Sugar Sugar

Inspired by Richard Sax's Classic Home Desserts (recommended in Cooking Light's great baking book selections), I offer some recipes that I have come across, some recent, some remote, all equal parts nostalgia and butter.  All special.  I am about 1/4 of the way through Classic Home Desserts and aside from being a cookbook, it is a great book just to read, full of the most wonderful marginalia - centuries-old recipes, anecdotes, proverbs, adages, literary quotes, historical context - and lively descriptions of the recipes and their origins.

About syllabub  (a creamy alcoholic punch): This is the Deep South dessert that is supposed to start Southern beaux and belles on their drunken downfall, since it is so mild that children are allowed to have it, thus acquiring a taste for the flavor of all liquors.  The idea is silly, and the syllabub is delicious.  The moral damage is negligible.

                                  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
                                  Cross Creek Cookery, 1942

How To Make Jelly: Take out the great Bones of four Calves Feet, and put the Feet into a Pot with ten Quarts of Water, three Ounces of Hartshorn, three Ounces of Isinglass, a Nutmeg quarter'd, four Blades of Mace; then boil this till it comes to two Quarts, and strain it through a Flannel-bag, let it stand twenty-four Hours, then scrape off all the Fat from the Top very clean, then slice it, and put it to the Whites of six Eggs beaten to a Froth, boil it a little, and strain it again through a Flannel-bag, then run the Jelly into little high Glasses... You must colour Red with Cochineal, Green with Spinage, Yellow with Saffron, Blue with Syrup of Violets, White with thick Cream and sometimes the Jelly itself.  You may add Orange-flower water, or Wine and Sugar, and Lemon if you please, but this is all Fancy.

                                 Hannah Glasse
                                 The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy
                                 London, 1747

               Frutto poibito, piu saporito. (Forbidden fruit is tastier).

                                  Italian proverb

From Dorie Greenspan's foreword: No one else before Richard, or since, understood the subject of home baking as well, cared about it as deeply, or could tell us about it as beautifully.  If he had simply collected the hundreds of quotations, stories, and journal entries that fill Classic Home Desserts, he'd have helped us understand how we home bakers are tied to a tradition that reaches back through centuries and across continents, and he'd have created a work to cherish.  But this is also a cookbook to take into the kitchen, to use until its pages are spattered with butter and dusted with sugar, to keep in the kitchen until we've baked our way through it... when Richard says these are 'home desserts' he means it: These are the recipes of moms, not chefs.

Drumroll, please!

We enjoyed this for the first time on Saturday.  It is pie.  Don't be fooled by 'casserole' unless casserole means 'uber deep-dish pie'.  It's crazy delicious.  Luke loved it and it made me so happy to see him enjoy something so much.

Maxwell's Sweet Potato Casserole
 3 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes (boiled and peeled)
           (not canned)
1 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs beaten
1/2 tsp each- nutmeg and cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 stick butter
1 1/2 cup sugar or to taste

Mix all above. Bake @ 425 for 15 min;
another 30 mins bake @ 350 or until knife comes out clean.

Topping
1/2 stick butter
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cup cornflakes
1/2 cup pecans

Melt butter & sugar, add flakes & nuts, then coat on top of casserole.
 Bake 425 for 8-10 mins or until brown.

♥

I had these cookies for the first time in Michigan last Christmas and my search for the ultimate cookie stopped, like buying a Chi flat iron or Tempurpedic bed or using Cetaphil as a facial cleanser.  There is no need to look further because it can't get any better.  Also it was a time when Luke and I were settling into the warm reality of We're Going To Be Together Forever and his family was so warm and welcoming and it was the holidays and all was right with the world.  Does true love taste like this cookie?  YES.  Either this or grilled cheese and tomato soup on a rainy Sunday.

Susie's Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 1/8 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk
1 Tablespoon vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips of chunks (I like to use semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips)

Mix dry ingredients. Mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in eggs and vanilla and whip until the mixture turns pale. Add dry ingredients. Add chocolate chips. Chill for a bit if possible. Drop by Tablespoons (I use an ice cream scoop to make them big) onto a prepared cookie sheet 350 for a regular oven. Check at 8 minutes and continue baking if needed. (if your oven has a convection feature, then use that at 325 degrees).

This is Susie's recipe and it is very similar to the chocolate chip cookie recipe that appears in America's Test Kitchen baking book.  Add the chips slowly to achieve your desired dough:chip ratio.  (I usually use 1/2 of a bag, much less than called for).

♥

Jackie's Bundt Cake
1 devil's food cake mix
1 cook and serve pudding mix, prepared
2 eggs
1 cup chocolate chips

Mix and pour into a greased and floured Bundt pan and bake at 325 for 40-45 minutes.

This cake is easy and delicious.  I think I might have had it for the first time when Jackie, then our new neighbor, made it for my 14th birthday, or right around then.  Happiness in a Bundt pan.

♥

Kathy Jones was our neighbor on the other side at the time:

Kathy Jones' Rice Krispie Treats
24 oz white almond bark, melted
1 cup creamy peanut butter
4 cups Rice Krispies
2 cups marshmallows

Mix and pour into a 9 x 13.  Wait until it sets up.  Slice and consume while recumbent, you don't want to risk eating while standing, as you may fall and hit your head as you succumb to a blinding sugar coma.

♥

Have made since college and I don't see a reason to make a full-fat version:

Cooking Light's Banana Bread
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 2/3 cups mashed banana (about 3 bananas)
1/4 cup skim milk
1/4 cup low fat sour cream
2 large egg whites
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1.  Preheat oven to 350.  Combine sugar and butter; beat until well blended.  Add banana, milk, sour cream and egg whites, beat well.
2.  Combine flour, baking soda and salt; stir well.  Add flour mixture to banana mixture, beating until blended.
4.  Spoon batter into 4 mini or one-9 inch loaf pans coated with cooking spray; bake for 45 minutes for mini loaves, 70 minutes for large loaf or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

♥

Elise loves this, we all love this.  For our birthday Mom made the dinner of our choosing.  For my height-of-summer birthday, usually spent somewhere sweltering, I typically chose beef stroganoff and lemon meringue.  Quite the pairing.  Elise would choose key lime and in recent years Mom has been making individual pies in small dessert glasses or shot glasses. 

Mom's Key Lime Pie
Graham cracker crumbs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
1/2 cup key lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 slightly beaten egg yolks

Prepare graham cracker crumbs according to package directions (do not bake).  Push into bottoms of glasses/bowls.  Whisk remaining ingredients together; spoon onto crusts.  Refrigerate until set.

... something I think all of us who bake at home have felt but might not have been able to express: the power of sharing something we make by hand, something that is always a gift because it is never a necessity.
                                                   Dorie Greenspan 

      What are your traditions?  What tastes like home to you?  What do you make to say I love you! ?