Regret, the Most Wasteful Emotion...

That was the title of an article I wrote for a women's magazine a long time ago. (I regret that it was rejected, but that's another story.)

Yesterday, while working from home on account of the snowpocalypse, I *happened* to click on Ebay in the middle of the day.  And there, under "vintage recipe cards," I discovered a treasure trove -- a collection of hundreds of old hand-written and typed recipe cards for cakes, frosting, pies, biscuits. Recipes on scraps of paper, newspaper clippings and illustrations from the 1930s including a full article on candy making from The Ohio Farmer, all in "vintage/used conditions, spots and stains are abundant!"

The lot was selling for $77.  I bid and then was outbid in a minute.  When the auction ended, the final sale price was nearly $230!

I immediately regretted not bidding higher, especially when I saw that it was from an estate sale in Ohio. It would have quadrupled my collection of vintage, hand-written recipes in an instant. But then, something seemed wrong about the ease of simply clicking a button (and paying big bucks) to do so.  I like the hunt through flea markets, estate sales, stoop sales and antique stores, the lovely serendipity of discovering a box, a scrapbook or notebook filled with memories -- and recipes.  (As my husband said, "Would Jacques Cousteau go to an aquarium?")

So I guess I'm going to continue to find my old-fashioned recipes the old-fashioned way, with no regrets.

*The cake pictured above is what I'm entering in the Red Show's red velvet cake contest this morning.  (I regret overbeating the batter last night, and having that cheap glass of wine that made me too sleepy to spend more time perfecting the frosting, but that's another story.)

A Cadillac in My Kitchen

Some of you have asked me about my vintage stove* (the backdrop for many a cake picture on my blog).  It's a c. 1950 Chambers, manufactured in Shelbyville, Indiana, and once called the "Cadillac of Stoves." 

 Its tag line was Cook with the Gas Turned Off!, which was designed to "liberate" the housewife.  It is so well insulated that supposedly when the oven reaches the desired temperature and the chicken (or whatever) is placed inside, the oven can be turned off and the cooking will continue just fine.  I've never tried it, mostly because I didn't want to risk removing a half cooked chicken (or whatever) when it was time to serve dinner. 

 Still, it is a fabulous appliance:  The three burners have a lot of btu's and it has a Thermowell, a recessed well  (complete with pots and a rack) where one can bake muffins, cook soup, and more.  The top broiler is very convenient, and you can use its aluminum covering as a griddle.  And it has a real, old-fashioned pilot light, which was very handy during a NYC blackout a couple of years ago when my daughter wanted an omelet.  Most modern stoves have electronic ignition and don't work without electricty. 

The Chambers oven is a bit small, which is why I also have an electric baking oven. But I'm on my third modern oven in 12 years; they keep breaking, while the 60-year-old Chambers hasn't failed yet.  (In fact, during a multi-month Kafka-esque nightmare with Con Ed when my electric oven wasn't working and I was supplying cafes with cakes, it was the Chambers oven that kept me in business.)

Chambers stoves have become quite popular in the past few years. Rachel Ray uses one on her television show, and there are a number of internet sites devoted to them.  

We've had ours for nearly 20 years. When we were renovating our kitchen, I fell in love with a vintage stove -- a gorgeous robin egg blue 1939 Quick Meal -- but simply couldn't afford it.  (Those were the days when I believed in delayed gratification.)  Anyway, we found our now beloved Chambers on Long Island, where it was being sold by a family who had just modernized their own kitchen.  I've never looked back,

*Full disclosure: No one asked me about the stove.  I just wanted to write about it.

My "Birthday" Pound Cake

Today I was going to celebrate the coincidence of my birthday falling on the same day as the New York Daily News was scheduled to feature a story about my blog.  Well, there must have been some bigger breaking news (Brangelina  changing a diaper, perhaps?) than my cake blog, because the story didn't appear. I'm hoping it will run next week.

When the Daily News sent a photographer to my house last Thursday morning to take some pictures, I decided to bake a cake so there would be something to photograph besides me.  This c. 1945 recipe for pound cake seemed perfect. And it was.  I put the batter together in a matter of minutes early in the morning -- it could not have been easier.  I popped it in the oven, and even though the recipe author cautions NOT to open the oven door for the first hour, I cheated.  And the cake was still fine. 

We all enjoyed the cake; even the Daily News photographer posed while eating a slice for breakfast.  I brought the cake to work that morning but fearing that the co-workers in my department were suffering from cake fatigue, I brought it over to the Abrons Arts Center where one of the artistic types who works there was overheard saying that it was the best pound cake he'd ever had.

It would have been lovely plain, but I made a simple confectioner's sugar and milk icing for it.  If I'd been slightly more alert that morning, I would have used lemon juice instead of milk; the citrus note would have played well against the creamy vanilla-ness of the cake.

And if anyone's wondering what cake I ate on my actual birthday, there were two. Some lovely colleagues brought me cake (and cookies) from Momofuko that were beyond delicious, and at dinner, my daughter's boyfriend had arranged for a truly special raw chocolate cake (with candle!) to be served to me. Believe me, its flavor was wonderful and complex, the perfect ending to a terrific meal.

The Joy of (Children's) Cooking

Whenever I bake bread, I am so astonished at how simple (and rewarding) it is, that I vow not to let so much time go by before baking another loaf.  But then, months or sometimes years pass before I tear open another package of yeast.

Finally last weekend, I ended my hiatus by baking two loaves of white bread -- something I knew my daughter's boyfriend would enjoy at our family dinner that evening.

And to showcase the simplicity of bread baking, I used a recipe from the 1946 Cookbook For Girls and Boys by Irma S. Rombauer, the author of the Joy of Cooking. 

Baking bread may take a lot of time -- but it doesn't take a lot of the cook's time.   After mixing the dough and kneading it (very therapeutic!), just leave it alone.  The dough is very forgiving: you can let it rise three or more times, or for twice as long as the recipe says and it comes out perfectly.  And part of the appeal is that you can go about your day (I took a yoga class and met a friend during times when the dough was rising), knowing that the yeast is hard at work in your kitchen, even while you're not.  (And there's nothing like aroma of baking bread -- the perfect kitchen perfume!)

Everyone (especially Josh) enjoyed the bread at dinner that night -- it was still warm and had a lovely texture and flavor.  It brought me back to the magical moment when I first tasted home-baked bread.  I was at the Rosen's, my next door neighbor's, when friends of theirs arrived, fresh loaf in hand. My entire bread experience to date had been informed by Wonder; as I took my first bite I couldn't believe something this delicious (and addicting -- I couldn't get enough of that bread) was in the same food group!   Now, whenever I bake bread, I can return to that transformative childhood moment, thankful that all it takes is some yeast and a bit of time.

Molasses on Snow Candy

To celebrate today's snowfall (as meager as it turned out to be in Brooklyn), I decided to make molasses on snow candy from one of my very favorite childhood books, Little House in the Big Woods. 
"Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup in little streams onto the snow."
Growing up, this candy was the stuff of dreams to me; I couldn't imagine how the snow magically turned into candy.  Well, as an adult I discovered it doesn't.  The snow is used simply as a way to quickly harden the liquid candy.  Still, it's a lot of fun to make and for all its simplicity -- only three ingredients, molasses, brown sugar, and snow -- the taste is complex.  Or, as my friend Jay would say, it's delicious "on every level."

Molasses on Snow
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar
fresh, clean snow


Fill a couple of pie tins with snow, and leave them outside while you make the candy.
Boil molasses and sugar together, stirring often until it reaches the hard ball stage, or about 260 degrees.
Turn off the fire, fetch the pans from outdoors.  Transfer the candy into a glass measuring cup and carefully pour it over the snow.  When the candy is hard, remove it to a clean towel.   Enjoy!

The Ingenious Cub Cake (German Coffee Cake)

It was freezing cold here in New York last Saturday morning and to keep our drafty brownstone toasty warm (us lacking a wood burning stove in the kitchen), I turned the oven to 350 degrees. And not wanting to waste all that good heat, I decided to whip up this recipe. Plus DH loves a good coffee cake, especially the crumb topping.

This is a delicious cake, and practically ingenious -- no need to make a separate mixture for the crumb topping, The topping is simply part of the cake mixture (removed before the wet ingredients are added), reserved and sprinkled atop the cake before baking. 

This cake speaks to a time when baking short-cuts (like this unusual all-in-one topping) saved time without sacrificing wholesomeness, flavor or quality.  They allowed for home-baked goods from scratch -- not from a mix made of ingredients put together six months earlier in some factory in Iowa.

Cub Cake is one of those cakes that perfume the whole kitchen and is so easy to put together, that I imagine it was made often as an after-school (or after church) treat. Today, one might be tempted to add more butter, and perhaps some chopped nuts, to make the topping richer.  But then, one would miss the beauty of the simplicity of this "everyday" cake. And despite the recipe author's instruction to serve warm, it actually tastes better the day after it's baked, the flavors having a chance to marry. 

Pinkalicious!

I was going to write about Cub Cake, a German coffee cake I made on Saturday, but then I made this mile-high red velvet cake and it seemed ever so much more exciting.

A friend of a friend invited me to enter a red velvet cake in a contest at the Red Show to be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society on February 13th (see poster above) and tonight I decided to experiment with pink frosting and three layers. Not sure I'll go with this version, but it was a lot of fun to create.

So this is my "practice" cake (and one that will end its life in my office and dear husband's tomorrow). I used to bake lots of red velvet cakes for a couple of local restaurants but I gave it up a while back -- the thrill was gone when red velvet cakes were suddenly everywhere, even available in Duncan Hines mixes! -- so I figured I needed a trial run.

Next up: That Cub Cake, the Joy of (Children's) Cooking and more!