Friday, December 28, 2007

A family classic

Today is my father's birthday. It's proximity to Christmas means we usually celebrate when the family gathers for Christmas festivities. And his birthday means one thing - Cherry Carnival Cake. What is this you may be asking yourself? Why it is nothing more or less than a lovely yellow/white cake with cherries in it, topped with ice cream (optional, but why wouldn't you?) and a hot cherry sauce (just heated pie filling). It is quite delicious (if you like cherries). This particular cake was made by my grandmother. I've never actually made the cherry carnival cake. Maybe will try it sometime this year. But the history of the recipe is what is more interesting than even eating the cake itself. Which is good for breakfast, too, by the way.

I may have some of the details wrong, but back a very long time ago, my great-grandmother Mary (who was a saint) was a kitchen tester for Gold Medal flour. I believe that how it worked was that they sent you a recipe and gave you the ingredients. You made the recipe. They came, took a portion of the recipe, say, a quarter of a cake. You got to keep the rest of the cake or whatever the recipe was. So, especially during leaner eras, it was probably a good way to get more food on your table. I'm not sure if you got paid on top of it. But regardless, the cherry carnival cake was a recipe from Grandma Mame's (her name) Gold Medal testing days.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

2007 Gingerbread House

More buns

Christmas Cookies!

From the top left, swirling around to the center: Nut boats (aka nut pillows), oatmeal florentines filled with butterscotch, jam thumprints, sugar cookies, almond bars, Russian tea cakes (aka snowballs/aka Mexican wedding cakes), shortbread thumbelinas.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Another crack at candy

I made bark! BARK! Why don't people make this stuff all the time? It was super easy. In a double boiler, I melted about 1 c of bittersweet chocolate chips and about 2 or 2 1/2 c of semisweet. While that melted, I laid down a rectangle (approximately 9x12, but I'm not good with measurements) of pretzels. Once the chocolate was melted, I poured/spread it over the pretzels. Then sprinkled about 1 1/2 c of salty mixed nuts over top. Delish!

Our child-like dinner

Mmm. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. V. homey, v. good on a cold night. I was flipping through some old Everyday Food magazines and came across a recipe for homemade tomato soup. I was intrigued. I've never been a huge fan of tomato soup out of a can - it's a bit too smooth, a bit too bland. This one looked like it would have a bit of texture and flavor, and I knew I could jazz it up myself. I added red pepper flakes with the sauteed onion. I also used an Italian spice mix instead of just thyme. I used lots of black pepper. And, since I apparently went heavy on the salt, I added in quite a bit of milk at the end (which made it creamier AND balanced out the ridiculous salty taste). Serve up with some lovely grilled cheese on the side (with ham for Mr. Carnivore), and it was quite delish.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Meanwhile, while the fudgemaster was at work...

I was making dinner. It was supposed to be a luscious dinner of London Broil, twice baked potato (born of a huge potato, as you can see, that's just half), and bread (no vegetables for Mr. R. I think I made myself something). As you can see from the picture, it turns into a dinner of potato, bread, and shoe leather/steakum/chewy bit. The meat got a bit overdone. Mr. R (I WILL CAST BLAME HIS WAY) was concerned it was UNDERdone on the stovetop, and suggested it go in the oven for a bit. BAD MR. R!! BAD! Sigh. Oh well. The potato was good and the bread.

I've been gone too long...

I know I've been gone. This weekend though, we finally cooked again. And my holiday cookie baking will commence soon.

Mr. R has been up in my grill about making fudge for weeks, so this weekend, I finally bought ingredients and let him have at it. He was very cute, wielding his candy thermometer. He let loose with an Emeril recipe. And it turned out very well, thank you very much.