Let Them Eat Cake!

Mr. Hairball was raised on box cakes with canned frosting and thoroughly enjoyed them until he met me. In fact, one of his favorite cakes was a cinnamon streusel cake made from a mix, and he refused for years to even entertain the thought of me making a scratch version of this cake. One day, I go to the grocery store to buy his streusel cake mix and I can't find it at the store. I go home and tell him and he grudgingly agrees to try a homemade version since his beloved box mix is no longer available. Thankfully, after a few tries I came up with something that he liked and household harmony was restored once more.

The streusel mixture is from my 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book. The original recipe made half the amount I have listed below. This cake is for Mr. Hairball and he likes a lot of streusel mixture in his cake. LOL

Streusel Mixture
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup chopped nuts

Toss together until mixed.

For the cake portion of the program, we will be using a recipe from the Hillbilly Housewife website and substituting butter for the margarine.


Lucy has very kindly agreed to be the background for this shot. In other words, she's blocking out all the crapola that was on the back of my counter. *snorts*


Preheat your oven to 350F. We will be making this cake in a well greased and floured bundt pan so prepare your pan.


Butter and sugar have been creamed and the eggs, vanilla, and salt have been added to the bowl.

Here I've added the baking powder, flour, powdered milk and the equivalent amount of water for the milk. I'm low on milk and saving what is left for drinking. Veteran bakers will note that all of the flour and milk goes in at one time instead of in stages.


Place 1/4 of the streusel mixture in the bottom of your prepared bundt pan. The pan really is clean it's just quite old and has had many cakes baked in it!


Top that with half of the cake batter.


Then add the rest of the streusel mixture.


I've started adding the remaining cake batter.


Now smooth it all out with your spatula and bake it at 350F for 35-40 minutes or until it tests done. Leave in bundt pan for about 15 minutes and then invert onto serving dish or platter and let cool completely. Once the cake is completely cool, it's time to glaze that bad boy. Once again, the amount of glaze is doubled here per Mr. Hairball's request.

Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons milk, cream, half and half, etc...
1/4 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Mix above ingredients until smooth and drizzle over your cooled cake.


Sorry this one is so dark. Mr. Hairball was begging me to hurry up and glaze it so he could eat some so I glazed it right there on the dining table.


Here's a shot back in kitchen after he ate some cake and I packed some up for his lunch. Note the large dark ribbon of streusel mixture there in the middle.

Chocolate AFC with Strawberries and Whipped Cream

I went shopping on Friday at the 'white bread grocery store' or WBGS as they had some good sales going on. I call it the 'white bread grocery store' because they literally do not sell *any* whole wheat flour in this store. I have no idea why.

Anyhoo, WBGS had strawberries on sale and when I went over and peered at them, they looked really good. So good in fact, that I decided to buy some and make some strawberries with balsamic vinegar and brown sugar.



Above is two pounds of strawberries ready to be washed, hulled, and sliced.



In the above container is 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and some freshly ground pepper. I know some of you are reading this and thinking Hairball has done gone and flipped her wig. Vinegar and black pepper on strawberries? [C'leen]That's like putting avocado on a cheeseburger! [/C'leen]. Trust me here, okay? Now I like it peppery so I used 13 grinds of pepper. I suggest grinding about five, stirring up everything all together and tasting it to see if it needs more pepper. You can always add more but, if you get too much then you are stuck! Once you get the strawberries to the place you like, put the lid on and stick them in the refrigerator while you make the cake.


Click to enlarge if you'd like to see the recipe. I did the Angel DeLuxe chocolate version of this cake. This is from my 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book if anyone is interested.



Here's some tips about the method of making an angel food cake. If you enlarge it you will see that they are using a wire whip in step three.

I looked in the front and found a picture of an wire whip as I was unfamiliar with it. I put black dots next to the wire whip and its description so it would be easier for you to see it. That old rotary egg beater makes me think of Mama Hairball. At one point, she had a collection of old kitchen tools displayed on one wall of her kitchen.

Now I've gathered up most of the ingredients for this recipe.

If you've read the recipe, you'll notice that I am missing the powdered sugar and shouldn't have the almond extract in the picture. I did use the powdered sugar as instructed but I goofed and add the almond extract to my egg whites. Oops!



Here's my twelve egg whites all ready for the cocoa mixture to be folded in. Lotta eggs, huh? Eggs were on sale last week for 98 cents a dozen so I decided to splurge. Between the coconut cake I made last week and this cake, I've got quite a bit of egg yolks in the freezer to use up. I've found one cake recipe that only uses the yolks that I'm going to try and I'm working on selecting some others to use up the darn things.



Now its ready to go in the tube pan. You may have seen that episode of Semi-Ho where Sandra Lee tells you on her show (but not in the written recipe) to grease your tube pan when she makes the angel food cake from the cake mix. Remember that she's drunk and has delusions of grandeur so when it comes to cooking advice it's best to just ignore her okay? The woman makes stuff like this and this with a straight face so she's obviously eight kinds of crazy, no? Now, Sandy does have her areas of expertise. She's your gal for hangover remedies, how to hang chandeliers in trees and how to make cherry flan that looks like an alien life form is gestating inside of it.

Sorry, I got sidetracked a bit there! Because you will not be greasing the pan, it is most definitely going to stick to the sides of your cake pan. Its like what my old employer used to say about linen clothing, "Its guaranteed to wrinkle so get over it." If your pan has little feet like mine does, then you can just flip it over and let it rest it on those feet. The traditional way is to invert the cake onto a glass bottle (like a wine bottle) so that the bottle fits into the hole in the tube part and leave it there until the cake has completely cooled. After the cake has cooled, you'll need a long flexible knife to free it from the sides of the pan.


I'm sorry for the quality of these next few pictures! You can't tell in this picture but, I've used my knife to loosen the cake from the sides of the pan. Here it is still attached to the bottom piece with the tube. Take your knife and run it between the cake and the pan and slip the cake off of the tube part. Notice the sides of my cake aren't perfect as they got a little cut up from me getting it out of the pan with the knife. Oh, well. This is only the second time I've ever made an angel food cake so hopefully I will get better as time goes by!



Here's some cake and strawberries for Mr. Hairball.



Here's the same out of focus cake with some whipped cream. Whipped cream is very easy to make, just some heavy cream, vanilla extract, and a couple of tablespoons of powdered sugar all beaten up until soft peaks form. Only takes a minute and tastes much better than Cool Whip.

Who wants some cake? Or would you prefer some of the strawberries by themselves?

Sandra Lee, the early years

Last night, I chose a cake recipe from my 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book to make for this week. There wasn't a picture of it on the page with the recipe, so I flipped through the rest of the book to see if perhaps there was one in another section. In doing so, I came across this drawing. (Please click to enlarge if necessary so you can read the text.)


I never would have guessed that Sandra Lee got her start back in 1950 when she worked in the Betty Crocker "Kamera Kitchen"!

Pictures from my old cookbook

My more observant readers may have noticed that there is a picture behind my blog title and description up top. The picture is from my Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book from 1950. While I was getting shots of the pages about mac and cheese and how to make a white sauce, I thought I would go ahead and take pictures of all the color pages in the book. As I was working my way through this book I came across a picture which really caught my attention.

Leafing through this cookbook is like seeing in all capital letters. The color pictures leap off of the page and attack your retinas with the fury of pack of wild dogs. You close your eyes and the image lingers. You cautiously open one eye and once again your vision is filled with COLOR! EYE BURNING, RETINA SEARING, COLOR!! Your stomach even lurches a bit as your modern eyes are unaccustomed to this kind of onslaught.

I call this one, "The meat that ate New York!". Click to enlarge if you are the masochistic sort .



Everybody okay? * Passes out cool cloths and water for those feeling faint* How about some pie? I just love good old fashioned homemade pie like Mr. Hairball's grandmother makes. It's so cozy, and soothing. Nothing like some warm pie on a cold day or at the end of a trying day. Pie is such a peaceful dessert.





That is until the 'cherry hatchet pie' showed up to wreck havoc everywhere. Would you feel safe leaving that pie in your kitchen? I wouldn't. I'd be snoozing away in bed and awaken to find the 'cherry hatchet pie' brandishing one of its little pastry hatchets in my face as I yell for Mr. Hairball to save me from the 'cherry hatchet pie'. Life is hard enough ya'll, I don't need any desserts with an attitude taking up residence in my kitchen. I think Nancy Reagan would agree with me. Just say no the the 'cherry hatchet pie' and don't be friends with those who hang out with the 'cherry hatchet pie'. You have been warned!!

Edited to add: I don't want to give anybody the wrong idea that I don't like this cookbook. I love this cookbook!! Many modern cookbooks are either written for a Semi-Ho audience or for an audience who doesn't need to take account of how much ingredients cost. I'm an average person, with an average household budget. The older cookbooks work well for me and my needs. I just find some of the pictures very amusing!!

Homemade mac & cheese and Lucy

I was really craving some baked macaroni and cheese. I usually make the kind where you don't make a cheese sauce and just layer in the cheese and pour a milk and egg mixture over the top and bake it. That is the version my late grandmother made for me growing up. Mama Hairball always made the boxed kind which is an entirely different animal!

I haven't been to the grocery store since the 25th. Because of that, I'm out of some things like eggs, so I couldn't make the non-cheese sauce version I normally make. I turned on my oven to preheat at 350F, got out my 1950 version of the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book, and refreshed my memory as to how much butter, flour, milk, and cheese I would need to make the cheese sauce version.



Click on the picture to see a larger version. I made a double batch of themedium white sauce and your white sauce is all smooth, you add in your shredded cheese. Betty said said to add 1/4 tsp dry mustard and "1/2 cup nippy American cheese ( cut up or grated). Stir until cheese is melted." I added some cayenne pepper and then some grated Cheddar and stirred until it was smooth.Meanwhile, I sprayed a 9x13 baking pan with non-stick spray and boiled a pound of macaroni for six minutes. It's going to absorb some moisture from the cheese sauce or milk/egg mixture depending on whichever version you make, so I cook it a little less than I would if I were going to eat the macaroni right then.



Next, I turned to the page about mac and cheese and looked over those instructions. If you look at the large version of this you will see that I am not exactly following the directions since I made a cheese sauce and I am making a larger quantity than Betty does.

I poured about 1/3 of the cheese sauce in the bottom of pan and added about 1/3 of the macaroni and repeated until I had used up all the macaroni and cheese sauce. Then I got out some sharp Cheddar I had left(I used a mild Cheddar for the cheese sauce) and put that on the top.



Here it is ready for the oven. Bake it for 30 minutes at 350F.

While we wait for the Mac & Cheese to achieve hot, bubbly, cheesy, goodness, let's veg out with another of my favorite scenes from I Love Lucy:



If you are unfamiliar with this episode, here's some more information.

Okay, lets check on our mac and cheese. Mine looked a little pale so I turned the temperature to 400 and turned on the broiler to crisp up the top a bit. Here's a closeup of my finished product:



Enjoy!