Apricot Ice and Cocoanut Cream Cookies

Sometimes, just sometimes, this hobby of mine rewards me with new and delicious treasures. Today, I have two recipes that are fantastic! Hurray!



Apricot Ice
Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together With Refreshments for All Social Affairs [1900's?]

1 quart can of apricots
1/2 cupful of sugar
1 pint of water
Juice of one lemon

Press the apricots through a sieve [or, you know, a blender.], add all the other ingredients, and
serve. This is nice served in lemonade glasses for afternoon tea. Pass sweet wafers. [Freeze like ice cream. All the other recipes for fruit ices in this book state this step, this one does not for some reason.]

This will serve eight persons.

***
Important Note:: When I say here "freeze like ice cream", I mean "freeze in an ice cream maker", not "put it into the freezer as if it were a carton of Haagen Daaz." Not that anyone made that mistake. You know who you are.

***



Cocoanut Cream Cookies
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book [1896]

2 eggs.
1 cup sugar.
1 cup thick cream.
1/2 cup shredded cocoanut.
3 1/2 cups flour.
3 teaspoons baking powder.
1 teaspoon salt.
[extra coconut for sprinkling on top of the dough]

Beat eggs until light, add sugar gradually, cocoanut, cream, and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder. Chill, toss on a floured board, pat and roll one-half inch thick. Sprinkle with cocoanut, roll one-fourth inch thick, and shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. Bake on a buttered sheet. [app. 325 degrees for 10 minutes]


Verdict:

Apricot Ice: Yum. The apricot ice has a clean, crisp, refreshing flavor, perfect for a hot summer day. It also makes use of one of my least favorite fruit applications, canned apricots. I'm not a fan of apricots to begin with, but when they are canned they are like dollops of slimy fur. Here, however, they are transformed into something cloying and slithering to something pure and good.

Also a plus, this recipe just requires things from your pantry, and could be easily adapted to other fruits. Other, similar fruit ice recipes are even in the cookbook, but it isn't that hard. No ice cream? Have a need for ice cream but no dollars? Blend up that mysterious can of fruit in the back of your pantry with water, sugar, and possibly lemon juice. Nice.


Cocoanut cream cookies: Also delicious. They are not heavily sweet like a lot of modern cookies that make your teeth hurt biting into them, they are just exactly sweet enough. No more, no less. Perfect. You can eat them with lemonade or apricot ice without wincing as you go back and forth between teeth-aching frosting and sharp citrus. The texture is sort of like a soft sugar cookie, like a much better version of those pink-frosting sugar cookies you get in grocery stores. I imagine these would work really well at a wedding reception, baby/bridal shower, etc.

As a bonus, by convenient happenstance they are low fat! "But Jana!" you say. "They clearly have cream in them! And cream is fattening!" Well, yes, yes it is. But less fattening then butter. Butter is all the fat and a few of the milk solids from cream. Ninety-eight percent of the cookie recipes I can think of off the top of my head use some sort of solid fat, be it butter or shortening (Spry shortening, of course!). This one, however, uses only cream. Therefore, it is low fat. Go. Make. Eat. Feel not thou guilty.

Happy 50's Ice Cream Time

And now, just because I love you, three delightful ice cream pictures from the booklet that came with my mom's ice cream maker that she got in Ye Olden Times. Look at these guys!

I scream! You scream!

Kids scream! Mom screams!

Bow ties are cool.

Well-dressed debonair husband politely smiles for!


Everybody screams for ice cream! Rah rah rah!



Next time: Apricot Ice. Because now I'm in the mood for ice cream.

Spry!Salmon Casserole, Spry!Oven-Creamed Potatoes, green salad, and Spry!Pineapple Upiside-Down Cake

Yes, the day has finally come. Spry. Glorious Spry. Sweet, creamy, digestible Spry.



Salmon Casserole
Unusual seasonings make this dish so savory! Yet it costs so little.

1 pound can salmon
1/4 cup Spry
1 teaspoon onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Salmon liquor
Milk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
1 egg, slightly beaten

Remove bones and skin from salmon and separate into flakes. . . . Melt Spry in frying pan. Add onion and cook until yellow. Add bread crumbs, salt, and pepper and brown lightly. . . . Put salmon liquor into a cup and pour in enough milk to make 1 cup. Combine salmon, crumbs, and liquid. . . . Add lemon juice, lemon rind, parsley, and egg, and blend, being careful not to mash salmon. . . . Pour into 8-inch Sprycoated. . . . Bake in moderately hot oven (375 degrees F.) for 30 minutes. Serves 6.



Friday Supper Special. Serve Salmon Casserole with Oven-creamed Potatoes (page 30) and a crisp green salad. For dessert, remember Pineapple Upside-down Cake (page 45).


White or Cream Sauce
A nice smooth sauce or creamed vegetables, fish, and meats. Dandy for scalloped dishes, too.

2 tablespoons Spry
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
1 cup milk or thin cream

Melt Spry in saucepan; add flour, salt, and pepper, and blend well. . . . Add milk gradually, stirring constantly, and continue stirring and cooking until thickened. . . . Makes 1 cup sauce.



Vegetable Casserole
Seasoned just enough and browned to a turn with a toppin' of melted cheese.

2 cups White Sauce (above)
1 teaspoon onion juice
1 cup cooked potatoes, diced
1 cup cooked green peas
1 cup cooked carrots, cut lengthwise
1/4 pound cheese, sliced

Combine white sauce and onion juice. . . . Add potatoes, peas, and carrots, and mix lightly. Turn into Sprycoated casserole. . . . Lay slices of cheese over top. . . . Bake in moderately hot oven (375 degrees F.) 30 minutes, or until cheese is melted and slightly browned. . . . Serves 6.



Oven-creamed Potatoes. Omit onion and add 2 tablespoons horse-radish to white sauce. Use 3 cups cooked diced potatoes; omit peas and carrots.




Pineapple Upside-down Cake
Easy to make and looks real dressy with pineapple and cherries glistenin' on top.

1/3 cup Spry
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, unbeaten
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 cups sifted flour
1/2 cup canned pineapple juice
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
5 slices canned pineapple
5 maraschino cherries (optional)

Combine Spry, salt, and vanilla; add sugar gradually and cream well. . . . Add egg and beat thoroughly. . . . Add baking powder to flour and sift 3 times. Add small amounts of flour to creamed mixture, alternately with pineapple juice, mixing after each addition until smooth. . . . Sprinkle brown sugar on bottom of 8 x 8-inch pan rubbed liberally with Spry. . . . Arrange pineapple on sugar, put cherries in centers of slices, and pour batter over all. . . . Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees F.) 50 to 60 minutes. . . . Serve upside down with whipped cream. . . . Serves 8 to 10.


Verdict:

DISCLAIMER: Spry is no longer sold, so if Aunt Jenny asks, any negative feelings I have about this food are a direct result of using Shur-Saving shortening instead of smooth, creamy, digestible Spry. Please, Aunt Jenny. Forgive me.

Salmon Casserole: This is a LOT of crumbs for this amount of salmon. Seriously, a lot. And I'm not sure which "unusual" seasonings Aunt Jenny is talking about. The parsley? The salt and pepper? Maybe she forgot to include them. It would've been a lot better with some good tartar sauce, but I didn't have any. Lame. Mainly, it was a bready fish-flavored loaf. Loaves, again. This cookbook has got to be from the 1940's-60's, what with the love of loaves of stuff. Bread should come in loaves. Meat can come in loaves, in the form of meatloaf. Other things, shaky ground, Aunt Jenny, shaky ground.

Oven-Creamed Potatoes: Sooooo bland! Usually this sort of thing would be made with butter instead of shortening, and butter has a lot more flavor. Shortening is designed to be tasteless. The horseradish... yeah. It was horseradishy. Now that was an unusual flavor! I think it ate the cheese, because I couldn't find it or taste it once it melted. That is too bad, because I love me some cheese. At least the potatoes didn't come in a loaf.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake: Mmmmmm. Cake. Not the best pineapple upside-down cake I've ever had, it's a lot better with butter, but still good. I ate one piece. An hour later, the rest of the cake had disappeared and husband looked really contented.

Spry! Receipts so digestible, even a child can eat 'em.

Why it has taken me so long to post the cover of Aunt Jenny's cookbook, I cannot say. Calvin seems really, really happy here. Perhaps Aunt Jenny let him lick the frostin' bowl last time she was makin' frostin'. Or perhaps he's just thrilled that every meal involves shortening. (Shortenin'?) But I have questions.

1. Why is he so skinny?

2. And wearin' lipstick?

3. If Aunt Jenny has written the cookbook that Calvin is readin' right now that he himself is on, and that picture is holding a cookbook with himself on it, how is space/time not fracturin'? Remember, the back of the cookbook also has an infinite time loop.

4. Has Aunt Jenny constructed a Paradox Machine, or is she a witch?

5. If option one, is it powered by Spry?

6. If option two, is she powered by Spry?


Also: "Receipts...so digestible a child can eat 'em." Discuss.


Next time: A Spry meal. Oh yes.

Brown Bread Ice Cream

I took a challenge to recreate a historical ice cream recipe. Of course I couldn't do something like vanilla or strawberry! No.



Brown Bread Ice Cream.
3 pints cream.
1 1/4 cups dried brown bread crumbs.
7/8 cup sugar.
1/4 teaspoon salt.

Soak crumbs in one quart cream, let stand fifteen minutes, rub through sieve, add sugar, salt, and remaining cream; then freeze.



Fannie Farmer again! She is weird.


Verdict:
This was reeeeeeaaaally creamy. Really, really, really creamy. It takes forever to melt! Usually ice cream recipes cut the cream with half-and-half or milk. Not this one, man, not this one. In the U.S., ice cream must have no less than 10% milkfat to be labelled ice cream. Some really super premium kinds have 20% milkfat. Heavy cream, which is what I used, must have no less than 36% milkfat.

Yikes.

The creaminess of it was actually the most remarkable part, rather than the bread crumbs. The bread crumbs dissolved into almost nothing. Pointless!

It tasted of very little. Like really bland, solid whipped cream. I may or may not even finish the rest of the batch. I know! Tossing ice cream!

Molded Chicken and Grape Salad

Sigh. People of the 70's. This is your fault. What made you people decide that encasing vegetables and meats in fruit jello was a super-de-duper idea? Shame on you.

Out of all the molded dinners, I chose this one because it sounded sort of like that yummy chicken salad on croissants you get at church dinners.

It was not.



Molded Chicken and Grape Salad
1 package (3 oz.) Jell-O brand gelatin, lemon or lime flavor
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup boiling water
1/8 teaspoon tarragon
3/4 cup cold water
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup diced cooked chicken or turkey
1/4 pound green or purple grapes, halved and seeded (about 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup diced celery

Dissolve gelatin and salt in boiling water, add tarragon. Add cold water and lemon juice and chill until thickened. Stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon into 4-cup mold or individual molds. Chill until firm, about 4 hours. Unmold and serve with mayonnaise. Makes about 3 1/2 cups or 4 entree servings.



Verdict:
This is an abomination. The bits with grapes and celery were sort of fine, but the chicken was... well, it was coated in lemon Jello. What more can you say? I ate a few bites, then chucked the rest in the trash. If someone served this to me at their house, I would be able to eat it so I wouldn't offend them. I would just never, ever make this again. Or anything like it. Ever. I tried a bit with mayonnaise, as per instructions. Awful. So bad. So bad. Hubby ate all of his and said he'd had worse, but then accused me of trying to make recipes until finally he would not be able to say this. He claimed that I was doomed to failure.

Curses.

I do love my Jello mold though. It is plastic and had interchangable designs that snap onto it to fill with mayonnaise or whipped cream, for festive occasions. When you pop it off, it also breaks the seal so the Jello slides right out. So look out! Now that I'm super good at using it, we're having lime jello with green beans and pimentos and a mayo-filled Christmas tree next Christmas!

Oh, did you think I made up the green beans and pimentos bit? No.



REJECTED.

French Bean Basket
2 packages (3 oz. each) or 1 package (6 oz.) Jell-O brand gelatin, lemon flavor
2 chicken bouillon cubes
2 cups boiling water
1 package (9 oz.) Birds Eye 5 minute French style green beans
1 1/4 cups cold water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped pimento

Dissolve gelatin and bouillon cubes in boiling water. Add frozen beans and stir until beans separate and gelatin begins to thicken. Stir in cold water, lemon juice and pimento. Pour into 4- or 5-cup ring mold or individual molds. Chill until firm, about 2 hours. Unmold and garnish with crisp greens, if desired. makes about 4 cups or 8 servings.

REJECTED.

Gazpacho Salad
1 can (7 oz.) pimientoes, drained and diced
1 1/2 cups diced unpeeled cucumber
3/4 cup diced green pepper
2 medium tomatoes, diced
4 scallions, sliced
1 cup sliced pitted ripe olives
1 small clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons salad oil
1/3 vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 can (10 1/2 oz.) consomme
2 packages (3 oz. each) Jell-O brand gelatin, lemon flavor
1 1/2 cups boiling water

Combine pimentos, vegetables, olives, garlic, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper in large bowl. Mix well and stir in consomme. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Chill until thickened. Fold in vegetable mixture. Pour into 8-cup mold. Chill until firm, about 4 hours. Unmold and garnish with tomato, lemon and cucumber slices, if desired. Makes 14 servings.

Silly husbands.

The eyes. The eyes. Don't look her in the eyes. Don't blink. Don't turn your back. Don't look away and don't blink.

She'll be waiting.