Suet Pudding and the joy of old recipe cards

You can click on the image above to make it larger.

I'm still going through my parents home, and it's hard choosing what to keep, what to donate but there is also joy. Things like finding a collection of old recipe cards. The card above is hand written by my Great-grandmother- Jane Bradley, and it's from my Great-Aunt's mother-in-law. I'm so grateful to my cousin Jane who was able to identify the handwriting. Now I know what to look for! My grandmother's typewriter and handwriting are easy for me to recognize.

The history just amazes me. It's too good not to share.

Ten Eyck Suet Pudding

1 cup molasses
1 cup sweet milk
1 cup suet chopped fine
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda

Salt and season to taste (I'd suggest mace, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves)

Steam for 1 hour.

I've never tried this recipe, but plan to this summer. Maybe modify it with the berries I have available.

Want more of my family recipes? Some of these have printable recipe cards!

Burnt Cream
Lemon Cups
Lemon Bars
Ball Cookies
Tapioca Pudding and a Salad dressing recipe
Cranberry Bread

Grandma had a sweet tooth and loved lemon. I'll be posting more recipes later!

Zig Zag Recipe cards and a few other things

Hi Everyone!

In the last few days a lot of people using Blogger have noticed that they are using a new code for images. This code was implemented without a good way to turn it off and causes images to show up in something called Lightbox. I used the code snippet from HERE to revert DETP. The people at Blogger do realize that a lot of their users really dislike the new feature, and hopefully will offer an easy way to opt out soon. 

Recipe Cards! 

The last couple of days, I've been playing with some PDF recipe cards. I'm still not completely happy with the results, but this is what I have so far. You should be able to type recipes directly into them using Acrobat Reader, and save the PDF to your hard drive with your recipes filled in and print them out. These are 4x6 inch cards formatted for US letter size paper or card stock.

Zig Zag Recipe Cards

This was my first version. I accidentally missed putting in some of the cutting guide lines. This is filled out using a couple of my grandmother's recipes. One for bourbon balls, the other for pecan balls.

Ball Cookie Zig Zag Recipe Cards

Grandma's Recipes- Lemon Bars

I haven't done a post from Grandma's recipe box in a while. As I've mentioned before, Grandma had a sweet tooth, so her recipes run heavily towards simple desserts. This is another lemon recipe so I used the recipe sheet posted here.
The original recipe card.

Grandma's text:

Lemon Bars

makes 15-18 bars

Holly Bradley

Mix together:

1 c. Butter or Oleo

1/2 c. Pwd. sugar

2 C sifted flour

salt

Combine.

4 Eggs beaten, 2 c. sugar, 4 Tbsp flour, 1 tsp Bk pwd, 6 Tbsp. lemon juice plus grated rind.

Put first ingredients in 9x13 pan, greased. Bake 15-20 min. at 350°- Do not brown

Pour combined ingredients and bake 20-25 min. at 350°. Sift pwd. sugar over while still warm. Cut in bars. let cool.

More modern text for people who didn't learn to cook from a recipe box.

Lemon Bars

makes 15-18 bars - Recipe from Holly Bradley's recipe box

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 cups sifted flour

1/4 tsp. salt

4 eggs beaten

2 cups sugar

4 Tbsp. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

6 Tbsp lemon juice

grated rind of one lemon

Grease a 9x13 inch pan and preheat oven to 350°.

Mix first 4 ingredients, and pat into pan. Bake for 15 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure it doesn't brown.

Mix remaining ingredients while the crust is baking, and pour over crust when it comes out of the oven. Put it back in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Sift powdered sugar over the top while it's still warm. Cut into bars and let cool.

The first part of the recipe makes a nice cookie type crust, and the second part makes something like a lemon curd. Not exactly a lemon curd because the lemon juice and baking powder combine to create a bit of lightness. and it doesn't have butter in it, but a very similar flavor. It's another easy to adapt and play with recipe. I like adding nuts in the crust and a bit of vanilla in lemon mix. Other ideas are to mix cocoa powder into the crust, and substituting the lemon juice with half orange juice and the lemon zest for orange zest. Chocolate orange flavors are always good.

This recipe WILL work with Splenda or other sugar substitutes. 

Click on the image for the full sized version of the recipe sheet.

Alaskan Fry Bread- printable recipe!

Alaskan Fry Bread  Serves 8

Alaskan fry bread is different than fry bread down south. Instead of being made with baking powder, water, flour and salt, it is made with yeast, flour, dry milk,water, salt, and usually some sort of sweetener. Just like a yeast bread recipe.
Traditionally, I've seen it served hot with a drizzle of honey, or with jam made from local berries.

The first recipe I learned was:

1 cup of milk lukewarm (made with 1/4 cup instant dry milk and luke warm water)
2 tsp. yeast or 1 envelope
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3-4 cups flour

shortening or oil to fry it in

Sprinkle yeast in the milk, let it set for a couple minutes to make sure the yeast is alive. If the milk gets a bit foamy, it's alive.
Stir sugar and salt into the milk, then add 2 cups of flour and stir it in.
Slowly add the rest of the flour, when you can't stir, knead it in. You might need a handful more or less of flour.

Set in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for one hour.
After it rises, punch it down, and split the dough into 2, then each of those pieces in 2,then each of those pieces in 2. 8 balls total. Roll the pieces into a ball shape and pat and pull them flat. Cut 3 or 4 lines through the dough and stretch it out slightly.
Set the pieces aside and heat up the oil.
Again, traditionally, Crisco is used because it kept well. I use canola oil.
Put 3 inches of oil in a heavy big skillet. Heat it up.
When the oil is hot*, put in the dough, a couple pieces at a time. Fry until it's golden on one side, flip over and fry the other side.
When it's golden on both sides, pull out and set to drain on a couple paper towels.

*Mom always checked the oil by sprinkling a bit of water in on her finger tips. When it skittered, the oil was hot enough. I don't recommend this method because it's just barely possible it could cause a grease fire by causing oil to come out of the pan

Well, I love baking bread. I make up recipes for bread regularly. So it was only natural that at some point I'd start playing with my old fry bread recipe. My family is wild for whole wheat breads, and I like fry bread plain. Nothing on it, but just a little sweeter.

So here's my family's fry bread recipe:
Again, we do use instant dry milk.

1 cup luke warm milk
2 tsp. yeast
1/4 cup honey!
1 tsp. salt
3-4 cups of whole wheat flour

shortening or oil to fry it in

Same steps, and sometimes I'll add in a bit of cinnamon. It's one of my favorites for packing along when we go hiking or on a day trip. I'll pack it layered in an air tight box between paper towels. That helps keep it very soft.

A little history, if you want to skip it, just scroll down to the printables!
My mother came up to Alaska in the 60s as a Vista volunteer. It was one of the best times in her life. She taught school in villages, and came away from it with a deep abiding love for Alaska, and the people and way of life up here. And the occasional craving for Spam and pilot bread. The first recipe is the one I learned from her.
The beadwork on the printable is based on Athabaskan beadwork. I'm half Athabaskan so it seemed appropriate. Athabaskan beadwork before missionaries and traders was based on geometric patterns. That changed with missionaries and glass seed beads. Now most traditional Athabaskan beadwork is floral motifs done in couching method on moose hide or other rough tanned leather. The motif I chose is Alaska's prickly rose.
The printables are at 100 ppi, click on the images to get the full sized version. If you print them on US letter sized paper at 100% they will have perfectly even borders.

Blank version

July 4th Recipe cards and coloring page

As usual, click on the images for the full sized 100 ppi versions. 

The recipe card set also includes a matching folder for them. 

Two recipes from Grandma's recipe box today because I just couldn't decide which one to offer.

The first one is a basic recipe for tapioca. My Grandma had a serious sweet tooth and this was one of her favorite desserts.

Tapioca Pudding

1/2 cup pearl tapioca

3 C. milk

2 eggs well beaten

1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 C. sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla 

Soak tapioca 24 hrs. in 1 cup milk. Drain, using 2 qt double boiler, add 2 c. milk, tapioca, eggs, salt and sugar. Cook for 15-20 min. stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add vanilla and allow to cool for 10 minutes.

As a kid, I loved it when Grandma made tapioca. As an adult, I use the same recipe more or less. I like it with half white sugar, half raw sugar, 1 more egg, and a tablespoon of vanilla instead of a half tsp.

Salad Dressing

1 10 1/2 oz. can tomato soup

1/2 c. oil

1 c. sugar

3/4 c. cider vinegar

1 tsp. mustard

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 

1/2 tsp. pepper

small bell pepper and onion

Blend all in blender, Refrigerate over night before using.

*Vi says she uses prepared hot mustard with horseradish

This is pretty close to a French dressing prepared according to this recipe, but Grandma always made mine with a lot more vinegar and no sugar because I preferred vinaigrette type dressings. Vi was a friend of hers. I never tasted the dressing made that way, but I think I'll try it on the 4th this year. 

Lemon Cups recipe with printable recipe pages

Getting back into Grandma's recipe box, I found this recipe for lemon cups. I remember loving these as a kid. Grandma had a sweet tooth and loved custards and puddings. This was probably the recipe that set up my life long affair with lemon flavored things. Puddings, ices, cookies. I love lemon.

She had access to a lemon tree and I'd pick lemons for this and for lemonade. One year my carry on bag on the way back to Alaska was just full of fresh lemons! I miss fresh lemons so much.

As written:

Lemon Cups

1 C. sugar

1/4 C. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. melted butter

5 Tbsp. lemon juice

grated rind of 1 lemon

3 well beaten egg yolks

1 1/2 C. milk scalded

3 stiff beaten egg whites

Combine sugar, flour, salt + butter; add lemon juice and rind. Add to combined egg yolks and milk; mix well. Folk in egg whites + pour into greased custard cups. Bake in pan of hot water in a moderate oven 325° 45 min. When baked each dessert will have custard on the bottom + sponge cake on top. Serves 8.

More usual terminology

Lemon Cups

3 eggs separated

1 C. sugar

1/4 C. Flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. melted butter

5 Tbsp. lemon juice (juice of one lemon with lemon juice added to make 5 Tbsp.)

grated rind of 1 lemon- or zest of one lemon. Be careful to avoid the bitter pith

1 1/2 C.  milk scalded then cooled to lukewarm

Preheat oven to 325°. Butter 8 custard cups and place in a pan of hot water.

In a bowl, beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks well and mix in milk. Beat well so there are no lumps.

In another bowl, mix sugar, flour, salt and butter well. Stir in lemon juice and rind. Pour mixture into the egg yolks/milk and mix well. Fold in the egg whites and spoon mixture into custard cups. Bake for 45 minutes.

Click on the images for the full sized 100 ppi versions. I hope you enjoy this dessert as much as I always have!

Burnt Cream

When I was young, my favorite restaurant in town was the Renaissance themed Clinkerdaggers. To be completely honest, I wasn't really adventurous with food and would always have a bowl of the beef stew they called Steak Pottage and  always a Burnt Cream for dessert.

It was the theme, the large murals of Renaissance paintings, the fireplace, the pretty serving dishes that looked like pewter. (they weren't, pewter has a really low melt point, but the LOOKED like pewter)

My mom would take me for special lunches there just completely randomly. After a dance class, before art class. Despite being a strong women's libber and hippie, she had very old fashioned ideas about how a young lady should be raised. It was always so nice.

Burnt cream.. wow. Do you remember the first time you had creme brulee? I'm pretty sure no more perfect dessert exists. I'm biased I know, it's all memory for me, plus I love vanilla. The texture of the silky smooth with the crackle of sugar on the top, the richness of the eggs and cream, the unexpected complexity of good vanilla. I love creme brulee. Please don't mess mine up with a lot of things on top or under it, or by mixing pumpkin or chocolate into it. Just plain, if something that good can ever be plain, creme brulee.

Clink's has been closed a long time now. But the same company owns another restaurant locally, and when my husband wants to give me a special treat he takes me there. Where I still order the same thing. Not a beef stew but an artichoke/crab dip that is served with sourdough toast points, and always, the creme brulee. I have places I take the kids for it, and while my son is very adventurous in his food tastes, they always order creme brulee for dessert when go to those place. The picture above shows how much they enjoy it.

In my grandmother's recipe box, I found this treasure.

Burnt Cream
Recipe:from Clinkerdaggers Restaurant Serves: 6

1 Pint whipping cream
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
granulated sugar for the topping

Preheat oven to 350°F. Heat cream over low heat until bubbles form around edge of pan.
Beat egg yolks and sugar together until thick, about 3 minutes. Gradually beat cream into egg yolks. Stir in vanilla and pour into 6 (6 oz) custard cups. Place custard cups in baking pan that has about 1/2 inch water in the bottom. Bake until set, about 45 minutes. Remove custard cups from water and refridgerate until chilled. Sprinkle each custard with about 2 tsp. granulated sugar. Place on top rack under broiler and cook until topping is medium brown. Chill before serving.

Remember,this recipe is at LEAST 25 years old. Before you could buy handy torches for 15.00 at any good kitchen wares store. I really recommend using a torch to burn the sugar and form the crusty caramelized sugar top. Also like most recipes from chefs, remember, most good commercial kitchens do NOT use the kind of vanilla you can get at the supermarket. They use a double strength vanilla. So if you are using a regular vanilla, double it.
And if you've never had creme brulee before, you should. Really.

Grandma's Recipe Box- Printable

Recently I found my grandmother's recipe box, and I'm slowly working through scanning the recipes and transcribing them for my kids. I posted her cranberry bread recipe.
The art on her 40 year old recipe box is a pretty Pennsylvania Dutch design that I decided I wanted to put on a recipe card set for everyone. The company that made it is Syndicate Mfg. Co in Pennsylvania. Her recipe box saw a lot of active use in her kitchen for many years, it's rusted, beat up, and yellowed.

 

You can download the 300 dpi PDF file here 

Reduce your waste with these fantastic upclycing ideas.

Grandma's Recipe Box- Cranberry Bread

While I was looking for something else in our spare room which is actually used for storage, I found my Grandma's recipe box. Over the next however long it takes, I'm going to try and get the whole thing scanned and transcribed for my kids. Some recipes I'll post here.
Cranberry Bread
Recipe from: Holly Bradley Serves: 1 loaf

1 c. sugar
2 c. Flour
1 1/2 tsp. bk pwd
1/2 tsp soda
1 tsp salt

Sift these together. Grate rind of one orange, juice of one orange- add enough water to make 3/4 cup liquid
2 tbsp shortening or oil
Add this to first mixture.

1 cup cranberries cut in half.
1 c. chopped nut meats
1 egg beaten
Add to other mixture- Bake in loaf pan 350° -60 to 70 min.

Updated recipe-
There are 3 mixes you have to make than mix together to make this bread, it's a quick bread so it doesn't need time to rise.
Start with one loaf pan, and butter it. If you want to make it just like my grandma did, butter then sugar the pan. She always sugared her pans instead using flour for anything sweet.
Pre-heat oven to 350°F
Orange
water
2 Tbsp. shortening or oil
Grate the peel from one orange into a glass measuring cup, cut the orange in half and squeeze juice into the cup. Add enough hot water to make 3/4 cup liquid. Stir in oil or shortening.

In a large bowl, sift together
1 c. sugar
2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder (can reduce to 1 tsp without a problem, get a non-aluminum baking powder, Bob's Red Mill is a good one)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt (can reduce to a half tsp. Seriously. I would.)

in another bowl (it's worth it, I swear)
1 egg beaten*
1 c. fresh cranberries- cut in half
1 c. coarsely chopped walnuts*

Mix the orange juice mixture into the dry mixture and stir until it's a nice lumpy thick batter. Stir in the nuts and egg and mix to incorporate the egg well.

Pour mixture into greased loaf pan.
Bake at 350°F for 55-65 minutes, or until pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve with cream cheese or homemade creme fraiche. Okay.. serve with homemade creme fraiche. Seriously. Because wow! If you want to make it a little fancier, put a splash of Grand Marnier into the creme fraiche and serve the slices of bread warm with a little puddle of creme fraiche. (Last suggestion is all mine)

Homemade Creme Fraiche- Night before
EASIEST thing in the world. In a clean jar, mix 1 cup heavy cream with 2 Tbsp. buttermilk. Just put the ingredients in, cap it, give it a good shake. Let it set out at room temp. for 24 hours. When you come back it will be a nice thick gorgeous cream. Put it in the fridge. To that you can add vanilla or Grand Marnier, amaretto, whatever flavors will compliment what you are serving it with, and you can use creme fraiche where ever you would use cream cheese. But.. creme fraiche is better. And check out supermarket prices on it, they want like 5.00 for a few ounces!

* her recipe calls for it to be added last, which just adds one more dish to wash since it's hard to beat an egg with nuts and cranberries in the way
the original calls for chopped nut meats, but generally in her recipes, that means walnuts unless it specifically calls for filberts, pecans or almonds. But pecans would be wonderful!
The chop you are going for is still a little bit chunky so you have bits of walnuts in the bread, not the fine grind I use for my yeast bread recipes. Although.. I think I will try it with pecan butter instead of chopped walnuts.