’t even sell baby food anymore as everyone makes their own. Luckily, the drugstore had an organic line in plastic pouches – they might want to revisit those old glass jars which can be recycled in all kinds of ways. A pouch held 125ml, exactly the amount I needed, but when I opened it, it tasted so awful, that I decided to use a different recipe with applesauce instead. The reviews were all good, except for one dissenter, who said don’t bother, waste of ingredients. Here’s the recipe for Rich and Chewy Low Fat Brownies.

Ingredients

½ cup cocoa

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ¾ cup white sugar

2 egg whites

¾ cup applesauce unsweetened

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl using a hand mixer. Add egg whites, applesauce and vanilla.
Mix all other ingredients in a separate smaller bowl and add to the wet ingredients in the large bowl. Do NOT overmix!
Spray 8×8 dish with PAM and bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Yields 16 brownies.

The lumpy texture was a bit strange, not sure if that was from the applesauce or my failure to read the recipe as I dumped the sugar in with the dry ingredients by mistake. They baked up alright, a bit denser than my regular brownie mix but the appearance was good, soft in the centre, slightly crusty at the edges and on top.

The Verdict: Well they were certainly rich and chewy, but were they good?

Never having made brownies from scratch before I had nothing to compare them to but they seemed tasteless, kind of like eating cardboard. Guilty as charged IMO. The rest of the jury was polite but noncommittal, preferring the slightly safer remark, “They’re okay, but they don’t taste like your regular brownies.” Several people thought they were cake.

I did cut back on the sugar by half a cup to 1 1/4 cups as some of the reviewers had suggested as it seemed like a lot of sugar for a small 8X8 pan. My chocolate powder was the very expensive French imported stuff which possibly made it too rich. They didn’t seem sweet at all, even smothered in my regular 2 inches of Canada’s favorite icing (see label).

They did look pretty on my pink plates though.

But food is to eat! I hate it when you’re in a fancy restaurant and you order something outrageously expensive off the dessert trolley because it looks good, and it turns out to be disappointing. Of course not everyone is a fussy foodie like I am (except that lone dissenter), but I would not have served these to company. They were mediocre at best – if I’m going to indulge in a brownie I want it to be great.

Were they even as healthy as promised? Here’s the nutrition label:

Serving Size: 1 (812) g

Servings Per Recipe: 1

AMT. PER SERVING% DAILY VALUE

Calories: 147.9

Calories from Fat 16 g 11 %

Total Fat 1.8 g 2 %

Saturated Fat 0.9 g 4 %

Cholesterol 3.8 mg 1 %

Sodium 118.6 mg 4 %

Total Carbohydrate 31.9 g 10 %

Dietary Fiber 0.8 g 3 %

Sugars 21.9 g 87 %

Protein 1.8 g

Add in the nutrition label from the icing:

Add up the 1.8g of fat from the brownie, but you would be lucky to get 16 brownies out of a small pan like that so let’s round that up to 4g, with the 5g of fat from the 2 tablespoons of icing (again a stretch), and you have about 9g.

Now compare that to Betty Crocker’s new product, Fudge Brownie in a Mug with fudge topping:

Nutrition Label:

You add some water and nuke it in the microwave for one minute. One pouch with fudge topping also gives you 9 g of fat, and about the same number of calories as the low fat recipe, but better taste, in fact it was so rich tasting I could only eat half of it. Is there such a thing as too chocolatey? I know death by double chocolate is all the rage but I much prefer regular milk chocolate over the often bitter darker stuff. Plus unless you’re baking for a family who ever eats just one brownie? The mug box has built-in portion control – not sure how they came up with 3 portions, why not 2 or 4, but maybe the extra one is to stash away for an emergency on days you need chocolate. So why not let Betty do all the work? Now it’s back to the pastry board for a better Valentine’s Day dessert…stay tuned. (950 words)

PS. Do you have a favorite brownie recipe or mix?

Santa’s Favorite Chocolate Cookies

December 18, 2019December 18, 201927 Comments

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is making several batches of no-bake chocolate/oatmeal/peanut butter cookies a week or two before Christmas and distributed them to all the hungry little elves who are slaving away trying to make Christmas good for everyone. They are always a crowd-pleaser at pot-lucks too. I don’t know what they are called, but I inherited the recipe from a sister-in-law back in the eighties so we refer to them as her cookies, but you could call them Santa’s favorites.

I don’t make them any other time of year, just at Christmas, although with the chocolate they would be suitable for Valentine’s Day too. It’s hard to justify the calories, but they do contain some good-for-you ingredients, like oatmeal (for lowering cholesterol), milk (source of calcium), peanut butter (for protein) and cocoa (source of antioxidants), even if there is a fair bit of sugar in the recipe. I find good old-fashioned grocery store Fry’s cocoa works best, as the one year I tried a fancy imported French brand, they were way too chocolaty, so I needed to add less. (Note: some versions of this recipe only use 1/4 cup cocoa but I’ve always used 1/3 cup of Fry’s, so you could adjust to your taste if you have a richer cocoa.)

Recipe:

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup Peanut Butter

2 cups white sugar

1/3 cup cocoa

1/2 cup milk

3 cups oatmeal (rolled minute oats)

2 tsp (10ml) vanilla

Mix sugar and cocoa in a pan. Add butter and milk and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. When it starts to boil, boil 1 to 1 1/2 minutes exactly. This is a full boil, not just a few bubbles. Do not under boil as the mixture will not set properly after you add the other ingredients.

As the chocolate mixture has to be boiled in a pan on the stove, these cookies are not suitable for kids to make. Santa’s little helpers could help measure the ingredients though.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, peanut butter and rolled oats in that order. I use Crunchy peanut butter as that’s what I buy, but Smooth is okay too.

Once you have added the peanut butter to the boiling chocolate mixture and whisked it through, and then added the oatmeal, you have to work quickly to scoop out the mixture before it sets. Drop by teaspoon onto wax paper or non-stick baking pans. Let cool thoroughly. Makes 24 cookies. Keep them in an airtight container. If they dry out too much after a few days, you can zap them in the microwave for ten seconds to make them moist again.

Some batches turn out drier than others, depending if I have let it boil too long, but it doesn’t affect the overall taste. It’s all good. They can be stored at room temperature or in the fridge, or frozen for later.

I usually keep a batch in the freezer and defrost when needed, even it it’s just one cookie as a treat with a cup of tea before bed. Heating them up in the microwave for about ten seconds makes them even better as there’s nothing like a warm chocolate cookie. Don’t forget to leave some out for Santa!

Rhubarb Lunar Coffee Cake

May 16, 2019May 20, 201918 Comments

“Mission Control to Earthlings: Volunteers needed to test Lunar Cake recipe. Only rhubarb lovers need apply.”

Rhubarb is one of those foods you either love or hate. I never liked rhubarb until a few years ago, but then my entire culinary experience consisted of a very tart rhubarb pie my mother would make for my dad once a year. We had a big rhubarb patch on the farm, and no matter how much sugar she used in the pie, it was so sour no one else would eat it. The rhubarb patch was rectangular in size and was beside a row of red currant bushes, with one black currant and one gooseberry bush at each end. Behind it, the odd spike of asparagus would appear in the early spring, these all being old-fashioned farm staples from a century ago. Today they would be considered heirloom varieties. Once established, those old rhubarb patches would live forever. I would sometimes volunteer to pick the red currants, as my dad would get his very own red current pie too. In retrospect those pies must have been something his mother had made, nostalgic reminders of childhood. We just thought they were sour.

Because the patch was so large and prolific and had been there for many years, people from town would stop by and ask if they could buy some. If you are a rhubarb-lover you always know where a good patch is. We would see the same people year after year, so one day we kids had the ingenious idea that we would have a roadside stand and sell bundles of rhubarb for 25 cents – a country version of a lemonade stand.

The rhubarb stand lasted all of one Sunday afternoon. There was little traffic on our dusty country road and we soon grew bored laying on a blanket under the big tree out front. On the rare occasion someone did stop, we would run to the house to get our parents, because we had been drilled in school not to talk to strangers, even those innocent souls out for a Sunday drive. (Makes sense right, well in the mind of a child). I think we grossed 75 cents.

Luckily we had our guard dogs to protect us and the rhubarb patch!

Now as an adult, count me in as a rhubarb fan too. I especially love strawberry-rhubarb jam, rhubarb scones, and most recently a rhubarb coffee cake, which I’ve made the past few years from a recipe a dietitian friend gave me. This Canadian recipe is called Lunar Rhubarb Cake and was developed by an editor of Canadian Living magazine back in the 1980’s. It was so good, it went viral before viral even existed, with everyone saying they got it from their mother, aunt, neighbor. (A recipe which promotes sharing like that, is one small step for food-kindness). According to the food column in the Ottawa Citizen, the name lunar comes from the appearance of the top of the cake, similar to the crater-like surface of the moon.

CAKE INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1 1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 Tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sour cream (you can use 2% if you wish)

2 cups chopped rhubarb (you can increase by 1/2 cup more if you wish)

1 tbsp. floor

LUNAR TOPPING:

1/4 cup butter (melted)

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon (I omitted this, as in my opinion cinnamon goes with apple pie, not rhubarb)

DIRECTIONS:

Chop the rhubarb and toss with 1 tbsp flour. Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix 2 cups flour, soda and salt together. (I buy the premixed flour with the baking soda and salt already in it which is more expensive but saves measuring). Alternatively add the flour mixture and sour cream to the creamed mixture. Add the rhubarb to the batter. Pour into a buttered 9 X 13 inch cake pan. Mix the topping ingredients and spread evenly over the top of the cake. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, until the top is pitted and crusty and a skewer comes out clean. (It was 15 minutes longer for me, as my oven always cooks slow). Recipe serves twelve hungry astronauts.

Some versions of this recipe call for buttermilk or sour milk instead of sour cream. The batter will be quite thick with the sour cream.

The cake keeps well in the fridge and was incredibly moist even after a week. It transports well too, should you wish to take it to a party in another galaxy. I think it would work well with blueberries when the season arrives, because as we all know rhubarb season is way too short!

Maybe if my mother’s old-fashioned rhubarb pie had a crumble topping we might have eaten it too, as the sweetness balances out the tartness of the rhubarb, similar to the popular combination of strawberries and rhubarb. Although I’m not a huge fan of strawberry-rhubarb pie, mostly because of the pastry, I have made a compote by stewing equal parts of rhubarb and strawberries on the stove and adding sugar to taste. It’s nice mixed with vanilla yogurt or ice cream or just eaten plain.

I’ve been envisioning my own rhubarb patch in the backyard, so I bought home this last week, although it’s been too cold to plant it.

Although eaten as a fruit, rhubarb is actually a vegetable. While the stalks may be edible, the leaves are toxic to humans and animals due to a high concentration of the poison, oxalic acid. It is a perennial which likes cooler climates. Plant in full sun, spacing 3 or 4 feet apart in a row. Patience is required as you can’t harvest the first few years until established. Newer varieties last about 15 years. You can also divide existing rhubarb plants (root balls) in early spring, so I might be on the hunt for an old patch down a country lane….

Flash forward to 2025 – mission accomplished….hopefully?

Tea and Sticky Toffee Pudding

February 19, 2019February 19, 201919 Comments

Snow, then ice pellets, then freezing rain, then back to snow again – this has been our weather pattern for the past six weeks. Today is definitely another stay at home day, and for those weary of winter what better thing to do than to bake. Your kitchen will smell lovely and your family is sure to be appreciative. The third Monday in February is Family Day in Canada, as the government felt we needed a long holiday weekend to ward off the winter blues. The idea is to spend the day outdoors with your family enjoying some winter activities, which inspired my mother to paint this picture.

Winter Fun

The weather cooperated last night with an unexpected six inch snowfall which made everything clean and white for tobogganing, skiing or skating. It’s pretty, but I would much prefer to see some greenery in my backyard and if there are any snowdrops beneath the neighbour’s tree they must be smothered by now.

There’s finally some warmth to the sun and the air has that mild feeling that tells you winter is winding down, but it’s still cold enough to make a nice warm dessert appealing. I stole this recipe for sticky toffee pudding from a local coffee shop which specializes in homemade deserts – well they graciously emailed it to me after I told them theirs was the best ever. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a big seller for them, but sticky toffee pudding is not that well known in Canada, although becoming more popular. Often thought of as a classic British dessert, it’s origins are actually Canadian, as (Wikipedia) legend has it that two Canadian WW2 officers gave the recipe to a British restaurant owner who put it in a cookbook. So I guess you could say it’s circled back across the pond. It’s really more of a cake, but as pudding is an interchangeable term for dessert in Britain, it’s best served with tea (and you can pretend you’re at Downton Abbey).

I used a big muffin pan instead of an eight inch square dish, as it makes perfect portions, and that’s how the coffee shop served it.

But I scooped the rest of the leftover batter into a small red loaf pan from Christmas because it looked more festive. Watch the baking time closely, as I took them out a bit before thirty minutes and they were still well done, (and my oven normally cooks slow).

The caramel sauce is sweet but not too sweet. I find those cans of 2% evaporated milk (NOT sweetened condensed), always have a peculiar smell and taste, but you don’t notice it when it’s boiled together with the sugar and butter. Some recipes say you can use cream if you wish, and I may try that sometime but I didn’t have any and the grocery store was closed because of the holiday. Of course cream will up the saturated fat content. Our (President’s Choice) grocery store sold an excellent microwavable freezer brand of this desert, and I was horrified to see they clocked in at 550 calories and over 60% of the days saturated fat quota. We have extensive food labeling here, which probably discouraged people from buying them as the product was discontinued. (Note the calories can be cancelled out by volunteering to shovel the driveway). While many restaurant versions of this desert (and I’ve sampled a few), have a moister darker cake, sometimes with spices, this one is lighter in color and more like a muffin texture. Store the sauce in the refrigerator if not using right away and reheat. If you like lots of warm sauce (and who doesn’t as it makes the cake), there was enough evaporated milk in the 300ml can to double the batch. It’s a rich decadent desert, so you might even want to split one with someone, and of course don’t forget the tea!

Song of the Day: Tea for Two – Ella Fitzgerald

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Category: recipes