Go ahead, call me white trash (I know you already do) but I happen to think Pop Tarts make pretty houses for holiday decorating. They’re a lot easier to get than gingerbread, they’re sturdier than Graham crackers, and you can even buy them frosted!
You can make a mobile home if you want (send me a photo) but with Pop Tarts as your platform, the stars are the limit. The towers might be tricky, but you could even make a model of Neuschwanstein Castle. For your first effort, however, I’d stick to a basic Jim Walter design.
I turn a baking sheet over and use the bottom for a base, make piping bags out of heavy duty ziplocks, and glue the tarts together with an icing made by whipping four egg whites until foamy then gradually stirring in four cups confectioner’s sugar until stiff. This, my friends, is confectionery concrete.
Once you fit the walls and roofs together, decorate it as you like with (more) icing of different colors, M&Ms, Fruit Loops, teeny-tiny candy canes, marshmallows, or whatever you can think to make it a simply dazzling work of art.
Cut red potatoes into chunks and boil with Zatarain’s liquid seasoning (I use a lot) until just tender. Drain and toss with vegetable oil, salt, pepper, and granulated garlic. Bake in a well-oiled shallow pan in a hot oven, stirring until browned but not crisp.
When working with the dough, use powdered sugar on your hands instead of flour; these cookies are flour-y enough. The longer you chill the dough, the better it holds its shape. Use unsalted butter, and almost anything other than red currant jelly is too sweet. Mashing the jelly with a fork makes it less likely to bubble up and spill over onto the dough.
Take 3/4 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 egg yolk, and 1 1/2 cups cake flour. Cream butter and sugar with egg yolk. Fold in flour, knead a little bit, wrap in wax paper, and chill. Roll into 1/2 inch balls, make a small depression in the middle, and fill with jelly. Bake at 325 until golden.
In my old home town, certain ladies were known to have the best recipe for, say, a coconut or 9-layer butter cake, Lane, Sally Lund, or what have you. When having a big holiday dinner or entertaining guests from out-of-town, you’d call up these good souls, commission the cake and it would be ready for you on the day.
We also had June Ann Willoughby, who you’d call to make a Mickey Mouse cake for a children’s party or a groom’s cake in the shape of his favorite hunting dog. She also created naughty cakes for bachelors’ and bridesmaids’ parties. A friend of mine swore she had a cast of her breasts made for June Ann to bake a cake in.
“We had to use an ice cube on the nips to get them to come out right,” she said.
June Ann’s crowning achievement was a cake that replicated a 1957 De Soto Fireflite Sportsman for Wayne and Alice Bryant’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was the very car that Wayne drove to pick Alice up in on their first date, and (according to Alice) the one in which Wayne, Jr.—who was mayor at the time and present at the party—was conceived.
“Though not THAT night, of course!” she added. The cake was big enough to feed over fifty people and the icing she used was a glassy, high-gloss glaze.
“Honey, I use cake oil,” she said. “What you do is you mix one part shortening, one vegetable oil, one part sugar, and one plain flour into a paste and brush that on the sides of your cake mold. You don’t have to fuss with dusting or anything. I make a quart of it at a time and keep it in the refrigerator. Lasts forever.”
The Jackson Cookbook, first issued by the Symphony League of Jackson in 1971, followed by a well-deserved 30th anniversary issue, features Eudora Welty’s introduction, “The Flavor of Jackson”, a savory dish of Southern culinary exposition.
In the essay, Welty writes: “I make Mrs. Mosal’s White Fruitcake every Christmas, having got it from my mother, who got it from Mrs. Mosal, and I often think to make a friend’s fine recipe is to celebrate her once more,” Welty wrote.
The original recipe in The Jackson Cookbook was submitted by Mrs. Mosal’s daughter, Mrs. D.I. Meredith. In 1980, this expanded version appeared on a limited edition Christmas card sent out by Albondocani Press, Ampersand Books, and Welty herself.
White Fruitcake
1 1/2 cups butter 2 cups sugar 6 eggs, separated 4 cups flour, sifted before measuring flour for fruit and nuts 2 tsp. baking powder pinch of salt 1 pound pecan meats (halves, preferably) 1 pound crystallized cherries, half green, half red 1 pound crystallized pineapple, clear some citron or lemon peel if desired 1 cup bourbon 1 tsp. vanilla nutmeg if desired
Make the cake several weeks ahead of Christmas if you can. The recipe makes three-medium-sized cakes or one large and one small. Prepare the pans — the sort with a chimney or tube — by greasing them well with Crisco and then lining them carefully with three layers of waxed paper, all greased as well.
Prepare the fruit and nuts ahead. Cut the pineapple in thin slivers and the cherries in half. Break up the pecan meats, reserving a handful or so shapely halves to decorate the tops of the cakes. Put in separate bowls, dusting the fruit and nuts lightly in a sifting of flour, to keep them from clustering together in the batter.
In a very large wide mixing bowl (a salad bowl or even a dishpan will serve) cream the butter very light, then beat in the sugar until all is smooth and creamy. Sift in the flour, with the baking powder and salt added, a little at a time, alternating with the unbeaten egg yolks added one at a time. When all this is creamy, add the floured fruits and nuts, gradually, scattering the lightly into the batter, stirring all the while, and add the bourbon in alteration little by little. Lastly, whip the egg whites into peaks and fold in.
Start the oven now, about 250. Pour the batter into the cake-pans, remembering that they will rise. Decorate the tops with nuts. Bake for three hours or more, until they spring back to the touch and a straw inserted at the center comes out clean and dry. (If the top browns too soon, lay a sheet of foil lightly over.) When done, the cake should be a warm golden color.
When they’ve cooled enough to handle, run a spatula around the sides of each cake, cover the pan with a big plate, turn the pan over and slip the cake out. Cover the cake with another plate and turn rightside up. When cool, the cake can be wrapped in cloth or foil and stored in a tightly fitted tin box. From time to time before Christmas you may improve it with a little more bourbon, dribbled over the top to be absorbed and so ripen the cake before cutting. This cake will keep for a good while, in or out of the refrigerator.
Unless you have a home bar and know people who drink Manhattans, Old Fashioneds or the occasional Tom Collins, it’s unlikely that you’re going to have any maraschino cherries. Oh, you’ll buy a jar during the holidays or if you’re having a kid’s birthday party, but otherwise maraschinos aren’t a standard kitchen item at all. On the other hand, bartenders have been stocking maraschino cherries next to the stuffed olives since before Prohibition, and in their heyday soda jerks routinely placed them atop sundaes and in sodas.
The term “maraschino” originates from the Marasca cherry—a sour, dark variety cultivated on the coast of Dalmatia (now part of Croatia) beginning in the mid-19th century. The original version was brined in ocean water, then preserved in a liqueur made from its own juices, and ground-up pits. In the 19th century, these became popular in Europe, but the supply was so small that they became a delicacy for the rich and royalty and other cherries came to be preserved in various ways and sold as “maraschino.”
Fine bars and restaurants in the United States began serving the cherries in the late 19th century. To meet the growing demand, by the turn of the century American producers were experimenting with other processes for preserving cherries, with flavors such as almond extract rather than the original alcohol liqueur and substitute Royal Anne (‘Napoleon,’ or ‘Napoleon Bigarreau’) cherries. In 1912 the USDA defined “maraschino cherries” as “Marasca cherries preserved in maraschino” under the authority of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906. The artificially-colored and sweetened Royal Anne variety were required to be called “Imitation Maraschino Cherries” instead. Food Inspection Decision 141, signed on Feb. 17, 1912, defined Marasca cherries and maraschinos.
Ernest H. Wiegand, a professor of horticulture at Oregon State University, developed the modern method of manufacturing maraschino cherries using a brine solution rather than alcohol since alcohol dehydrated the fruit, shrinking them, making them hard and wrinkled. By focusing on preserving the shape and structure of the cherry in its plump, beautiful ripeness, Wiegand discovered that adding calcium salts to the preserving brine firmed up the fruit, a method that with modifications is still used today.
You’re probably going to hear some dingaling tell you this can be done in a cookie tin, but it can’t.
For six servings, pour a quart of cooked grits seasoned and flavored as you see fit into an oiled casserole or skillet to cool until just warm. Then make six deep depressions in the grits with the back of an oiled spoon, and ease an egg into each hole.
Bake at 350 uncovered until eggs have firmed to your likeness, in my experience a good twenty minutes for hard-cooked, which I’ve rarely done, if ever.
Claiborne’s recipe has been printed in almost everything he did, but this version comes from Christmas Memories with Recipes (1988) along with his endearing “Distant Christmases”. In this essay, he recalls:
“On Christmas afternoon there was also, to my mind, a surprising annual ritual, surprising because both my parents were teetotalers, and alcohol, other than the pharmaceutical sort, was absolutely forbidden in my home. Each Christmas, however, my mother would ask a neighbor to buy her a pint of bootleg bourbon (it was during Prohibition and my home state was dry). She would then assemble her rich-as-Croesus eggnog, made with an abundance of eggs and heavy cream, and temper it with a bit of bourbon. She would also pour a generous quantity out of the bourbon bottle over the homemade fruitcakes, which would be sliced and served with the eggnog.” You must use fresh organic eggs for a this recipe.
8 eggs separated 3/4 c. sugar 1 c. bourbon 1/2 c. heavy cream Nutmeg Put the egg yolks and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and lemon-colored. Gradually add the bourbon, beating on low speed. In a separate bowl whip the cream until stiff. Fold it into the egg-yolk mixture. In a clean bowl whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the eggnog. Serve with a generous grating of nutmeg.
Wittgenstein asks, “Just what IS a cookie?” Analytics state, “It is easier to say what a cookie IS NOT than to say what a cookie IS!” A stentorian voice declares, “A cookie IS a cookie IS a cookie.”
Ergo, flour, sugar, and butter with a leavening agent and eggs constitute the Ur-cookie, which is an Ur-cookie. These can be topped with a sugar frosting or glaze or sprinkles, or chopped nuts. You can add food coloring to make them magenta, chartreuse or cyan. You can cut them into any shape using traditional cookie cutters, or use any number of handy implements if you’re feeling froggy.
For true inspiration, make them with children.
1 c. butter 1 c. brown sugar 1 c. white sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp. vanilla 3 c. flour 1 tsp. baking soda 1/4 tsp. salt
Cream butter with sugars; mix well. Add eggs, vanilla and then flour, sifted with salt and baking soda, a little at a time. Bake at 350 degrees on a flat, heavy baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool thoroughly before frosting.
Anyone who entrusts you with a family recipe loves you and will give you other instructions like, “Get a job.”
Such memories bind us all, and heirloom recipes should be treasured as reflections of a people and their character. I’m always on the lookout for old recipes from family lines and any dish not mentioned in that harangue of books and magazines devoted to Southern cuisine. Community cookbooks are a fine source of these recipes, but you can bet your bottom dollar that more than a few contributors are simply not going to share essential details because the church secretary was caught sleeping with her brother-in-law.
Some years ago, I found a recipe that stands out: amalgamation cake. Yes, it’s a cake, but amalgamation is a word you usually stumble on in cookery works by dirt road academics purportedly “devoted to” and “enthralled with” Southern foodways. I first heard this cake mentioned by a friend from Tupelo; queries to others brought about a dozen responses, all of them indicating that the amalgamation cake originated from northeast Mississippi and adjacent Alabama.
I felt smug about isolating a true north Mississippi heirloom when someone popped up and pointed out that Ferrol Sams mentions amalgamation cake, “And he’s from Georgia.” Recipes also hail from northwest Tennessee, western South Carolina and a bundt from Florida that seems way off all maps, but they are few. No mention is made of amalgamation cake in “Southern Living”, not in any of Quail Ridge Press’ “Best of the Bests” series, nor in any of my Jackson cookbooks. It is in The Mississippi Cookbook, published by the Mississippi Cooperative Extension Service in 1972, confirming that amalgamation cake is a rural tradition.
Courtesy of Bob Franks, Fulton, Mississippi
Research on the origins of this recipe became a grail quest. The earliest recipe I’ve found is handwritten from Itawamba County in 1939, sent to me by Bob Franks in Fulton. Apparently recipes for amalgamation cake are jealously guarded in families, passed down and shared only with close friends and relatives. True to form, every recipe I received came with stringent instructions to follow; those who shared recipes with me said if I didn’t use fresh coconut that I would die and go to–a deeper level of–hell.
They all told me to get a job, too.
Amalgamation cake is always made for Christmas, and is similar to Alabama’s Lane cake, made famous by its mention in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Lane cake was created by Emma Lane of Clayton, Alabama who published her recipe in 1898. Most recipes for both cakes result in layers of white sponge cake with a filling of raisins, pecans, and coconut. The main difference between a Lane cake, which has it, and and amalgamation cake, which doesn’t, is liquor. The Lane cake, like its cousin the Lady Baltimore, is always infused with bourbon or some such, while the sober amalgamation abstains from spirits. The sole exception to this rule is a recipe from my home county (“Vote dry and drink wet!”) Calhoun, which calls for a sweet wine wrap overnight.
The following recipe was published in The Tuscaloosa News, Nov. 2011, from Billie Ruth Armstrong Moore, a student in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s “Preserving Your Family History” class. Asked to bring in a family recipe and write about it, she wrote:
Granny’s Amalgamation Cake was a favorite dessert at Thanksgiving and Christmas which our extended Armstrong family always celebrated at the home of my grandmother, Georgia Elizabeth Shumpert Armstrong. Her home was located near the Evergreen Community which is in the southwest corner of Itawamba County, Mississippi.
Billie Ruth includes scaly bark hickory nuts, a distinctively native ingredient. White raisins were mentioned as a refinement, and seven minute frosting is standard.
Bake batter in 2 or three layers. For filling, beat egg yolks well, and then add sugar, milk and butter. Mix well and cook on medium heat until thickened slightly. Add raisins and nuts, cook until thick, add coconut last. Beat well, cool, spread between layers, then assemble and frost cake. Let rest several hours–overnight if possible–before serving.
