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.
A friend from Texas—east Texas, mind you—now living in Maine said their neighbors considered pound cake Southern because the ingredients are cheap.
Well, dear hearts, those are the very reasons Americans have baked this cake well before Burr shot Hamilton. This recipe is a felony with fruit, a mortal sin with ice cream.
Preheat oven to 350 (a crucial step). Grease, line, and set aside a 10-inch loaf pan or Bundt. Cream 2 cups sugar with a cup of softened butter. Stir in two tablespoons of poppy seeds, a cup of buttermilk, 4 beaten eggs, and at least a tablespoon of vanilla extract.
Sift 3 cups of plain flour with a teaspoon each of baking powder and soda. Gradually blend with liquid mix until smooth. Bake for an hour, then turn the oven off and leave the cake in until the oven has cooled. Rest on a rack an hour before slicing.
After WWII, “atomic” was a synonym for “great” or “super.” Even strippers billed themselves as “Atomic Bombs.” Recipes for atomic brownies started appearing in cookbooks at the same time, but they’re about as atomic as a stripper.
Brownie Base
1 cup unsalted butter 14 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped ½ cup packed dark brown sugar ½ cup packed light brown sugar ½ cup granulated sugar 5 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 tablespoon vanilla extract ¼ cup milk 1½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1½ cups coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted
Chocolate Drizzle
1/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped 2 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the butter and chocolates in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring until mixture is melted and smooth. Whisk in sugars, eggs, vanilla extract and milk, blending until smooth. Add flour and salt just until mixture is combined, stir in nuts and spread into 13 x 9-inch baking pan lined with greased parchment paper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or so. Cool pan completely on a wire rack. For the drizzle, bring cream to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Remove pan from heat and add chocolates, whisk until smooth and cool until thickened. Pour over brownies, and cool in the refrigerator until firm before cutting into bars.
The Southern boomer table—for which, I might add, I barely qualify—is peppered with dishes fabricated in company test kitchens.
Green bean casserole is likely the most conspicuous example, but there are dozens of others. Many commercial dessert recipes include the word “magic,” as if merely waving your hands over the ingredients would produce a cake, pie, or cookie.
This recipe is from The Country Gourmet, distributed by the Mississippi Animal Rescue League in 1983. The book features a short forward by Eudora Welty, who writes, “Guarding and protecting, trying to save, all life on earth is a need we all alike share.”
Beat six ounces of whipped topping with a thawed can of lemonade concentrate and a can of condensed milk. Pour into a graham cracker pie crust and chill (in the freezer, jly) one hour before serving.
Over time many dishes have been needlessly–and recklessly–consigned to specific holidays. How often do you roast a turkey, stuff eggs, or make a fruitcake? What’s sad and paradoxical about this occasional consignment is that many dishes we prepare only for the holidays are those that bring us the most comfort, that make us feel most at home and closest to the heart of our lives.
Gingerbread is an extreme example of this culinary exile, particularly because when gingerbread is prepared even for the holidays it’s most often make into cookies. Instead, let’s make loaves any day of the year, any time of the day. Many recipes employ equal measures of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice as well as ginger–almost as an afterthought–but ginger should shine.
Cream a stick of unsalted butter with a half cup of light brown sugar, beat until fluffy, and mix well with two eggs and a half cup of sorghum molasses. Mix one and a half cups of flour with a half teaspoon of baking soda, a teaspoon each of cinnamon, ground cloves, and allspice along with a heaping tablespoon of ground ginger. Add two teaspoons vanilla and a half cup buttermilk. Pour batter into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 350 for about an hour. If you have the willpower, cool before slicing. I never do.
For sheer succulence, few fruits on earth can match a ripe-on-point peach fresh off the tree, and Escoffier, “the king of chefs and the chef of kings,” affirmed the fruit’s supremacy when he created an astoundingly superb yet simple dish to celebrate the great operatic coloratura soprano, Nellie Melba.
Dame Nellie Melba, (1861-1931), was a skilled pianist and organist as a youngster, but she did not study singing until in her twenties. She made her operatic debut as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto in 1887 at Brussels under the name Melba, derived from that of the city of Melbourne. Until 1926 she sang in the principal opera houses of Europe and the United States, particularly Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera, excelling in Delibes’s Lakmé, as Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, and as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata. She was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1918. She returned to Melbourne in 1926. Her image is on the Australian one-hundred-dollar bill.
Melba was not known as a Wagnerian singer, although she occasionally sang Elsa in Lohengrin, which she did to acclaim in 1892, at Covent Garden. The Duke of Orléans gave a dinner party at the Savoy to celebrate her triumph. For the occasion, Escoffier created a new dessert, and to display it, he used an ice sculpture of a swan, which is featured in the opera. The swan carried peaches topped with spun sugar which rested on a bed of vanilla ice cream. In 1900, Escoffier created a new version of the dessert for the occasion of the opening of the Carlton Hotel, where he was head chef. Escoffier topped the peaches with raspberry purée.
Incidentally, in 1897, Nellie, who was “slimming,” complained that her bread was much too thick and sent it to Escoffier in the Savoy kitchen. The chef returned to her table with a thinly sliced piece of toasted bread and promptly named it Melba toast in her honor.
Inferior versions of peach Melba substitute pears, apricots, or strawberries instead of peaches or use raspberry sauce or melted redcurrant jelly instead of raspberry purée. The original dessert used simple ingredients of “tender and very ripe peaches, vanilla ice cream, and a purée of sugared raspberry”. Escoffier himself said, “Any variation on this recipe ruins the delicate balance of its taste.”
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.
