In a quart pot, stir together a half cup granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and 3 ounces of good cocoa. To this add well whipped 3 egg yolks and a cup each whole milk and cream.
Blend very well and bring to heat slowly, whisking continually until mixture begins to thicken. Take care not so scorch. When thick, blend in two pats of butter and a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.
While still warm, pour the pudding through a strainer into a bowl. Refrigerate until cold. Use a fine whisk to cream pudding before spooning into serving containers.
This dish, like so many others, has become needlessly consigned to a specific holiday, but such a rich dessert should grace our tables much more often. Most recipes for coeur a la creme have only four ingredients—crème fraiche, cream cheese, egg whites and sugar—though the misguided might add vanilla or lemon. For years I’ve been making a coeur a la crème using cottage cheese for convenience, but this year, I’ve upped my game and made crème fraiche, which is not difficult, a little goes a long way, and keeps quite well.
You can make a simple crème fraiche by adding a packet of culture to store-bought dairy, but that’s a slacker’s option. Me, I trotted down to the Mississippi Farmer’s Market and bought lightly pasteurized milks that retained enough lactic bacteria for the process. I mixed a cup of milk and a quarter cup of buttermilk along with a heaping tablespoon of store-bought sour cream to make a bit of a bite.
I kept the starter out overnight. By morning, it had thickened to a dense slurry. I added a half cup or so of this culture to a quart of whole cream from the supermarket, and it worked like a charm, producing a thick, tart crème fraiche. If you’re so inclined, the culture can be tended as you would a sourdough, and in time will mellow and deepen. I find it not worth the bother.
As to the coeur itself, if you happen to frequent the kinds of stores that sell such things as stainless steel strawberry stem removers, chromium banana slicers, and cast-iron hot dog toasters, then you’re likely to run into these cute little ceramic heart molds with holes that are made specifically for a coeur a le crème. Since I am most assuredly not the Williams-Sonoma-type, I went to the Dollar Store and found a purple plastic, heart-shaped container with Ninja Turtles embossed on the front (“Be My Bodacious Valentine!”). It was just the right size, about a pint.
I burned holes in the plastic with a hot nail, and lined the mold—for that’s what it had become—with damp cheesecloth, mixed one cup of the crème fraiche with six ounces of cream cheese, blended in two stiffly-beaten egg whites and a tablespoon of confectioner’s sugar.
After filling the mold, I placed it uncovered on a plate in the coldest part of the refrigerator for several hours. After inverting the mold onto a plate and removing the cloth, I added a puddle of pureed raspberries, though any kind of berry would have been good, depending on your mood, though bananas would be tricky.
Scripture cakes are nothing less than culinary evangelism, yet they evoke the charming scenario of a little girl helping make a cake and looking up verses at her mother’s side.
This recipe is typical. Those with anything less than an encyclopedic knowledge of the written Word are advised to get the Book out before the bowls.
1 1/2 cups Judges 5:25 2 cups Jeremiah 6:20 2 cups 1 Samuel 30:12 2 cups Nahum 3:12 1 cup Numbers 17:8 2 tsp. 1 Samuel 14:25 4 1/2 cups 1 Kings 4:22 6 of Jeremiah 17:11 1 1/2 cup Judges 4:19 2 tsp. Amos 4:5 a pinch of Leviticus 2:13 season to taste with: 2 Chronicles 9:9
Follow Solomon’s prescription for unruly boys in Proverbs 23:14. Bake at 350 until springy and toothpick-dry.
My friend John Wills, a fine cook who grew up in east Texas, went to high school in Chicago, attended college in Alaska, and now lives in Maine, told me that of all the Southern recipes he brings to the table, the one that his guests most remember is pound cake.
“To be honest,” he said, “I think a lot of people believe it’s typically Southern because you didn’t have to be able to read to make it, all you had to remember was a pound each of butter, flour, eggs and sugar.”
A good pound cake recipe is essential to any Southern cook’s repertoire, but these days you’ll rarely find a pound cake recipe that doesn’t include milk in some form; Egerton’s “half-pound” recipe in Southern Food (1987) has whole cream. But I’m far from alone in believing that best pound cakes are made with sour cream.
This recipe comes from Winifred Green Cheney’s Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976). “With no exceptions,” she writes, “this is the best pound cake I have ever tasted.” As with most of Winifred’s recipes, this one is ludicrously meticulous; an eighth of a teaspoon of salt? Resift three times? Honestly.
1/2 cups butter, room temperature 3 cups sugar 6 large eggs, room temperature 1 cup commercial sour cream 3 cups all-purpose flour, measured after sifting 1/2 teaspoon soda 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon flavoring (vanilla, lemon, or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon almond) Powdered sugar
Cream butter by hand or an electric mixer until it has reached the consistency of whipped cream. When you think you have creamed it enough, cream some more. Slowly dribble in sugar a tablespoon at a time; beat well. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in sour cream. Put measured flour into sifter with soda and salt, and resift three times. Add flour cup at a time to creamed butter, blending well with mixer on lowest speed. Add flavoring. (I use vanilla and almond along with 2 tablespoons brandy.)
Pour batter into one Bundt pan and one small loaf pan or two large (cake, see below: jly) pans, greased and lined with heavy waxed paper. Bake in a preheated 325° oven: Bundt cake for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. small loaf for about 55 minutes, large loaves for 65 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool on rack 15 minutes and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Remove from pan and allow to continue cooling to prevent sweating. Yield: 1 (10-inch) Bundt cake and 1 (7- x 3- x 2-inch) loaf cake or 2 (9- x 5- X 3-inch) cakes—40 to 44 servings.
While Shoney’s menu claims the pie is baked, only the pie shell is baked. The filling is cooked and cooled, the strawberries simply washed and sliced.
Combine 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with a cup of sugar and a half a package of strawberry gelatin. Mix in a cup of water and heat, stir until thick, and cool.
Bake a 9-inch pie crust until lightly browned. Cool, blend strawberries into the gelatin, spoon into pie shell, and refrigerate until firm. Overnight is best.
Line a lightly buttered loaf pan with parchment paper, and place it in the freezer.
Pour a 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk into a mixing bowl, add two teaspoons pure vanilla, and refrigerate. Whip two cups of heavy cream to stiff peaks. Working quickly, GENTLY fold the whipped cream into the sweetened condensed milk, along with any additions—mashed macerated fruit, chocolate syrup, or crushed cookies or nuts—until well blended.
Pour into the frozen loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap. Freeze for at least four hours. Some recipes will tell you to stir the mixture after about two hours (while you still can) but you don’t have to.
Mix 32 oz. of softened cream cheese with 1 1/2 cups sugar and two heaping tablespoons of cornstarch. Get it fluffy, then blend in 4 eggs beaten very well until you have a smooth batter. Pound 4 Oreos to teeny-tiny little pieces and add them to the batter along with a cup of Bailey’s Irish Cream. I always throw in a teaspoon of almond extract. Pour the batter into a 10 in. spring pan lined with a Graham cracker crust with chocolate chips and chopped nuts. Bake at 350 for an hour or so. Dust with cocoa. Indulge yourself; it’s been a tough year.
