Cake - Retro Food For Modern Times

Tag: Cake

05
Jun
2015

Birthday Mushroom Cake

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, A-Zof Cooking, Vintage Cookbooks, Vintage Recipes

Why should you invite a mushroom to your birthday?

Hands up all of you who thought I was going to go with that corny old “Because he’s a fun guy” schtick? Well boo to you!!! My jokes are never that bad. Are they? I’m actually terrible with jokes. The only one I can ever remember is “Why are pirates called pirates?” And the answer is “Because they are” Only you have to say the “are” in that pirate voice. “Arrrre” See? The only joke I know and it’s not even funny written down.

So, mushrooms, parties…I made a cake!!! In fact I made lots of little cakes. And they looked kinda like mushrooms. And you should definitely have them at your next party!

Oh and the taste? So good. Chocolate, marzipan and sour cherry jam….how could you go wrong?

Have I ever mentioned exactly how much I love marzipan? Well, it’s this much – I ate the left over marzipan from making this recipe by itself. Then I bought another pack and ate that by itself too. Then I felt sick for about three days. But it was worth every minute of it.

My mini mushroom cakes are based on a recipe from The A-Z of Cooking which has it as one large cake. This is from the Children’s Favorites sections which means we have hit C. Why does it feel like I have been cooking from this book for YEARS? How can we be only up to C?

To be honest, I’m not sure of the validity of the mushroom cake as a child’s favourite. Teddy Bears, Thomas The Tank Engine, one of those awesome Barbie Pool Party Cakes – hmm whatever, yes and definitely yes, yes yes! (Note to self, Make Barbie Pool Party Cake for next year). I’m not sure there’s many children asking their mum to bake them the fungi cake. Not even back in the hippy ’70’s.

Mushroom Cake – Original

You start with one big or lots of little chocolate cakes. I used the recipe from The A-Z of Cooking but you could use any chocolate cake you wanted. This would be A-MAY-ZING using your favourite brownie recipe too.

Here is the original recipe, my slightly tweaked recipe is below.

Spread the top your cakes with the sour cherry jam,

Roll out your marzipan until quite thin, then cut into rounds large enough to drape over the top and sides of your cake. Trim additional marzipan so the marzipan is flush with the bottom of the cake. Turn over so the uncovered part of the cake is now facing the top.

Roll another long thin piece of marzipan. Spread with the sour cherry jam and roll up, lengthways. Cut this into 4-5 pieces depending on how long you want your stalk. Repeat until you have the same number of stalks as you do cakes.

Pipe or spread your icing onto your cakes. I spread mine and made the mushroom gills with a toothpick.

Then place your stalks onto the middle of each cake.You may need to hold these in place with a little dob of jam or icing.

Despite their dubious credentials as a children’s favourite, these mushroom cakes are just adorable and so tasty, and you know what would make then even better and certainly not kid friendly? Douse the cakes with a little bit of kirsch before adding the jam.

Now that’s what I call a magic mushroom cake!

Three sleeps to Pieathalon!!!! I can hardly wait

Have a great week!!!

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Retro cakes & a bit of kitchen history
Apple Cake
Amazing birthday cake recipes (that even adults will love)

29
Jan
2015

Nutty Nutella Cake… with a Meringue Topping

categories: Ancho, Cake, Chocolate, Icecream, Meringue, Sorbet, Spice Peddler

Just as we finish a good meal with something sweet, so shall we round out the month of madness with one of the kookiest recipes I’ve seen lately. And here it is:

Looking at that photo, I know what you are thinking. And you know what?

Some of you are mean!!!!

Have you been taking lessons from my family?

So these are not the best looking cakes in the world. There is a definite dip in middle of all of them. The texture is kind of rough….then again….that rough texture is also kind of crispy and there is a delicious fudgy layer in the middle. And who doesn’t love a fudgy layer?

But remember the Twinkie Defence? I’m about to launch the Picnic Defence. The Picnic is one of the best chocolate bars ever. Chocolate, caramel, wafer, peanuts. So good. The only problem? It looks like a big old turd.

But so good to eat.

And the Nutty Nutella Cake is the Picnic bar‘s next door neighbour in “Dammit we taste so much better than we look” Street.

You know what else makes this cake so special? I’ll tell you in a moment but first, let’s take a walk down Pronunciation Avenue and talk about Nutella. In Australia ( and I believe England), we call this super delicious chocolate hazelnut spread Nut-ella. Because it’s made of nuts. And….ella. Ella being an Italian euphemism for a shit ton of sugar.

However, definitely on The Splendid Table Podcast and I’m sure a few others I listen to, I have heard Americans call this stuff Noo-tella.

WTF? I can get over that whole tomato / tomayto thing. But Noo-tella is a step too far.
It’s NUT-ella. End of.

I first found this recipe on the Masterchef site. However, it has since been taken down. Only a picture remains. And yep, phew…Matt Preston’s cake is as ugly as mine…

http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef/recipes

Possibly even uglier.

But I was able to find a copy in Matt Preston’s latest book and in the same spirit of adventure in which I made muffins from ice cream and flour a few years back I decided to give it a whirl. And you know what else….there’s obviously some weird psychic connection between Matty P, and me because in the same book, he has a recipe for “bread” made from you guessed it, ice cream and flour!

So, you wanna know what’s in these ugly but delicious sweet treats?

Nutella…or if you’re cheap like me, supermarket brand hazelnut spread.
Eggs
Vanillla

That’s all folks. C’est tout. Three ingredients. To get this….

And you know what? That little dip….don’tcha just want to fill it up with all sorts of deliciousness?

I went for a contrast – still warm cake with some of my ancho berry sorbet and a couple of leaves of chocolate mint – direct from the garden!!!

But you could have any flavour of ice cream, or some salted caramel sauce..or even some normal frosting…

Or what if you added a big dollop of nutella into the dip and then made a meringue over it? OMG. I am so making that….stay right here. I”ll be back…..

Just got to fill these cakes….

Then whip up a meringue….

And bung ’em in the oven for a bit….

And then…..

I am giggling like a little girl and dancing round my kitchen. My, face, my hands, my camera are all smeared with chocolate and meringue and am feeling both a little nauseous and like I have died and gone to heaven….

We only had three of the cakes left and I have just eaten two of them….they were that good!!!!

Scuse the fingers….but you’re lucky there are any photo’s I was so busy ~~shoving these into my gob~~ taste-testing to ensure the highest possible quality standards.

And look at that…the light as air toasty on top meringue, the oozy melty nutella and the cakey base….

What a way to end the month!!!!

I am racing to get this out because I am heading up to the sunshiney Gold Coast very early tomorrow morning for a couple of days – sadly mostly work and not much play – but by the time I can post again it will be February….which is as scary as hell. Where did January go????

Have a great week where ever you are and what ever you get up to.

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Nutella Meringue Cake

Print Recipe

A delicious chocolate cake with a base of three ingredients. Good by itself or topped with your favourite flavours for a super delicious treat!

Author: Taryn Fryer
Yield: 10 1x

Ingredients

Scale

For the Cake

4 large eggs
240g Nutella or chocolate hazelnut spread of your choice
1 tsp vanilla

For the topping

Additional Nutella – 1 tsp per cake
3 eggs
1 1/2cup of sugar

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

For the cake

Preheat the oven to 175C.
Lightly grease your cupcake liners and place in a tray.
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs on top speed until they have tripled in size (approx 6 minutes but this will depend on the power of your mixer).
Place the Nutella in a metal bowl with the vanilla extract and stir over a pan of boiling water until the Nutella softens. (You can also do this in a microwave – use a microwave safe bowl and heat for 1 minute, stirring every 15 seconds).
Turn the mixer down to low and drop spoonfuls of Nutella into the egg mixture. Repeat until all the nutella has been added and the Nutella is completely mixed in.
Scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl with a spatula to ensure there is no Nutella sticking to them and stir a few times by hand.
Pour the Nutella mixture into the prepared cases, filling them about 3/4 full.
Bake for approx 15-20 minutes until a skewer inserted into a cake comes out clean.
The cakes will look lovely and round when they come out of the oven but they will collapse as they cool.
Once cool, add a spoonful of Nutella into each dip.

For the Meringue

Separate the eggs and place the whites in a clean, dry bowl.
Beat until the mixture forms stiff peaks.
Gradually add the sugar and beat until the mixture is thick and glossy.
Spoon or pipe this mixture onto the cakes.
Place under preheated grill for 1-2 minutes or until lightly toasted. Alternatively, use a culinary blow torch to lightly grill the meringue

Notes

This cake is also great topped with a scoop of your favourite icecream, would be awesome with a salted caramel, berries and cream etc.
I used a coconut oil spray to grease the cupcake liners which added the slightest hint of coconut to my cakes.
The meringue quantities above will cover an entire batch of cupcakes.

24
Jan
2014

Watch Me Pull a Magic Cake Out Of My Hat

categories: Cake

Anyone else out there remember Saturday morning cartoons and the gang from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

One of the running gags was that Bullwinkle was forever trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat…

Rocky & Bullwinkle

And failing miserably…

Rocky & Bullwinkle Magic Trick

Maybe Rocky’s disdain was hardwired into me at an early age as I have never been a fan of magic tricks…although, having just said I really liked the movie The Prestige. Then again, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla? What’s not to like?

And that dorky kid from Harry Potter growing up to be handsome as hell?

Now that’s the kind of magic I can get behind.

But in general, my David Copperfield tends to be more of the Dickens rather than the disappearing Statue of Liberty variety.

However, recently a thing called the Magic Cake has been haunting my Pinterest feed and, it had me intrigued. The blurb promised that the Magic Cake would “come out of the oven with three distinct layers…a dense layer on bottom, custard-like layer in the middle, and a fluffy cake layer on top”.

WTF? No…this can’t possibly work.

And yet…

There are photos…

And Lemon Delicious Pudding somehow manages to make itself into awesome pudding and sauce…so there is some sort of precedent.

But three layers?

No way.

Mind you, last time I went into a recipe with a “that trick never works” mindset I was proved semi wrong…(see here for my icecream muffins.)

Still, it was the so-called beloved’s birthday and…I feel terrible for all you people born in the first week of January because…oh boy…I love to cook, I love to entertain…but by the time his birthday rolls around I’m usually kind of over it. Not to mention broke.

Which is another reason why the Magic Cake seemed too good to be true.

i thought it may be one of those things where the magic would only occur if you added the blood of seven virgins harvested on the 29 of February under a full moon.

But quelle surprise, there was just normal stuff…flour, butter, sugar, eggs…not a drop of virgin’s blood to be found. Good thing really, I don’t recall seeing a line of it at the local supermarket. Although I didn’t look too closely at the Heston Blumenthal range. Funny thing is, it doesn’t even seem too outrageous anymore does it? Browsing the shelves and seeing Heinz Tomato Ketchup, McIlhenney’s Tabasco Sauce, Blumenthal’s Virgin Blood…

But does it work?

Best answer I can give based on a sample size of one is… kinda, sorta, maybe.

There was a definite top layer but it was more meringue-y than cakey.

There was definitely a custardy middle. This was delicious by the way, sweet and creamy.

And, you can’t see this in any of the photo’s but there was a thicker layer of…..custardy type stuff on the bottom. The third layer was definitely discernible to the tooth if not the eye.

Hmm…if you notice, even in the original description the bottom layer is left bit vague…

To call this a cake is a stretch there was nothing cake-y about it. The thick later at the bottom was a little rubbery and not altogether pleasant. It tasted ok, it was just an odd texture which I didn’t really care for.

So, on a scale of magic, how does the Magic Cake rate?

Better than Bullwinkle, nowhere near as good as Neville Longbottom.

Hope your week is magic, whatever you get up to!

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08
Apr
2013

Retro Food For Modern Times: Good Cooking for (Almost) Everyone (1981)

categories: 1970's food, Bacon, Books, Cake, Prunes, Sandwiches, Vintage Cookbooks

Hello there, time to take a look into a new book.

Welcome to Mary Meredith’s Good Cooking for Everyone.

Good Cooking For Everyone by Mary Meredith 002

Let me just start with a little quibble. When i think of 1981, I think of this:

And not so much this:

Mary Meredith 001

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at Mary here. This book was first published in 1970 and this was a probably a perfectly acceptable photo back then. Eleven years later, you’d think that maybe the publishers could have forked out for a new publicity photo. Maybe one using that new technology of colour.

The 500 “specially selected recipes” in this book do address a wide audience, if not exactly everyone.

In keeping with the Livvie theme above, there are sandwiches that would suit people watching their weight:

Lettuce and Lemon Sandwiches 001

And recipes for those who are most definitely not.

Mary calls this “California Stuffed Forehock.” I prefer to think of it as “The Reason Elvis (Permanently) Left the Building”. The prunes in the recipe could explain why he was found on the toilet.

Californian Stuffed Forehock 001

Enough for 4 people or one bacon lovin’ popstar!

From The King, to proper royalty, Mary Meredith also provides us with a dainty dish to set before a king. Four and twenty blackbirds anyone?

Cutlet Pie

In fairness to Mary, it’s not actually blackbirds but a mix of lamb kidneys and cutlets. In fairness to modern sensibility, I was staring at this picture wondering how to describe the sheer awfulness of a pie with bones in little bootees sticking out of it. Mark looked at it over my shoulder. “You’re not making that are you?” he asked, sounding a little shaky. I assured him I was not. “Good” he said. “Because it looks fucking horrible.” Description problem solved.

Then, there are recipes for people who want their cakes to look like footwear. (Why? WHY???)

Shoe cake - who doesn't want to eat an old boot on their birthday! — Shoe cake – who doesn’t want to eat an old boot on their birthday!

And recipes for people who want to traumatise their children. Never mind the chocolate-roll cats at the front, what are those weird shiny pink things with faces ? Apart from the stuff of nightmares?

Children's Party Food — Children’s Party Food

I did however manage to find one group of people for who Mary was not catering for. I was searching the index of this book when, in the B’s, I came across:

Baked Lemon Potatoes
Batch of scones

It’s an odd way of listing these items but there were corresponding entries under L, P and S so whilst kooky, they weren’t entirely random. (But again, maybe something that should have been corrected in the 1981 edition.)

I also noticed under M:

Making a jug of cocoa

Using this logic surely every recipe should be listed under M?

Making Lettuce and lemon sandwiches
Making Elvis Has Left The Building, etc.

And just to be really irritating there is no corresponding entry under C listing:

Cocoa, Making a jug of

I’m sorry cocoa drinkers of the world, I guess if you were of a logical mind in 1981 and wanted to find out how to make a jug of your favourite drink (without having to scan through 499 other recipes), you were S.O.L.

I’m spending the weekend with a jug of margaritas… it was going to be cocoa but the recipe was too damn hard to find!

So much for an alcohol free April!

Whatever your tipple, have a great week.

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19
Feb
2013

Singers and Swingers in The Kitchen – Roberta Ashley (1967): Lemon Cake, Orange Jello and Confusion

categories: Cake, Jelly, Lemon

Hello and welcome to the new look Retro Food For Modern Times. I’m still tweaking the design so feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I also know I have gone overboard on this book. I promise this will be my last post from it. ~~For the moment.~~

Finally, if anyone has come to this page by Googling “swingers” and “jello”, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for. It’s about cake. Seriously, stop reading now. You’ll only be disappointed. It wasn’t even a particularly nice cake!

Ok, so now that the perverts are gone, lets talk cake. Although, maybe I should have let them stay. It worked for that “Fifty Shades of Grey” lady. Maybe I should become the E L James of smutty cooking. I could go all breathy and talk about “Beating the eggs and whipping the cream” whilst heaving my bosom about. Or would that just make me Nigella? (Who I absolutely adore. Please don’t sue me. I love you).

Anyway, back to the cake. The recipe comes from Chad Stuart. And before you even start to think “Who the f…” let me interrupt you right there. Chad Stuart is one half of the British folk duo Chad And Jeremy.

Same question huh? I thought so. Click the link if you really want to find out. It doesn’t really matter but just for the hell of it, Chad Stuart is the speccy one in the photo below, not the one who looks a little bit like a young Ryan Gosling if you squint and look at the screen on the correct angle.

So, the cake.

I had never heard of a cake that used Jelly / Jello as an ingredient but was not averse to trying it. There were only a few ingredients and I have an incredible fondness for a lemon syrup cake!

Orange-Lemon Cake Ingredients — Lemon Orange Cake Ingredients

The batter turned a bright orange and went quite bubbly. It tasted slightly chemical and overwhelmingly of oil. The oil was my fault. The recipe states vegetable oil. I should have used a more neutral oil like canola instead of a fruity olive oil. There was still too much of it though, you can see it pooling around the edges of the bowl in the picture below.

I think the slight chemical taste probably came from the cake mix. It could also have been some sort of weird mental effect – my mind thinking that it wasn’t “real” cake so should not taste like one. I’m someone who often likes the raw batter better than the cooked cake so the initial taste was disappointing.

Lemon Orange Cake BatterThe first weird thing happened when I took the cake out of the oven. There was a white….(I want to say bloom but that reminds me a little too much of mould or algae)….froth?…on the surface of the cake, about an inch in from the border of the tin. This was probably caused by all those bubbles in the mixture, although these had not been as prevalent when I’d spooned it into the pan.

The froth didn’t impact the taste but it was unsightly and as the cake wasn’t iced, it meant I had to keep looking at it.

There was also some sort of Jedi mind trick going on with the taste of the cake. It was an orange cake in colour so in my mind, it should have also tasted of orange. It didn’t. It tasted pretty much of nothing. I’m not sure why, maybe the excess of oil neutralised the other flavours.

Adding the syrup, if anything, made it even weirder. Not the least of which because I have no idea what a poultry nail is. I poked my holes with a skewer like a normal person. What I ended up with was an orange cake that tasted of lemon.

This cake caused my brain to melt. Seriously. It messed with my head. The oily batter, the weird froth, the colour not matching the flavour, it was not a pleasant experience or one that I am likely to repeat without significantly changing the recipe.

If I was going to make it again I would use a more neutral oil and cut down on the amount. I would have the colour of the cake match the colour of the syrup – if using orange jelly/o, I would use orange syrup. How awesome would this look with a blood orange syrup?

I’m off to hunt for a new book for next time. Enjoy your week!
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Tag: Cake

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Nutella Meringue Cake

Ingredients

For the Cake

For the topping

Instructions

For the cake

For the Meringue

Notes