Heart-Shaped Cakes

As a child, I adored Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, her romanticized memoir of life on the western frontier in the late 19th century.  Just how romanticized these are I discovered in a wonderful new book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Carolyn Fraser. Let's just say it wasn't all Pa's joyful fiddling and endless fields of wildflowers. 

Wilder's books spawned many offshoots, a television series and a book of recipes among them. I've made Molasses on Snow Candy from The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walter and, a few weeks ago, inspired by Prairie Fires, I baked Heart-Shaped Cakes, a recreated version of a confection made by Ma and placed in Laura's Christmas stocking to her utter delight.

Heart-Shaped Cakes are more like a shortbread or a scone than a cake, as Ma didn't have eggs or baking powder on hand.  They are simple to make and surprisingly good. (And would be a wonderful gift for your valentine!) White sugar was dear on the frontier, so gifts of cake, especially topped with sugar as these are, were an extra special treat.

The recipe calls for cutting the butter into the dry ingredients with cold fingers. That proved difficult, so I took a shortcut by using a pastry blender.  You can also use a food processor, but that seems a bit too modern.

  

Once the fat it cut into the dry ingredients, make a well and add the buttermilk.

The dough will look rather shaggy.

With your hands, form a ball.

Dust your work surface with a bit of flour and roll the dough into a circle.  Cut into six equal pieces.

Again, with your hands, shape each piece into hearts. I used a butter knife to make a small cut at the top and then formed them in the heart-ish shapes. (You won't get cookie cutter perfection using this method, but neither did Ma.) Place on a baking sheet and pop them in the oven.

I made these for my beautiful niece Dory who was visiting from Austin.  (She is not this red in real life; I have a new computer and new photo editing software which I obviously can't use properly yet.)

Here's the recipe, with my method below.

Heart-Shaped Cakes

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup white sugar (extra for dusting)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter
1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425F

Mix flour, sugar, baking soda and nutmeg in a bowl.
Using cold fingers, two knives or a pastry blender, rub the butter into the flour mixture.
Make a well in the center and add buttermilk.
Using your hand, work it into a dough.
Form into a ball.
Dust work surface with a bit of flour.
Roll the dough into an 8-inch circle.
Cut into eight pieces (cut in half, then halve again for uniformity)
Shape the top of each wedge into a heart. (I made a small cut with a butter knife to help this process.)
Place on a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cakes are a bit puffy and the tops are slightly brown.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle generously with sugar.

--> -->

Cherry Magic

Even though I work in marketing (or maybe because of it) I'm a sucker for intriguing and unusual names. And that's how I came to make this recipe with the enticing title of Cherry Magic.  Plus, who doesn't want to make a little magic in the kitchen?

And because I delayed posting it for so long (I made it a few weeks ago), it works perfectly as a Valentine's Day dessert if you're looking for something a bit more original than the traditional chocolate confection.

Cherry Magic is a white cake with fruit that is easy and delicious. It did disappear like magic when I shared it with my coworkers. The c. 1940 recipe is from the collection of a Suring, Wisconsin housewife.

Begin by beating the butter and sugar.

Add in the other ingredients (recipe below) and spoon into a well-buttered pan.  The batter is rather thick, so you'll need to push it to the corners of the pan.

After the batter is in the pan, begin the cherry mixture. I used frozen cherries because I didn't have canned or fresh.

Heat the cherries, sugar, water and almond extract until the sugar is dissolved. Perhaps because I used frozen cherries, there was A LOT of liquid in the pan.

I used my common sense and only added some of the liquid. (I reserved the rest, boiled it down until syrupy and used it as a sauce.) The colors in this photo are a bit odd because I accidentally had a filter on my iPhone camera. But you can see the amount of liquid I added, along with the cherries.

Remove from the oven when the sides pull away from the pan and it is a lovely golden brown. Enjoy!

Production notes: I used Dole brand frozen cherries and, other than that, followed the recipe exactly. The cherries, perhaps because they were frozen,  released a lot of liquid during cooking, so I didn't add it all to the batter. Instead, while the cake was in the oven, I reduced the cherry liquid on the stove (boiling the liquid to concentrate it) and used it as a dessert sauce.

 

English Muffins

Like many other New Yorkers during yesterday's Snowzilla, I hunkered down, binge watched television (Mozart in the Jungle, at my house), and generally enjoyed the enforced "do nothing" gift of the blizzard.  But I couldn't stay away from the kitchen, and so when the DH said he'd like an English muffin, I pulled out the flour bin, opened a yeast packet, and got to work. (The toaster part would come much later; thank goodness he's the patient sort.)

This vintage recipe for English muffins, from a collection of a 1940s Wisconsin housewife, was quite successful. Homemade English muffins are very easy to make and way better than the store bought variety. You don't even need an oven -- these are "baked" in a skillet on the stove top!

To begin, scald milk and add butter, salt and sugar. Let the mixture cool a bit.

Proof yeast in a bowl. (Just mix it with warm water.) The yeast on the right (although it hadn't expired) was clearly dead. So I tossed it and tried some rapid rise yeast, which was expired (and is also supposed to be added dry to the flour) and it worked beautifully -- note the bubbles. This is one reason I love working with yeast; it is sooo forgiving.

Mix the dough and knead a bit. I cheated and used my Kitchen Aid (with the dough hook).

Cover and let rise until double.

Punch the dough down, and divide in half. Roll half out on a board or counter sprinkled with cornmeal. Cut out circles with a three-inch biscuit cutter (or a glass, or whatever you have around). This dough is extraordinarily easy to work with.

Place the muffins on a tray and cover.

Until double in size (about an hour, or two episodes of Mozart in the Jungle).

Place in a medium hot skillet.  Cover and cook about five minutes. Flip and cook the other side about five minutes. They don't stick at all, even if you don't use a non-stick pan, like I did.

These were enjoyed by my friend Judith, a Long Island resident who spent the snowy weekend with us, in order to get to her job. This is her, right after she finished her second consecutive 12-hour shift as an emergency room nurse at the local hospital.  (Letting me take her photo was the price she paid for her room-and-board.)

Here's the original recipe card, and below that is a typed, easy-to-read version.

Production notes: The original recipe said that it makes 18, but I got just 13 from the dough. There were scraps to make more, but I didn't see how to combine them and roll them with incorporating all the cornmeal. I didn't use a thermometer at all. 105 - 115 is warm-to-the-touch. If in doubt with the yeast, go colder -- too hot and it will die. I used butter instead of margerine, but otherwise followed this exactly.  Getting the right stove top temperature is critical, otherwise the muffins will be cooked on the outside and gummy inside. I did a few at first to experiment, cutting them open. If they are too gummy at the end, you can always pop them in the oven for a few minutes.

English Muffins

1 cup milk
2 TBS sugar
1 teas. salt
3 TBS butter
1 cup warm water (105 - 115 degrees)
1 pkg. dry yeast
6 cup all-purpose flour
cornmeal

Scald milk (bubbles will form around the edge of the pan). Stir in sugar, salt and butter.
Cool to 105 - 115 degrees)
Sprinkle yeast in warm water, stir to dissolve.
Combine yeast mixture and milk mixture in a large bowl.
Add flour and mix. Knead slightly (or more, if using a mechanical kneader).
Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top.
Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.
Punch dough down, and divide in half.
On a board sprinkled with cornmeal, roll each half of dough to 1/2 inch thick.
Cut in three inch circles. Cover both sides well with cornmeal.
Let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk.
Place in a medium hot skillet, cover the pan and bake until browned, about five minutes. (You'll need to do this in batches, depending on the size of your skillet.)
Flip and bake the other side.
Remove from skillet.
Enjoy!
Variation: Add 1/2 cup raisins and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon to milk.

Little Mermaid Tuna Muffins

As much as I like to cook, I always dreaded preparing school lunches for my children. Both were picky eaters, and didn't care for sandwiches, making the task infinitely more difficult. Now that they're grown-ups, there are many things I miss about their childhood; making school lunches is NOT among them.

How I wish I'd discovered these handy portable tuna muffins sooner! They are simply delicious, easy to prepare and (dare I say) rather nutritious.

The recipe, though not on a handwritten card, is from a delightful, albeit out-of-print cookbook, Once Upon a Recipe by Karen Green. It is beautifully illustrated.

Here's the mis en place for the muffins. Quite a number of ingredients, but most are already in the pantry. The cooked brown rice is a take-out from a nearby Chinese restaurant.

Mix all ingredients, except the egg whites, in a bowl and combine well.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, but not dry (you can add a bit of cream of tartar to insure you don't over beat). Gently fold them into the mixture.

It should look like this.

Spoon the mixture into six greased muffin cups.

Bake for about 40 minutes. Remove from the pan by running a butter knife around the edge of each muffin.

French Breakfast Puffs

French Breakfast Puffs are not French and they are not puffs, but they are delicious, easy to prepare and very unusual (as in, how have I not encountered these before?).  They are muffins that are dipped in melted butter and rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture right out of the oven -- and it's that coating that makes them so special, almost like a doughnut, but without the bother of frying.

If you awaken just 45 minutes before the rest of your family, you can have these ready for them to enjoy -- they are that quick to make. But I'm told they're good the next day, too, according to my Henry Street Settlement colleagues who had the "leftovers" from my Thursday night baking adventure for breakfast Friday morning.

I found this recipe, probably dating from the 1950s, in a large collection of family recipes I purchased from an estate in Texas.

Begin by creaming the butter, sugar and egg. Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl and have the milk handy.  When the mixture is well combined, add the flour alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour.

Spoon the batter into greased muffin tins. Don't line the tins with paper, and don't worry about smoothing the tops, as this will happen naturally in the oven.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. These won't color a lot.

While the puffs are baking, melt the butter and mix the cinnamon and sugar together. As soon as the puffs are done, roll each in the butter to coat, then into the sugar mixture.

These are dense, almost like a cake doughnut.

Production notes: I followed the recipe exactly, but used butter instead of soft shortening, and 1 percent rather than whole milk, because that's what I had on hand. When alternately adding the flour and milk, start and end with the flour. As you can see in the photos, this did not make enough batter to fill all 12 muffin tins -- only 11. And perhaps I saturated the muffins too well in the melted butter, because it ran out after I completed the eighth muffin!  So if you want to make 12 muffins, fill the tins about half (not 2/3) full and melt about three extra tablespoons of butter for the final coating.