Christmas, 40s Radio, and Cookies

The 40s just screams Christmas to me. Most likely because I grew up watching movies like It's A Wonderful Life, and Holiday Inn. As a child we had this great Christmas album of 40s era carols that folded open to make a pop-up winter village. Peeking into the windows of the little houses and listening to that album are among my favorite childhood memories.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited to be making some authentic 1940s Christmas cookies. I tied my hair up in a kerchief and put on some holiday radio shows before I got to work. I am now a definite fan of The Shadow, a "wealthy man about town" who can make himself invisible and uses his power to solve mysteries. Radio in the 40s was excellent, there are no two ways about that.

Now, let's enjoy The Andrew Sisters singing Winter Wonderland while we get down to the business of baking.

The first batch of cookies I made were Standard Refrigerator Cookies. I opted for the "spice" variation to make them a bit more festive. Because "Refrigerator Cookies" have their own section in the book and this version is the "standard" one, I was expecting a nice and easy experience. I was wrong.

To make the cookies sift 6 cups flour, 4 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt together. In a separate bowl, cream 1 1/2 cups shortening and 3 cups brown sugar until fluffy. Add 3 eggs and 2 tsp vanilla. "Add to which bowl?" I don't know. My guess was the one with the shortening and sugar. Because I chose the spice variation, I decided to add my spices at this point. To the dry bowl I added 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. (The instructions say to add this to one portion of the dough. Since I didn't know what that meant, I ignored it. Oddly enough, this is not where the cookies started to break bad on me.) Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and make into a dough.  Once you have your dough, or in my case, bowl of crumbs...

Yeah, this will totally work

...divide it into six pieces and shape each piece into a log, then chill. (Sadly this means put into the refrigerator, not grab a beer and watch television.)

I could not get mine into logs. I rolled them into balls and hoped that the log would come to me by magic after I refrigerated the dough.

This will probably work out, right?

They didn't. I re-crumbled each section and added globs of shortening until I was able to get a the texture needed for shaping and general cookie making. Then I made my logs.

Once you get a chilled log of dough, slice it "very thin".

And now I get why pre-made cookie dough is a thing.

Bake at 375* for approximately 12 minutes.

Finally... cookies

These cookies smelled. Cinnamon and nutmeg are usually fantastic, but not today. For all of the trouble these little buggers caused me, I think they are really gross. The recipe yields 10 dozen. 120 really gross cookies. No thank you. I only made around 40 or 50 (still too many). My son likes them though, so I'm hoping it's just me, because these cookies are for gift baskets. Nothing says love like funky cookies.

The second set of cookies went much better. They were Scotch Shortbread (my favorite cookie), so what could go wrong?

These easy and wonderful beauties are made by creaming 1 cup butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar. Work in 2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour. This will actually produce a dough, I promise. Chill the dough for a bit and then roll it out and cut it into shapes. Bake at 325* until they smell delicious.

Mmmmmmm

I'll toss in a bonus recipe that is not from the cook book. If you want to make a really special variation of the Scottish Shortbread, sandwich preserves (strawberry or raspberry) between two cookies, glaze the top with confectioners sugar that has been melted down with a touch of hot water, and top that baby off with half a maraschino cherry. Ooh, I'm hungry just thinking about this.

I doubt I'll get honest feedback on the cookies (because they are gifts), but my contention is that Refrigerator Cookies stopped being a DIY thing for a reason (even Martha Stewart's recipe uses a mix) and Scotch Shortbread is always amazing. This particular shortbread recipe is super easy and has only three ingredients. Fantastic!

Happy Holidays!

Plastic and Tea Sandwiches

Plastics were a big, huge deal in the 40s.  Due to the scarcity of resources coupled with the great needs of the troops, scientists turned to plastics research to fill the gaps.  Plastics production increased some odd 2000+% during the war, 85% of which was used for war efforts.  Plastic was made better and cheaper. During and after the war plastics were everywhere. Our world was forever changed. I cringe to imagine a world where shampoo is in a glass bottle. Say what you will about Monsanto, but in 1945 they surely saved a lot of feet from broken glass.

During the plastics boom of the 40s they made just about anything from this exciting, new material. There were plastic hats (ooohh.. fancy), plastic clutch bags, and even plastic bras (which sounds silly, but was designed as safety equipment for factory workers).

Here is a film from the 1940s which explains about the history of plastic, it's uses during the war, and it's destiny to change the world at home.

Of course, now we know we may have overdone it a little bit, but there is no doubting that plastic was a game changer.

Okay, on to our recipe which has nothing to do whatsoever with plastic. I'm on vacation, so working out an easy segue just isn't my thing right now.

Due to baking burnout, and the fact that tomorrow I will transform my little kitchen into a Christmas cookie factory, this week's recipe is easy-peasy. I've made tea sandwiches.

My sister and her husband came by for a visit and I thought the "attractive sandwiches" would work well because I wasn't certain whether they would be arriving hungry.

I made two kinds. The first of which were egg sandwiches. They are super easy, simply slice up hard boiled eggs and lay slices of egg onto slices of lightly buttered bread. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika.

yum

The second kind were chicken sandwiches, which is just a really basic chicken salad. These are made by chopping 1 cup chicken meat until it is very fine (or buying canned and attacking it with a fork), mix into a paste by combining with 1/4 cup mayonnaise. Spread the paste onto slices of bread.

you had me at paste

In order to make these boring, but delicious creatures into amusing and delicate tea sandwiches, the crusts must be removed and the remaining sandwich cut into shapes. After cutting a few with cookie cutters, I decided that I would quickly run out of bread and made the remaining sandwiches into squares. At the very end, I got creative and realized that triangles are also a thing. The whole endeavor was an enormous waste of bread.

This is an awful lot of food waste, even without wartime rationing

The resultant sandwiches are super-cute and very tasty though. If I didn't hate the thought of throwing away so much bread I would definitely consider making a wider variety of these for parties, perhaps with different breads and some garnishes. They were a hit.

Take that Subway! Who's the sandwich artist now?

Another Cake and Swans Down in the 40s

This week was my sister's birthday. Happy birthday, sis! So I invited her over for retro cake and coffee (all my coffee is retro, because I use a stove-top percolator). Unfortunately, her car broke down on the way, but the cake was already in process. So I guess I will eat the cake? Is that rude? I don't really know the protocol for birthday cake sans birthday person.

This recipe, like the last one, calls for "cake flour."  I normally avoid recipes that don't use all purpose flour, because I don't want to have multiple flours around the house. It seems redundant. For these recipes I've decided to bite the bullet and picked up some Swans Down Cake Flour. I chose it because of the old fashioned packaging.

The ribbon along the top of the box says that this flour has been in production since 1894. During the 1940s Swans Down was a popular cake flour and according to their website in 1945 General Foods introduced the first boxed cake mix under the Swans Down name. I also found that during the war there was a Swans Down war ration cook book with recipes modified to compensate for shortages in things like eggs, butter, and sugar.

Today's cake recipe, certainly did not account for any egg shortages, because it called for eight egg yolks. Prudent and heart healthy, that's my kinda cake.

The cake is called a Gold Cake. To make the cake, cream 3/4 cups shortening with 1 1/4 cups sugar. Add 8 egg yolks and continue creaming. Sift 2 1/2 cups cake flour with 3 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt. (Since my last entry I have learned that a mesh strainer makes a much better sifter than any actual sifter on the market.) Add this to the creamed mixture alternately with 3/4 cups milk and 1 tsp vanilla. Beat until smooth between each addition. Bake at 350* for 20 minutes. The recipe says that it will make three 9" cake pans (which I have now purchased), but I was only able to get two pans worth from the batter.

They came out looking pretty nice.

For the frosting, I attempted a recipe from the book. It was difficult to find a recipe that doesn't call for raw eggs. I guess salmonella wasn't a big concern back in the day. I made Eggless Confectioners' Frosting. This is made by combining 2 Tbsp milk with 1 cup confectioners sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I chose to make it using one of the suggested variations by adding 2 Tbsp cocoa.

This makes the runniest possible "frosting." I chilled it in the fridge for a bit to make it spreadable, but it kept getting soaked right into the cake. There wasn't enough to cover everything so I went back to my trusty old whipped cream recipe to finish it off. You can see the color variation in the frosting, but I think it looks alright.

Definitely looks homemade.

I was a bit concerned when I cut the cake, because it started to crumble like crazy.

Hmmm.... do you suppose it's a bit dry?

The cake was actually really tasty (as were both of the frostings). I could detect just a hint of baking powder in the flavor and it was a touch dry. Not enough to be bothersome, but if I were making this cake again I would cut the baking powder down to 2 teaspoons instead of 3. I really liked the flavor of the frosting from the book. I would recommend it for a pour-over frosting and use something else in between the layers. This recipe was very good and seems to leave a lot of room for latitude. With a few tweaks here and there I think a few really special cakes can be made.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have another slice.

Arithmetic in the 40s and Feeding Little Ones

40s kids were taught arithmetic prior to the "new math" movement. New math was introduced in the 1960s as an attempt to keep American schoolchildren's math and science skills competitive with Russia.

So, how was arithmetic done back in the day? To me, it actually seems a little neater.

Take for example the problem: 723 - 186. The old way the math would be done as such:

  723
-186      

Instead of borrowing from the 2 to make the 3 into 13, one would subtract the 6 from 3 by counting six backward from three like such... 2,1,0,9,8,7. Making 7 the difference (answer). You would then "carry" the one (because you went past zero once) and add it to the 8 (or if you wanna get fancy you can take it away from the 2) in the next column.

To me it's neater, because you don't wind up with number soup all over the place when writing it out on paper. I remember making simple errors in grade school after losing track of all the carrying and borrowing that was scribbled all over the teeny tiny margins between the numbers on my homework assignments. Just look at this crazy mess...

Ones, Ones everywhere!!!

To me, this looks so much less confusing...

No slashes, just a couple of ones. Ahhhh - nice.

I'm sure there are advantages to the "new" way that I'm just not seeing, but aesthetics is clearly not one of them.

Tom Lehrer explains the differences humorously and thoroughly in his hit song New Math.

I could listen to this song over and again and still get a giggle, but alas, it is time to move on to our recipe...

What does math have to do with our recipe? My son invited some friends over to be test subjects in his science fair project. He needed them to take a math test under varying conditions so that he could test the condition's effects on cognition. Pretty cool, right? Asking people to come over and take a math test isn't easy though, so I plied them with cake.

The cake is called a "One-Two-Three-Four Cake"... sounds appropriate enough. The ingredients are super simple, but the steps are surprisingly particular (just like math).

To make the cake cream 1 cup butter with 2 cups sugar until fluffy. Add 4 egg yolks one at a time (hang on to the whites). Beat the mixture thoroughly after adding each egg. Sift 3 cups cake flour with 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 3 teaspoons baking powder three times. That's right THREE FREAKIN' TIMES. Because sifters are so cooperative this won't be frustrating at all. (Note to self: look into buying some sort of fancy sifter). Add half the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture with 1/2 cup milk and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add the remaining dry ingredients and a 1/2 cup more milk. Beat until smooth again. Beat the egg whites until stiff (whoops! I don't remember reading this when I was making the cake). Fold the egg whites into the batter. Pour into three 9" pans and bake at 350* for ~ 25 minutes.

I don't have three 9" pans, so I used a bundt pan.

Yup, looks like cake batter

After about 30 minutes the cake smelled done, but the batter looked wet, so I gave it another 5. After five more minutes I started to smell burning. (oh boy!).

Phew! This looks okay

Removing cakes from pans has never been my strong suit. I always line my pans with wax paper, but that solution is a no-go for the bundt pan. After shaking the thing like a maraca for a few minutes, the cake was finally free.

Well.. most of it was free anyway

I frosted the cake with whipped cream. That recipe wasn't from the book, but it's my stand-by. Just a little bit of heavy cream mixed with your desired amount of powdered sugar, whipped into a frostable consistency.

Frosting to the rescue!

I'm not sure the kids liked it much, but my fiance and I both enjoyed it. It struck us both as a sort of casual company cake and not a special occasion cake. It was a little crunchy on the outside, airy on the inside, and not too sweet. It would make the perfect compliment to coffee with friends.

This one will definitely stay a regular in my everyday rotation.

Dec. 7th 1941

No recipes today, for it is a day of remembrance.

http://i.imgur.com/6h5He2t.jpg