Tag: desserts

Posted on

Chocolate Pudding

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.

Posted on

Pound Cake: A Perspective

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. Follow it, nonetheless.

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.

Posted on

Willadeen’s Spoon Bread

Willadeen Monahan and her sister Geraldeen used to sing on the local radio shows in north Mississippi back in the 1950s. They were pretty and could sing up a storm, but the act never went anywhere. In time they both married and settled down, Geraldeen in Kosciusko and Willadeen in Como, where I became her neighbor.

Panola County gets mighty cold in the deep Delta winter, and when the north wind came whipping down on us like a blue devil, Willadeen would call us up and say, “Y’all come on over and get some of this spoon bread to keep you warm. You know I make the best in the world!” And she did. Here’s her recipe.

Preheat oven to 400. Sift 1 cup cornmeal into 2 cups of lightly salted boiling water. Lower the heat and stir vigorously to a stiff gruel. Remove from heat and mix in a cup of cold milk or cream–this is best done with a whip.

Add 2 well-beaten eggs and 2 tablespoons melted butter. Blend until very smooth and ladle into a heated, well-oiled 8-in. baking dish. Willadeen used a skillet, which gives a nice crust. Bake until firm in the middle and nicely browned, about 40 minutes, less if you’re using cast iron. Serve hot from the oven with molasses or honey.

Posted on

Peach Melba

For sheer succulence, few fruits on earth can match a ripe-on-point peach fresh off the tree, and Escoffier affirmed the fruit’s supremacy when he created a superb yet simple dish to celebrate Nellie Melba.

Dame Nellie Melba, (1861-1931), was a skilled pianist and organist as a youngster; 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.

The original dessert used simple ingredients: “tender and very ripe peaches, vanilla ice cream, and a purée of sugared raspberry”. Escoffier said that any variation on his recipe “ruins the delicate balance of its taste.”

Posted on

Yancy’s Carrot Cake

This recipe is the only one you’ll ever need. Many might consider the dark rum optional, but it’s essential; even if you’re a teetotaler, the alcohol burns off in the cooking, and good heavens, you’re bound to know someone with at least one bottle.

I like a mix of gold and dark raisins, and prefer salted pecans to walnuts. Like all great cakes, this one is best made the day before.

Mix thoroughly ¾ cup vegetable oil and ¾ cup warm buttermilk with ¾ cup white and ¾ cup light brown sugar (you don’t have to pack it). Set aside. Sift together 2 ½ cups plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons each ground cinnamon and ground ginger, and a couple dashes of nutmeg.

Add half the dry ingredients to the oil/buttermilk mixture, and the rest alternately with 4 well-beaten eggs at room temperature. Add two cups grated carrots, about ¾ cup raisins, ¾ cup chopped nuts and a cup of drained crushed pineapple. Finish off with a tablespoon of vanilla extract and a generous slug of dark rum (okay, three ounces).

Pour batter into a Bundt or two 9 in. layer pans and bake at 375 until fragrant and springy. For the frosting, mix a pound of cream cheese and ½ stick butter at room temperature with powdered sugar to texture, a teaspoon almond extract and grated orange zests. Sprinkle with nuts.

Posted on

Big Boy’s Strawberry Pie

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.

Posted on

Bailey’s Cheesecake

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.