Since this holiday is all about celebrating amazing oil that lasted for eight days rather than the expected one (the original energy-efficiency holiday, if you think about it), it’s generally traditional to serve something fried. I’m still working with the oil for this retro recipe attempt, but in a slightly different form…

Pie Crust. I have met very few people who say, “Oh, pie crust is really easy to make,” or “my homemade pie crust tastes amazing.” The general rule of thumb is that pie crust actually isn’t all that bad, but it does require some attention — in particular, you have to keep your fat of choice (butter, lard, and/or shortening) very cold while cutting it in, or utter disaster will result. I’ve also run into problems with overmixing or overworking the dough, resulting in a very dense, chewy, unappealing crust. And if your crust is mediocre, you need to have an absolutely amazing filling to save that pie.

I was pretty intrigued, therefore, by this advertisement I stumbled across which used oil, rather than very cold chunks of some sort of fat. It didn’t sound like it could possibly match the quality of “standard” crust methods, but the simplicity of just “stir and roll” really appealed to me — we had to try this.

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup Wesson Oil
1/4 cup cold whole milk

1. Quick start for modern Stir-N-Roll pie crust: pour Wesson Oil and cold milk into measuring cup, and pour all at once into flour. There’s no digging out shortening, no packing to measure, Wesson pours to measure accurately. It is instant shortening with all the delicacy of finest salad oil.

2. No cutting in shortening — just stir to mix. Wesson blends in quickly and evenly. Even beginners find Stir-N-Roll pie dough easy to handle. Best of all, light, delicate Wesson Oil keeps its delicacy at high pie-baking temperatures. Your pie crust has home-baked flavor no mix can equal.

3. No mussy floured board. Roll your pie crust neatly between waxed papers. Even with moist, juicy fillings, your pastry keeps its tender crispness. And because Wesson Oil is lighter and more delicate than any other type of shortening, your pie crust is sure to be delicate, too.

Easy enough ingredient selection.

I had to include this picture, because oil and milk actually look pretty cool together.

This is the unmentioned first step. Really, the motto should be “pour, stir, and roll”…

And now we get to “stir.”

The stand mixer is a good tool for this job, too; turn on, pour liquid, and walk away for a minute. (Just in case you wanted to make a quick recipe even quicker.)

It very soon turns into a crumbly dough…

… which is quite easily formed into two separate balls for…

… rolling!

Handling is interesting. This is far easier to repair than a “traditional” crust — you just squish extra crust into the holes, pat it so it’s (more or less) flat, and it’s fixed. That’s good, because this crust rips very easily and is impossible to transfer into a pie pan without some damage.

The top crust didn’t brown very much during baking, but I also didn’t add any egg wash or such to help with that. (And yes, those are oak leaves, not holly leaves… my cookie cutter selection isn’t extensive, apparently.)

I like salty foods, but this is ridiculously salty. Other versions of “stir-n-roll” crust call for 1 teaspoon (which is plenty), so I don’t know what the heck happened here — rogue copy editor, or sabotage by the Morton’s Salt girl perhaps? A mincemeat pie at least has enough other flavors going on that you aren’t immediately killed by the salt. (I’ve made this a couple of times now, and reducing the salt is quite helpful!) Additionally, the crust ends up rather oily. This helps when you’re rolling in wax paper (it peels off super-easy), and it comes out of the pie dish easily, but it ends up sliding around on plates rather than sitting still.

Between the handling and the oiliness, this isn’t likely to be a contender for Best Pie Crust Ever. But it is a lot better than I expected. The flavor is good (when made with appropriate salt content), and it does actually manage to be somewhat flaky and tender despite not having any solid blobs of fat that melt in the oven (which is what I’ve always heard is the main trick to truly flaky crust — or biscuits, for that matter). So it’s not the best crust ever, but it’s pretty darn good — and pretty easy, too.

For the holiday season, I wanted to try a few different variations of fruitcake. I love my grandmother’s recipe the best, but there are so many ways of making fruitcakes, and a lot of retro advertising came up with some intriguing (and frightening) variations, promising simplicity and deliciousness.

Yet this one still stands out, because I have absolutely no clue what makes it a “Hong Kong” Fruitcake.

HONG KONG FRUITCAKE

1 — Prepare 1 pkg. marble cake mix as directed on package. Add 2 Tbs. chopped candied ginger (crystalized preferred), 1 tsp. almond extract. Spoon batter into wax paper lined tube pan (alternating white with chocolate; with knife cut through batter several times.

2 — Bake 40 min. at temp given on pkg.

3 — Cool, then frost with powdered sugar icing. (Blend 2-1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar, 1 Tbs. butter. Add 2 Tbs. milk, 1 tsp. almond extract.) Stud with currants, pieces of candied cherries and ginger, citron, 2 kinds of nuts.

I don’t know, what Hong Kong stereotype would this recipe conjure up in the 60′s? Maybe it’s the ginger. At least there isn’t some bad caricature to go with it.

(Google is absolutely no help, since the only mention of “Hong Kong Fruitcake” I can find is the Wrigley’s ad. Soon, I’ll be the second most prevalent online source for Hong Kong Fruitcake. Don’t worry, I’ll still remember all you loyal readers when I’m rich and famous.)

Weirdly, we couldn’t find marble cake mix, so we got one box each of yellow and chocolate to make a double recipe.

In other words, I’m banking on Wrigley’s to not let me down.

I stand by my opinion that cake is always best when made from scratch. But, at the same time, you can’t beat box mixes for convenience. Dump ingredients in a bowl, turn on a mixer, and walk away? Sometimes you just need that simplicity.

Five minutes later and we’ve got the batter wonderfully smooth, and spooned into bundt pans.

This is where I actually tend to have the most trouble. Whenever I need to marble batter, I tend to think it would be better if I just keep stirring just a little bit longer. This has historically led to a lot of pale chocolate cakes when I was trying for marbled.

Luckily for the fruitcake, I’ve learned to restrain myself over the years.

I even managed to grease my bundt pans enough that the cakes released almost perfectly. (Ignore that slightly torn patch. It will be glued back on with icing shortly.)

Once icing was made and bits of topping were purchased, we tossed everything on top. There was some dispute over the best size for the “2 kinds of nuts” (halves, or chopped); Buzz did his cake his way, I did mine my way.

Since the camera is mine, you get to see a picture of mine. (Ha!)

A cutaway of the interior reveals slight marbling; I think I managed to cut into sections that were both primarily chocolate. When eaten, there was plenty more yellow cake in evidence!

Buzz’s initial reaction sums this up quite nicely: “It tastes like cake.” Not fruitcake, just cake. Not even almond ginger cake, just cake. The icing is delicious (I love almond extract in baked goods), although the sprinkling of fruits and nuts makes for a somewhat odd contrast.

I can literally see the appeal of this recipe, though. It looks really festive with all that stuff on top, and would make a beautiful holiday dessert, but doesn’t taste like a fruitcake at all. For the large number of people who complain about hard cake with to many weird candied fruits, this could be a really nice alternative.

Personally, I still prefer my Grandma’s sweet and soft booze-soaked version, but I’ll keep this in the recipe archive as a possibility for potlucks.

This 1962 recipe is preserved on Flickr by Look Homeward, Harlot!

On the other hand, it means we have a lot of pumpkin hanging out in our freezer sometimes. In an attempt to use up the last of the 2010 batch, we are still making pumpkin-based food although Thanksgiving is well past. (Frankly, the South Carolina climate is so bizarre to my northern sensibilities that it still seems like early fall to me, despite December holidays rapidly approaching. It was 60°F here today and it’s going to be warmer the rest of the week. I just don’t understand this.)

So we’re retr-attempting a pumpkin chiffon pie — I mean, coconut pumpkin chiffon pie, since it’s from an advertisement for Baker’s Coconut. It seems like a bit of a stretch to put coconut in a pumpkin pie… however, I like coconut well enough, and I’ve never made a chiffon pie before, so I’m up for it.

COCONUT PUMPKIN CHIFFON PIE

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1-1/4 cups mashed cooked pumpkin
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup water
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg whites
1 cup Baker’s Shredded Coconut, toasted *
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1/3 cup cream, whipped and sweetened

Soften gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water. Combine pumpkin, milk, 1/2 cup water, egg yolks, 1/2 cup of the sugar, salt, and spices in top of double boiler. Cook over boiling water 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Remove from boiling water. Chill until slightly thickened.

Beat egg whites until foamy. Add remaining sugar gradually and continue beating until stiff. Fold in pumpkin mixture, vanilla, and 3/4 of the toasted coconut. Turn into cold pie shell. Chill until firm. Before serving, top with whipped cream and remaining toasted coconut.

* To toast coconut, spread thinly in shallow pan. Place in moderate oven (350°F) and toast about 10 minutes, or until delicately browned. Stir occasionally to toast evenly.

FYI: This recipe does not cook the egg whites. If you are concerned about the safety of raw eggs, use pasteurized eggs or do not make this pie.

This is a lot of ingredients, and a lot of steps for a pumpkin pie.

Softening gelatin is easy, just drop it in water and wander away for a while.

My fun trick for how to cook things in a double boiler, despite having never owned a double boiler: stick a bowl on top of a pot with water in it! (Just make sure it’s heat-safe — Pyrex works beautifully, metal would probably also be ok. Plastic would be a bad idea.)

And ten minutes of stirring, uuuugh. (My arm, my arm!)

Meanwhile, the gelatin had absorbed almost all the water and was squishily firmed up. (Side note — in my freshman solid state chemistry class, Prof. Sadoway showed us superabsorbent polymer gels one day, which were still pretty unusual and interesting in 1996. They are the stuff that allows super-thin diapers to absorb gallons of fluid. This gelatin looks exactly the same, even though it’s [a] edible and [b] not nearly as absorbent. And now I’ll stop talking about nerdy chemistry and get back to the cooking.)

The pumpkin mix had thickened a bit after ten minutes, so time to drop in the gelatin…

Which caused it the gelatin to almost immediately liquify, and the entire mixture became very loose. Oh well, it’s supposed to thicken after it cools.

Incidentally, coconut smells amazing while it toasts.

While the pumpkin cools, we whipped the egg whites. I usually use white sugar, not brown, in egg whites, but it makes it a nice tan color and gives it a somewhat richer taste. (Something to remember to try in meringue some time!)

One thing I couldn’t really understand is why the vanilla isn’t added until this step — why not put it in the pumpkin-gelatin mix?

Whatever, everything is folded together, poured into pie crust, and chilled.

The 1/3 cup of cream is absolutely not enough; it couldn’t make a full ring around the pie, and certainly not the heaping fluffy circle in the advertisement.

So whip up 2/3 cup of cream, and you’ll be able to adequately cover the whole pie. Then, sprinkle with coconut!

This pie is GOOOOOOOOOOD. I don’t think the coconut is really necessary — it adds a bit of texture and a nice toasted flavor, but anyone with coconut allergies could easily leave it out. It’s somewhat on the sweet side. And it’s also a lot less orange than the original advertisement — browny-orange isn’t a bad color for pumpkin pie by any means, just don’t expect an orange-orange pie!

I think I’ve got a new favorite pie to take to Thanksgiving next year!

Recipe comes from the Gallery of Graphic Design from TJS Labs.

Now that’s cleared up, let’s take a look at what we’re trying to make and eat this week…

This is one that has been up for consideration a number of times, actually, but we’ve always either settled on something better or worse. While these meat balls are pretty weird looking, they aren’t quite as outlandish as some things we’ve made — they fall into that middle ground of odd, but not horrifyingly bizarre. I am actually not so much freaked out by the “porcupine” rice bits, as I am by the weird glossy coating the meatballs seem to have. Food just isn’t supposed to glisten like that.

PORCUPINE MEAT BALLS

*00 g (1 lb.) fine hamburger mince
*50 g (8 oz.) sausage meat
*50 (1 cup) long grain rice, uncooked
1 onion, grated or finely chopped
1 carrot, grated
1 teaspoon mixed herbs
1 tablespoon chutney, chopped
1 egg, beaten
Oil for frying
1 can tomato soup
250 ml (1 cup) water
Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
Parsley sprigs for garnish

Place hamburger mince, sausage meat, rice, onion, carrot, mixed herbs, chutney, and egg in a mixing bowl and mix together.

Shape mixture into balls, approximately 4 cm (1-1/2 in.) in diameter, with clean, cool, wet hands.

Heat 1 cm (1/2 in.) oil in a large heavy frying pan and fry meat balls until browned on all sides, turning frequently. Drain well on kitchen paper towels.

Place fried meatballs in a casserole or ovenproof dish.

Mix soup with water, lemon rind and juice and pour over meatballs.

Bake, without a lid, in a moderate oven at 180 deg. C (350 deg. F) for 45 minutes or until tender.

Serve hot garnished with parsley sprigs accompanied by creamed potatoes and glazed carrots. Serves 6.

So upon a closer reading, it’s not the rice that’s going to be the oddball ingredient here — it’s chutney. Now, I don’t really know much about chutney. It is an Indian condiment, and it can be wet or dry, spicy or mild, made with fruits or vegetables. I’ve often seen it with takeout or at restaurants, but never really eaten it. So for this, I settled for a moderately inexpensive “Major Grey Chutney,” which is a mildly spiced mango chutney. It tastes like somewhat vinegary jam, or maybe mincemeat.

In other random news, I got exactly 1.00 pounds of ground chuck at the meat counter. Maybe I should go play the lottery.

This isn’t a very inspiring assortment of ingredients in the bowl. (And I even forgot to add the blob of chutney at this point, it had to be mixed in later when I remembered.)

I started mixing the meat and stuff with a wooden spoon, but quickly gave in and switch to hand-mixing — it wasn’t going to come together otherwise.

Besides, I had to shape the meatballs by hand, so I ended up with meat-coated hands anyway.

While it might be “nourishing and economical,” it isn’t low-fat. And while I don’t try to entirely eliminate fat from my diet, I do try to use a little bit less than THIS much.

The meatballs smelled very good when finished frying. I kept having to remind myself they were still raw on the inside and I really shouldn’t try eating them yet. (Plus all that rice must still be crunchy…)

They almost fit in one layer in the casserole dish — hopefully a few sticking out of the sauce won’t be a problem. Speaking of which, the sauce tastes like very watery tomato soup. The lemon probably helps it somewhat, but it’s awfully diluted.

And finally, a nice helping with a side of mashed potatoes. (I didn’t get around to making any glazed carrots. Sorry.)

These were so close to being delicious that I was really disappointed. The chutney and Italian herb mix gave the meatballs a really good flavor; you couldn’t tell there was onion and carrot in there at all. The sauce, after cooking, had a wonderful citrus freshness that brightened up the tomato flavor and accentuated the meatballs nicely.

So what went wrong, you might well ask? The rice, while not completely raw, was still very al dente. It really ruined the texture, and it was hard to get past the crunch and enjoy the rest of the meatball. If the rice had been half-cooked to start, it could have worked (or possibly leave the rice out altogether, although that might make the texture odd in other ways). While those little spines definitely did remind us of a porcupine, I doubt it’s what the recipe creator really intended. (Who would do that to food on purpose?)

But I did learn that chutney helps make some darn good meatballs!

Advertisement from 1976 in “New Idea” preserved online in the Flickr stream of glen.h

One lazy weekend morning, Buzz and I decided it was a great day to try a retro recipe. He wanted something with meat in it, with meat as the star, and suggested ground lamb. None of my bookmarks called for lamb — lots of hamburger, but that’s not really the same, and I didn’t want to waste lamb on a dubious concoction from decades ago. So we started looking for pork chops, steak, really anything substantially “meaty” — and came across this.

The subsequent exchange went something like this:

“That’s not a recipe, we can’t make that.”

“Sure it is, meat tenderizer and mediocre steak! That’s a recipe.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Oh come on, please!”

I stood my ground, though; “steak” and “meat tenderizer” is not a recipe, especially not if there aren’t any proportions, or instructions beyond “use.” After flipping through a few more images, though, we found…

That’s right: a bull hugging a matador, while the matador sprinkles him with meat tenderizer. And, since that image is just way too good to pass up, we really did have to make steak.

Did you know that meat tenderizer is made from enzymes found in papaya? Weird but true. So really, I could be using fresh papaya chunks here, instead of generic meat tenderizer. (But guess what I had in the kitchen cupboard…)

Buzz butterflied the entire hunk of meat, making two (fairly large!) steaks. Seasoning was pretty simple — salt and pepper, in addition to the meat tenderizer. (One steak also got prime rib rub, just to see if that significantly improved the flavor.)

And, he threw it under the broiler for a while.

I still insisted on finding a real recipe to go on the side, though. Surprisingly, I don’t have many vegetable recipes bookmarked, either, but we did manage to agree on Harvest Succotash.

HARVEST SUCCOTASH — Melt 3 tbsp. bacon fat; blend in 2 tbsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/8 tsp. pepper. Stir in 1/2 c. liquid from No. 2 can Stokely’s Finest Cut Green Beans, or No. 303 can Golden Whole Kernel Corn. Boil and stir 2 min.; add 1/2 c. cream or evaporated milk. Add drained beans and corn, heat. 8 servings.

I will pause here for a moment and admit that I don’t really understand how this is succotash. As I understand it, succotash consists of corn and lima beans. There are versions with other beans like kidney, navy, etc. — almost any bean you can buy dried in a bag seems to be appropriate, if not entirely traditional. Green beans, however, despite being “beans,” are really completely different vegetables.

However, I don’t really like lima beans. This means a couple of things:

1. I am not an expert on succotash, since it generally is sitting there full of lima beans saying “you won’t enjoy this!”
2. I’m more than happy to follow Mrs. Irene L. Dout’s prize-winning succotash recipe, which calls for green rather than lima beans.

Easy enough, right?

Making a roux of bacon fat, flour, and canned vegetable juice is rather odd.

For one thing, it smells of canned vegetables.

And for some reason (probably the bacon fat) it took a while to get to the appropriate consistency. I cooked fat and flour and vegetable juice for a while and nothing happened — then suddenly, BAM, it looked like wallpaper paste.

Quick, add the cream!

It turned into a creamy sauce. (I first wrote “nice, creamy sauce” but realized that isn’t necessarily fair, since I haven’t tasted it yet.)

And then the vegetables got dumped on top. And at this point I realized that the photograph in the advertisement was pretty misleading — there’s no way the vegetables are going to stay that shiny and clean once this is mixed up.

I was right. Doesn’t look terrible, but doesn’t look like the picture.

This was a really, really tasty meal!

The tenderizer did an admirable job of tenderizing; you could tell which parts of the steak had gotten only a light dose, and were chewier as a result. Overall, though, it was a decent steak.

I was expecting the succotash to taste like glue-covered Veg-All (horrors!), but rather than bland glop, the sauce was a pleasant, creamy accent to the vegetables. It ended up tasting somewhat like creamed corn with green beans mixed in. Publix does a very good canned corn, and their canned green beans aren’t bad either; I think poor-quality vegetables could easily kill this succotash, though. (Well done, Mrs. Dout!)

Advertisements available online at TJS Labs Gallery of Graphic Design.

In addition to bringing from-scratch cranberry jelly and relishes to this year’s family Thanksgiving assembly, we decided to make a couple of retro cranberry recipes. That means you get a bonus double batch this week, two retro recipes for the price of one! (Sorry, you can’t put them on layaway…)

First up, Buzz wanted to try Cranberry Maple Pie. Just because it’s CRANBERRY TIME!

CRANBERRY MAPLE PIE

1 tablespoon flour
1 cup maple syrup
2 cups Eatmor Cranberries
Pie pastry

Line an 8-inch pie plate with pastry. Sprinkle flour over bottom crust and add maple syrup. Top with whole raw cranberries. Cover with pastry, press edges together and brush top of crust with milk. Bake in hot oven, 400°F. about 40 minutes. It’s sweet, juicy, good!

This looked fairly promising, until I read through the instructions more closely. “Wait, it’s just cranberries, sitting on maple syrup?” [Skeptical face!]

So, I sprinkled flour.

I poured in maple syrup.

I added cranberries. And then the proportions actually started to make sense; the maple syrup did manage to mostly cover the cranberries, so maybe this would turn out OK after all.

After baking, it looked wonderful. (I had to get out the little turkey-shaped cookie cutter and make some turkey pie crust shapes for the top. HAD to.)

Slices of the pie didn’t really stand up well, which was probably the fault of both a fairly liquid filling, and not very strong crust.

I don’t really know what I expected from the pie, although “good” wasn’t high on the list. However, the maple syrup really did a decent job of holding together (especially once the filling had cooled). The biggest downfall was my homemade pie crust, something I’m still working on perfecting. (It generally tastes fine, but its structural integrity leaves something to be desired, a rather ironic shortfall for a mechanical engineer.) I had never tasted maple syrup with cranberries before, and the combination is pleasantly fall-like.

And moving on!

Canned cranberry jelly, while not something I personally see the appeal of, is the favorite of some people. Maybe I’ll like it better when you add stuff to it and serve it in pretty glasses, instead of just slicing it on a plate. With that theory in hand, we’re attempting Cranberry Noel Dessert.

Cranberry Noel Dessert

Beat together 1 lb. can Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce and 2 tblsps. sugar. Fold in 1/2 pt. heavy cream, whipped, and 1/2 tsp. almond extract.

This was also very easy to whip up. I even forgot an ingredient shot, it’s so easy.

Can-shaped jelly and sugar!

Mushed together!

And folded with whipped cream!

To make it look that much more awesome, a little cranberry and mint-leaf garnish.

The Cranberry Noel Dessert (which we rapidly started calling “cranberry fluff” just to save time) was also good, much better than plain old sauce-from-a-can. I don’t know if it necessarily needed the extra two tablespoons of sugar, since canned jellied cranberry sauce tends to be quite sweet. (Perhaps it was more tart, back in the day?) Regardless, it melded together nicely with whipped cream. I could even see turning this into a freezer pie, potentially…

Whatever form your cranberries take this week, we hope you have a fun and delicious Thanksgiving holiday!

Cranberry Maple Pie is from an advertisement December, 1939, in Woman’s Day magazine. Cranberry Noel Dessert is also from a Woman’s Day magazine advert, but later — December, 1954. Both were found via the TJS Labs Gallery of Graphic Design.

WHITE HOUSE SPINACH DE LUXE

1 pound spinach
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup spinach water
1/2 cup White House [evaporated milk]
1 cup grated cheese
4 slices bacon

Wash spinach carefully. Add salt. Cook spinach with only the water clinging to leaves. Drain. Measure liquid, add water to make 1/2 cup. Combine with White House Milk. Place alternate layers of spinach, cheese, and milk mixture in shallow greased casserole. Top with bacon slices. Bake in moderate oven, 375 F., for 35 minutes or until bacon is crisp. 4 servings.

Spinach De Luxe is one of those dishes that visually scare me. My mother, despite good intentions, was pretty bad at cooking. She also worked. So a lot of her standard main and side dishes were from the freezer. The worst was fried clams that tasted like breaded rubber bands. A close runner-up was “spinach soufflé,” which took the worst characteristics of both soufflés and spinach and combined them into one sad, unappealing green blob. I still can’t look at any cooked spinach without mentally cringing, even when I know it’s going to taste infinitely better than my memories.

Although, I’ll admit — I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Maybe my fear of green sludge will be justified.

I didn’t have fresh spinach on hand, but did manage to dig a pound of frozen chopped spinach out of the freezer. (I didn’t expect it to be quite so finely chopped, though.)

Draining the spinach yielded exactly 1/2 cup of “spinach water,” so we didn’t add any extra water.

For “cheese,” I grated up some leftover gouda. This is becoming an excellent use of leftovers!

Layering turned out to be slightly challenging. A pound of chopped spinach doesn’t take up very much volume, but I did manage to stretch it into two thin layers.

I used five slices of bacon rather than four, just to cover the entire surface. And then, it went in the oven to bake.

It took longer than 35 minutes to crisp the bacon; it’s generally difficult to get bacon truly crisp if you’re letting it sit in its own fat (or sit on top of cheesy spinach milk, for that matter).

I also forgot to account for the bacon shrinking. (Oh well.)

This tasted really good! Everybody’s first bite was sort of reluctant (it isn’t a beautiful thing, even if you weren’t traumatized by spinach as a child) but even the pickiest child, at first declaring she didn’t like it (and liked bites including bacon “even worse”), ended up cleaning her plate. She claimed she was just being polite, although I don’t necessarily believe that.

To really make this dish a winner, I recommend leave out 1/2 cup of liquid — there was some debate whether the “spinach water” or evaporated milk were less helpful, but either way Spinach De Luxe came out rather on the squishy side. I think using a nice cheese was a big help for its overall flavor, and the bacon is a great contrast on top. Also consider breaking your bacon into smaller pieces, rather than just having a meat layer on top; it will be easier to eat and serve.

Adorable milk-hawking infant brought to you by White House Milk, and preserved online in bluwmongoose’s Flickr stream.

What better way to use up random leftovers than with a fun little retro recipe?

Given a choice between carrot rice pudding and spinach de luxe, I’m a lot more interested in carrot rice pudding. Any excuse to put vegetables into a dessert.

WHITE HOUSE CARROT RICE PUDDING

1/2 cup rice, uncooked
1/2 cup White House Milk
3/4 cup water
1-1/2 cups cooked carrots, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves

Wash rice. Cook in 1/2 cup White House Milk and 3/4 cup water in covered saucepan until tender. Mash cooked carrots. Combine rice, carrots and remaining ingredients. Bake in greased 1-1/2 quart casserole in moderate oven, 375°F., for 1 hour. 6 servings.

In measuring the milk, we realized we had twice as much as we remembered — 1 cup, in fact, enough to make both the carrot rice pudding and the spinach de luxe. So, sneak preview — next week is spinach!

Cook!

Mash!

Combine!

Bake!

Realize you forgot to grease the pan!

In addition to sticking to the dish (whoops!), this came out of the oven looking awfully dry — more like a cake than a typical rice pudding. It tasted like carrot cake, too — so much so that I started rummaging in the fridge to see if we had any cream cheese frosting sitting around (we didn’t) — with the odd textural addition of cooked rice as a binder instead of flour. It wasn’t bad at all, but it couldn’t quite decide what it was supposed to be.

Overall, though, it didn’t taste all that bad. Daughter even wanted to take some leftovers for lunch. (And that, folks, is why I sneak vegetables into desserts…)

Adorable milk-hawking infant brought to you by White House Milk, and preserved online in bluwmongoose’s Flickr stream.

ICE CREAM MUFFINS

by Mr. Albert F. Hinshaw, Orangevale, California

1-1/2 cups Pillsbury’s Best Self-Rising Flour*
2 cups very soft vanilla ice cream

Oven 425°

Measure flour and ice cream into mixing bowl. Mix only until all dry particles are moistened. Fill well-greased muffin cups three-fourths full. Bake at 425° for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown.

* For use with Pillsbury’s Best Flour (Regular or Instant Blending), add 1 tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.

Tip: If a richer muffin is desired, add 1 egg and 2 tablespoons cooking oil.

Variations: Stir 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate pieces or 1/2 cup chopped Diamond Walnuts into batter. Or, sprinkle muffins with sugar or cinnamon and sugar before baking.

This recipe makes sense, sort of. Ice cream already has milk and sugar, so all you “need” is flour for structure and baking powder for rising. Whether this basic theory is actually able to provide the correct proportions for baking remains to be seen! We decided to attempt both the regular and “rich” muffins listed in the recipe, to get a good idea of just how well the “two ingredient” approach would really work.

You could probably get some interesting variations with the wide array of ice cream flavors that are available nowadays — even fruity flavors like blueberry or strawberry could be a neat base. Of course, wanting to experiment with variations will require Ice Cream Muffins to be a tasty basic muffin, and we don’t know if they are yet — so vanilla it is!

Unfortunately, when ice cream melts, it loses some of the air that was churned in during the freezing process. The recipe isn’t clear on whether “2 cups” is before or after this air goes out. (Hopefully they mean before, because I used up all the ice cream…)

Once thoroughly softened (ok, melted), the ice cream was poured into the flour mixture.

The Rich Ice Cream Muffin Batch got an additional dose of egg and oil.

After stirring only until the dry ingredients were moistened, it looked quite lumpy — even for a muffin batter.

According to the Spoon Assistant (you know, that small child who hangs around the kitchen and offers to lick all your spoons for you, often while you’re still using them) the batter tasted pretty good. On the whole, this is an extremely kid-friendly recipe — not much to measure, not much to pour, and no worries if they don’t stir enough since you want it kinda lumpy.

Half of each batch got a light sprinkling of demerara sugar for a bit of extra sweetness and crunch.

After baking, there is not really a visible difference between the Rich (left) and Regular (right) Ice Cream Muffins, externally or internally.

The Rich Muffin (left) has a slightly higher rise, but only slightly.

Opinions were somewhat divided. Everyone agreed the Rich were better than the Regular, though only one family member declared the Regular Ice Cream Muffin to be inedible. I can’t quite put my finger on why this didn’t taste like a muffin. Neither version really tasted like ice cream, but there just wasn’t a whole lot of flavor — and what flavor it did have was slightly odd. (They’re also fairly tough.) A sprinkling of sugar couldn’t do much to help the unimpressiveness of the muffin.

I guess if you absolutely have to make muffins, and have nothing in the house but a pint of ice cream and some self-rising flour, this would be acceptable. Kind of a waste of the ice cream, though!

After squareburgers and “tropical” bacon, I was feeling a bit tired of meat. Tasty, sure, but definitely savory dishes. Time for something sweet!

Perfect Parfait — APRICOT TAPIOCA CREAM!

1 egg yolk
2 cups milk
3 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons Minute Tapioca
1 egg white
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups cooked apricot purée

Mix egg yolk with a small amount of the milk in saucepan. Add remaining milk, 3 tablespoons sugar, salt, and Minute Tapioca. Place over medium heat. Cook until mixture comes to a full boil, stirring constantly — this takes 5 to 8 minutes. (Do not overcook … mixture thickens as it cools.) Remove from heat.

Beat egg white until foamy throughout; add 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time. Continue beating with rotary egg beater until mixture will stand in soft peaks. Add hot tapioca mixture, stirring constantly. Add vanilla. Cool, stirring after 15 to 20 minutes. Chill. Turn into parfait glasses, alternating tapioca cream with apricot purée. Garnish with whipped cream. An elegant dessert for 6 people! So lavishly luscious — so full of homemade goodness — no one would ever dream it’s so quick and easy to fix. And thrifty, too.

Even though recipes like this promise to be “quick and easy to fix,” it’s tough to improve on the convenience of instant Jello. Regardless, I’ve actually been interested in trying to make pudding from scratch for a while. Not just so I can get my retro on — also so I can see how it tastes in comparison, since so many homemade foods are such a big improvement on prepackaged, boxed counterparts. Vanilla pudding with apricot layers sounds like as good a place as any to start trying.

And weirdly enough, I even already had tapioca starch in my house (not Minute Tapioca, but you can apparently substitute with no problems). These ingredients didn’t even require a trip to the store.

Stirring constantly is one of those funny instructions that you never worry about until it’s too late.

Beginning to cook: “Stirring for five to eight minutes will be easy!”

Seven minutes later: “MY ARMS!“

By the end of the cooking process, it already was starting to feel a little thicker than milk ought to, which was encouraging.

I hit the first snag when beating the egg white. This came as a surprise, since I’ve never had much trouble (aside from tired arms) from egg whites. These were supposed to be staying in soft peaks, but instead kept slumping back into a shiny blob no matter how long they were beaten.

The tapioca, on the other hand, was thickening nicely as it sat in the pot. So, I just moved on and added it to the less-than-peaky egg whites. Maybe that will be fine…

[TIME PASSES]

Unfortunately, after three hours in the fridge, it wasn’t fine. It lost all the thickness brought by the tapioca-milk mixture, and I assumed the eggs were to blame.

So, another attempt — this time using my stand mixer to REALLY show those egg whites who’s boss. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

While it chilled, I puréed some apricots. We’ve done similar things before (for example, it’s a nice hamentaschen filling, or super-easy homemade baby food) — just boil dried apricots for a while with a little bit of cinnamon, toss in the food processor, and you’re done.

Thankfully, the second egg whites seemed to make an improvement, and I finally seemed to have an appropriately pudding-like texture in my pudding. Into the fridge, leaving it overnight to get as solid as possible.

BUT NO!

Once again, it de-puddingified. Well, this batch was a little bit better, since there was a half-inch thick layer of pudding-like goo on top, but my excitement was quickly quashed when I picked up the bowl and noticed the vast majority of “pudding” was simply sloshing around underneath.

I can’t try this again at the moment because I’m out of eggs, but further pudding testing is absolutely required. I very much want to figure out what the hell is wrong with this, because it COULDN’T have been this hard to make pudding from scratch. I’ve made cakes, hollandaise sauce, jellied boullion, and a pudding defeats me? Oh, it’s on.

Original frustration-inducing late 1940′s tapioca advertisement is from Look Homeward, Harlot’s Flickr stream.