Celebrities Favorite's Weird Candy Trivia. Growing Candy.
updated 5-2-08
Karen wrote after a visit to our site,
"Did I forget to mention that one of the things endearing about "your little kitchen" is the pictures and stories and such and, rather than being one of those "stainless steel type kitchens", yours comes across as one with a window, plants hanging and sitting in the window, homey, an inviting ambience and the smell of fresh coffee brewing and of course, always the smell of something being baked ready to come out of the oven..." Thank you, Karen W. for those kind and thoughtful sentiments.
Robin Wallace opens kitchen window's, offering insite to other simpler times.
Vintage Cooking Recipes to keep you toasty this winter and a story to keep you warm-:).
Apple Vintage Recipes
Angel or Devil Recipes
Barbeques
Beef Dinners
Breads, Rolls, and Muffins.
Cake Recipes.
Candy.
Casserole Dishes
Carry In Dishes
Chili Recipes
Chicken, Poultry Dishes
Chow Mein
Cobbler & Crisp Recipes
Cookies.
Dips and Party Mix Recipes
Fish, Shrimps, & other Swimmers
Fudge
Family Reunion Recipes
Genealogy and Recipes
Gravy - Gravies
Helpful Hints
Italian
Ice Cream Recipes
Jams, Jellies, Marmalades
Lunch Box Sandwich Spreads
Marshmallows
Mexican
Pancakes, Hotcakes, BuckWheats and Syrups
Pickles and Picklers
Pies.
Pizza Pies
Popcorn Recipes
Porkchops, Piggies, and other Oinkers
Potato, Potatoes
Pudding
Salad Recipes.
Sandwich Recipes
Sauces, Condiments
Sauerkraut
Scary Recipes
Soups and Chowders
Uncategorized
Unusual Recipes
Vegetable Bin
Vintage Recipe Books
Molasses Recipe Booklet
Vintage Pillsbury 1957
Vintage Coconut - 1948
1913 Calumet Recipes
Other Recipes
Dedication: To Gloria, for the beautiful gift she sent to keep S’s tushie warm when she needed it the most.
Gram Irwin, Great Grandma Wallace and Auntie Julia would all start in around the weekend after Thanksgiving planning out their holiday baked goods giving and trying to figure out who was to get what delicacies based on taste preferences and need. Great Grandma and Auntie Julia always made the oatmeal and buttermilk cookies that they were famous for as the main staples of their gifting arsenal (you can find the oatmeal cookie and rolled buttermilk cookies recipes elsewhere on this site). They also made an incredible dark soft molasses gingerbread cookie that came out in bite sized balls that they rolled in powdered sugar as well as a delightful soft pfefferneusse, but, alas, those two recipes were lost to the antiques dealer who made off with multiple boxes of period family documents when Uncle Harry eventually sold off the farm.
Unlike Great Grandma Wallace, who could be very forthright and businesslike, brooking no nonsense when she set to work, I think Auntie Julia was always willing to gladly endure my “help” during the cookie baking process. Any time they had the spare minutes (which somehow always managed to correspond with our visits to the homestead during the holidays) were spent in baking huge batches of cookies and packaging them up on beautiful platters that would either be cleared into the neighbors’ own storage containers and given back on the day the goodies were delivered or returned to the two after the beginning of the new year and the holidays had ended. I don’t think they ever lost a one of the platters they sent out with the cookies (talk about trust!) since any that were forgotten usually were returned later in the year containing a multi-layered cake or other baked delight sent almost as an apology for neglecting to return the dishware sooner.
When I wasn’t allowed to help mix the cookie batter (any of you with kids knows what kind of mess can decorate the walls when a four-year-old helps mix flour or other messy components), I was always set to work choosing the various cutters used to make Auntie Julia’s rolled-out cookies. In addition to being farmers, the uncles were skilled blacksmiths and tinsmiths and made a good deal of the cookie cutters and other kitchen implements used in their daily cooking. Dependent upon the uncles’ whims, Great Grandma and Auntie Julia eventually ended up with an eclectic assortment of cookie cutter shapes in a huge variety of sizes. There were stars, diamonds, snowmen and women, wreaths, bells, candy canes, and leaves, along with the other usual shapes to be found in cookie cutters used especially for the holidays. There was also a huge selection of farm animals like pigs, cows, turkeys, chickens, and wildlife like deer, raccoons, rabbits and squirrels, long before such shapes became popular at specialty cooking stores. We even had one shaped like a beaver and an opossum, neither of which I have ever encountered in the intervening years while shopping for replacements after the old tin box and the cache of precious cutters were sold with the farm. If Auntie Julia ever minded that the wreaths more often than not ended up with a star or little bird-shaped hole in the middle instead of the proper scalloped cut-out shape, she never mentioned it, and my contributions to the vast selection were dutifully frosted and decorated with precious colored sugar crystals, silvered balls or other decorations like jimmies or hot cinnamon candies and added to those sent out with the platters as gifts. The number of their neighbors and friends who would be the recipients of the delectable cookies varied from year to year, but the cookies were usually delivered the week of Christmas Eve to be enjoyed with glasses of fresh, creamy, homemade eggnog made from the milk and eggs their farms produced.
Unlike Great Grandma and Auntie Julia, Gram Irwin belonged to innumerable social and charitable organizations which always benefited from her baking efforts. She never seemed to need a recipe for the cookies she baked (keeping a great number of them in her head to be recalled as needed), and I always was sorry that she never apparently wrote down the recipes.. Most of her cookie creations were measured out by the handful or whatever amount looked good to her eye (I still measure like this to this day, much to the disgust of my younger sister who learned exacting, precise measuring techniques from the Cordon Bleu-trained Frenchwoman who first taught her), and frequently contained whatever goodies came under her fingers. The only recipes she ever measured out were those she got from other sources. One of my all-time favorites of hers was a butterscotch-like oatmeal concoction that frequently contained coconut, hickory nuts and, of all things, coffee or dark blackstrap molasses.
As good as Gram Irwin’s creations were (she was always being asked to provide baked goods during the holidays for such organizations as the Eastern Star, the Grange, her church’s women’s organization, the 4-H, Farm Home Bureau, etc.), she would be the first to tell you that her cookies and baked goods couldn’t hold a candle to those made by her sister-in-law, Agnes. Grandpa Irwin’s mother, Mary Servis, came from a long line of bakers who owned a fancy tea house in the port city of Cork before she emigrated from Ireland, and Aunt Agnes had inherited her mother’s magic touch when it came to baking. I can remember the few times that I visited her house her dining room table was covered with pans of fresh-made dinner rolls, loaves of fresh baked breads and other sweet rolls and cookies that she made. She had a booming business selling these goods to her neighbors and others to supplement her household income. I was told that before I was born, Gram’s egg customers often ordered baked goods that Gram delivered on her usual Saturday morning egg runs to her customers.
Like Gram, Aunt Agnes’ baking was always requested at her church for their holiday bake sales and functions. Since her husband, Harry, was a worker at the area dairy co-op, she also managed to obtain scads of the milk sugar that was discarded from the milk runs to use in her multitude of creations. Whether it was a lifetime of practice, the quality and quantity of fresh milk and butter that she got from her little brother, Sammy’s, dairy farm or the fresh eggs she got from Gram and Grandpa Irwin, I don’t know, but she could have put many commercial bakeries to shame.
Up until well after Gram had passed in 1989, there was an old, glass jar that had a metal screw-on lid and wire bale that had served as a cookie jar all during the time I was growing up. I don’t remember now if it held 2 ½ or 5 gallons, but it sat in a place of honor on the back of the work space to the right side of the stove in the kitchen for as long as she lived. Any time there were cookies in the house, be they homemade or store bought, into the jar they went where my grandfather could go and raid one or two of whatever was there anytime he wanted one or had tea to drink.
It was always impossible to figure out what to get Grandpa Irwin for Christmas. Whether he was just naturally thrifty or had learned it from bitter experience during the Great Depression and rationing trials of World War II, I don’t know, but I can remember my mom and dad buying him tools year after year for Christmas, trying to replace old or worn-out implements long past their prime . In the 10 years or so after he had passed away, they would find perfectly new tools they had bought for him over multiple decades, most still in the original packaging, secreted in odd little cubbies all over the garage and in the cellar, waiting for a time when HE considered the original too far gone to use. Later on, they filled up three full toolboxes with the pliers, screwdriver sets, etc. they had so carefully bought for him over the years (I still have one of them to this day which formed the basis of my own tool collection used in general household repairs).
Read "Easter and Where NOT to Hide Eggs" Memories of Easters past and a few vintage recipes.
Logan's Halloween Story -The original story won first place in sixth-eighth grade division of Southeastern Middle School, 2005 by Logan Lyon
Food and Genealogy. A story By Robin L. Wallace. Our lives, our families, our very history's are defined by the foods we eat.
Family Reunion Recipes.
"The Fourth of July and Other Disasters"
(With Apologies to Jean Shepherd)
By Robin L. Wallace
A short story by Suellen Fry. Memories of my father and his version of Kickapoojoyjuice.
And since she usually visited in the afternoon, Grandpa would never notice the missing cookie jar until the next day when he went to raid a couple of cookies for his afternoon “pick-me-up”. After a couple of minutes’ noisy and fruitless rummaging in the kitchen, the house soon rang out with his frustrated calls of: “Lona, Lona, where’s my cookie jar, woman? I need my afternoon cookies for strength! You lose it? How can you lose a cookie jar that big?”
With an exasperated, “Oh, Bubbles!” Gram would go out into the kitchen to fetch him a couple of cookies out of the cupboard before he insisted that he would faint away from hunger. This little tableau usually went on for the duration of the time Aunt Agnes had custody of the missing cookie jar.
I hope that as the season progresses you have some happy memories to warm you as you prepare for your own celebrations, too. As for me, well, I have a cup of homemade eggnog and an oatmeal cookie waiting for me. Happy holidays to all!
As I noted above, you can find Auntie Julia and Great Grandma’s cookie recipes elsewhere on this site (The Muenster Town Historian recently contacted me and has included Auntie Julia‘s cookie recipe in their Brass Tavern Inn cookbook because it was a close period approximation of the one their town ancestress Julia Brass used to serve to revive the weary travelers who stopped off at her inn riding on the stagecoach - you can read about it at Munster History. In later years as we, ourselves, made the recipes, we redacted and changed them a little to be more useful to modern cooks.
Notes on Auntie Julia’s Buttermilk Cookies: The original recipe, long since lost, originally called for the cookies to be started off at a higher temperature and “set” in a hotter oven. The baking was then done at a lower temperature to finish them off until done. In the updated version I have shared, this step has been omitted, but the cookies turn out better if you refrigerate the dough for at least four hours (I have found overnight to work the best) before you attempt to roll them out. They are an especially tender dough, and Auntie Julia often dusted the rolling surface, rolling pin and cutters with 10x powdered sugar to keep them from getting too tough in the rolling/cutting process. She said they made a more tender cookie that way and preferred that method over Great Grandma Wallace’s method of using flour. Be sure to watch them carefully during baking so that the bottom is just a light golden brown and the tops appear to be just dry and set. Much longer than that and the cookies will be over baked and too dry.
We also learned that the cookie dough could be tinted and formed into shapes much like Play-Doh™. The trick is to remember to keep all of the dough the same thickness so that it bakes evenly.
If you find out that the cookies have dried out in the storage container, you can moisten them back up by adding a slice of white bread in with the cookies.
For the holidays Auntie Julia and Great Grandma always made an incredible frosting based on the liquid milk sugar they were given as a bonus from the dairy cooperative they belonged to (as did Gram Irwin and Grandpa Irwin’s sister, Agnes). The milk was picked up on a regular basis and taken by tanker to the dairy for processing. As the milk sloshed around in the tankers during transport, a liquefied milk sugar settled out in the bottom of the tankers. Since it was unusable, many times what was not given away to the farmers’ and dairy workers’ wives was dumped and washed away as the tankers were being cleaned up for the next run. I’ve never come across anything like it since, but the canned butter creme frosting available commercially makes an okay substitute. After the cookies were frosted, they were decorated with red and green sugar crystals, silvered balls, chocolate or Christmas-colored jimmies and hot, red cinnamon candies (Auntie Julia never used more than four of these on any cookie or the result would be too hot). If she was feeling extravagant, the cookies were iced in chocolate or a spiced white frosting (you can mix in a teaspoon of powdered nutmeg and a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon to a tub of vanilla or cream cheese frosting before using it on the cookie to get a good approximation of their original version - if the frosting is too spicy for your palate, decrease the amounts of spice to taste). M&Ms™ were also occasionally added to the cookies when Great Grandma was feeling fancy and extravagant, with the logo always down in the frosting so as not to spoil the effect of the addition of the color of the candy shells to the cookie.
These cookies are especially good for dipping in eggnog, regular or chocolate milk, and usually freeze well when separated in layers by waxed paper or aluminum foil.
2 cups regular milk
2 cups heavy whipping cream*
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 large eggs**
4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons sugar
Rum or rum extract (to taste if desired)
Place eggs in blender and pulse until mixed. Add remaining ingredients except rum or rum extract and blend well. Chill and serve with a dollop of whipped cream and dash of powdered cinnamon on top.
* You can substitute light whipping cream if you find the taste of the heavy cream too thick, but do not substitute skim or 2% for the whole milk. A certain amount of fat is needed in the milk for the recipe to work properly.
** This recipe was developed long before the salmonella issue came up with eggs. You can use a like amount of pasteurized egg substitute if you have raw egg concerns. I have heard that the raw egg mixture can be heated a little over a double boiler to kill off germs before adding the milk, cream and other ingredients, but I have never tried to make it this way.
Gram Irwin was never a drinker (the only alcohol kept in the house was an ancient bottle of scotch whisky to be added to hot, homemade lemonade by the tablespoonful as a home cure for pneumonia), so she would add rum extract at about a ½ teaspoonful per 8 oz. cupful to accommodate those who did. The ruse must have worked because I never heard any complaints from those who did imbibe, and jugs of her eggnog often accompanied her cookies during the holiday season.
1 cup vegetable shortening or butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 cups unsifted whole wheat or all purpose flour
2 cups quick cooking oats (not instant)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (9 oz.) package Nonesuch or other condensed mincemeat
¾ cup of broken hickory nut or black walnut pieces, coarsely chopped§
½ tablespoon sour cream or buttermilk*
2 cups tea or weak coffee
1 teaspoon ground ginger¥
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon¥
¼ teaspoon ground cloves¥
1 teaspoon ground allspice¥
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg¥
Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease cookie sheets or spray with a non-stick cooking spray before use. Crumble mincemeat in a large bowl and cover with favorite flavor of tea or weak coffee and let steep until totally moistened. Drain before adding to cookie mixture.
In large mixer bowl, beat shortening/butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, beat well. Stir together the flour, salt, and baking soda and optional spices (see note). Gradually add to shortening mixture. Gradually add in oatmeal. Add soaked mincemeat. Fold in nut pieces. If the mixture is too dry, add buttermilk or sour cream in ½ tablespoon amounts until the mixture is cohesive.
Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls, about 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes or until slightly browned. Be careful as this is easy to overshoot. Let the cookies set on the sheet for several minutes before removing from pan. NOTE: If you like a softer cookie never bake them until brown. For a more cake like cookie use 1 1/3 cups to 1 ½ cups of jarred or ready-to-use Nonesuch mincemeat. Frost or garnish as desired.
Quick Frosting Recipe:
In small bowl, beat 3 cups confectioners' sugar, 3 tablespoons softened butter or margarine and 3 tablespoons milk or buttermilk until well blended.
Makes about 6 1/2 dozen.
¥ Aunt Agnes was the queen of spices so the extra amounts listed here may be a little too strong for the modern palate, especially if the jarred variety of mincemeat is used. You might want to experiment with this to see if it suits your tastes before just tossing them in.
4 pounds beef, diced £
2 pounds beef suet £
2 pounds granulated sugar
2 pounds seedless raisins, chopped
1 pound dried currants
4 pounds apples, peeled and chopped finely
1/2 pound citron, minced ±
1/2 pound candied lemon peel, minced ±
1 cup dark molasses
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
3 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons powdered or grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
grated zest of 1 orange
grated zest of 2 lemons
1/2 cup orange juice (from the oranges you grated)
1/2 cup lemon juice (from the lemons you grated)
4 cups hard alcoholic cider (the alcohol will cook off in your pies or other baking,
leaving the just the flavor behind)
2 cups brandy (same per above)
Boil the meat and suet together until tender, then drain and cool it. Force it through a food grinder (or if you don’t have one, you can quickly pulse it in a food processor. Be sure you don‘t make a paste out of the meat).
In a large pot, mix all the remaining ingredients together, except the brandy, and add the ground or pulsed meat mixture and cook all together for 90 minutes or until fruit is soft and tender.
Add the brandy to the warm mixture and stir until thoroughly combined. Fill one quart-sized freezer bags and let the mixture cool before freezing.
Pour mincemeat into sterilized jars to within one inch of the top. Put on cap, screw lid band firmly into place until tight.. Process for 25 minutes at 10 pounds pressure. Let the canner cool and unlock before removing the jars.
Makes around 12 quarts
£ Although I have never tried it this way, I have heard from other family members that around 6 pounds of 75% ground beef cooked over low heat will produce similar results. The trick here is to crumble the hamburger meat up as finely as possible while cooking without letting it brown at all. Drain the meat of excess grease after cooking and set aside in a bowl, but do not drain it further on paper towels. A certain part of the fat is needed to insure the recipe comes out properly. This also insures that the mixture will be a little easier to grind than regular beef would be to get out any lumps.
± Because citron or candied lemon may be hard to find, you might try using an equivalent amount of orange or lemon essence chopped prunes or other dried fruit of your choice plus 2 teaspoons of lemon extract. I stopped using citron to avoid preservatives, which I have problems with.
There must be some special angel who knew that there would come a time when I would want and need Grandma Irwin's recipe for molasses cookies. When I lost the cook book put out by the local Grange chapter in the mid-1970s, I figured that the recipe was gone forever, being the only place I ever found it written down. As I might've explained in other places, Grandma was one of the kinds of old-fashioned cooks who kept that sort of information all in her head. Like those old-time cooks, she was able to call that knowledge forth whenever she needed it, unlike all us nonprofessional cooks who have to rely on cook books or other recipes we have written down to make our creations.
I can remember a time several years ago when I was interested in using the computer to convert everything I loved from those nasty little 3 x 5 index cards (so damnably hard to read, even though my tiny handwriting was so neat) into regular sized 8.5 x 11 inch pages that could be stored in a notebook, removed as needed, and placed in a clear page protector for easy cleanup when used in the kitchen. If the recipe was stored in the computer, it could be printed out again as needed when the original had gotten too dirty or stained to use again. Ah, those innocent, carefree days before I realized the foibles of trying to store data on drives or diskettes that would regularly crash, making everything that I had saved irretrievable in the event I changed machine types or even upgraded from one model to the next. After having lost several pieces of writing in this manner, I must've gotten into my head to start making hard copies as often as I could to preserve the precious work.
Somewhere along the line, I must have copied the recipes I liked the best from whatever source, be it cookbook, handwritten cards or paper, or even coupon fliers. Unremembered by me, I must've pulled the recipes I liked the best out of the Grange cookbook with the idea of making a master cookbook of my own, and through the years had misplaced the printout I had so scrupulously made.
Wonder of wonders! When my roommate was going through some of my papers while cleaning recently, she found Grandma's cookie recipe as was mentioned in this article. And so, to make sure that it never gets lost again, I offer it here for your enjoyment. I know that Grandma Irwin would be proud to know that her cookies are bringing pleasure to those who use the recipe and enjoy the results.
So what follows (with millions of thanks to my hardworking roommate for finding it in the first place!) I offer the recipe here for your enjoyment.
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup shortening
1 scant cup molasses
1 cup coffee
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
Preheat oven to 350°F. Cream sugar and shortening until fluffy. Mix in molasses and spices. Sift flour with baking powder, soda, and salt. Alternate the flour mixture with the liquid and add to the sugar mixture, beginning with flour and ending with flour. Let stand overnight in the refrigerator. Roll out or drop on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 12 minutes or until just done.
Notes: This was Gram Irwin's basic recipe for molasses cookies. This recipe makes great cookies that could stand on their own.
Depending on what struck her fancy, she often added such goodies as one half cup shredded coconut, one half cup roughly chopped nuts (this could be walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans, black walnuts or even the occasional butternut that Grandpa Irwin found and brought home to her) or even raisins that had been boiled until they were plump. In those cases, Grandma Irwin might mix half a cup of coffee with a half a cup of the liquid that the raisins were boiled in to make up the cupful of liquid required for the recipe.
In other cases, she would mix a cup of buttermilk with the baking soda and add that in place of the coffee.
To boil the raisins, measure out the amount you need for your recipe and place it in a saucepan. Put in just enough water to cover the raisins, and allow them to boil over medium heat at a full boil for six to eight minutes, or until tender and plump. Take the raisins off the heat to cool, and when cool strain them carefully. Depending on what you want to do, you can reserve some or all of the liquid to use in your recipe.
Since molasses can be somewhat difficult to get out of the measuring cup completely, immerse the measuring cup and molasses into a hot water bath that does not go over the rim of the measuring cup to liquefy the molasses. I suggest that you soak it like this for at least 10 minutes before it is needed for use.
My all-time favorite using this recipe was when she added in shredded coconut and nuts. Feel free to experiment until you find ingredients that suit your taste.
These cookies store well in an airtight container. They also can be frozen in freezer bags for up to three months. If you find the cookies have gotten dry in the storage container, you can soften them up by adding a slice of white bread in with them.
This is one cookie that Grandpa Irwin used to love to dunk in his tea after lunch or dinner. I've also found them to be good with flavored coffees, hot chocolate, homemade eggnog and even just plain milk instead of eating a doughnut for breakfast.
Copyright © 11/26/07
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