Butterscotch Cake

Another weekend of football, so another dessert is needed. I kept passing up this recipe because it seemed somewhat complex for a Mary recipe. Most of her recipes call for the standard ingredients in two bowls. I am wondering if this recipe was actually one of her mothers due to the age of the recipe card and the printing which is similar to Mary's with a little more elegance.

Butterscotch Cake
(written on yellowed-with-age recipe card)

1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 1/4 cup hot milk
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3 eggs, well beaten
3 cup sifted cake flour
3 tsp baking powder

Combine 1 cup brown sugar, butter and 1/4 cup milk in a pan and cook, stirring constantly, until a small amount forms a hard ball in cold water (this took about 10 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in 1 1/4 cup hot milk. Cool. Combine shortening, salt, and vanilla.  Add 3/4 cup brown sugar gradually and cream until light and fluffy. Beat eggs until light and beat into caramel mixture, gradually. Sift flour and baking powder 3 times and add gradually to cream mixture, alternating with butterscotch mixture beating until smooth after each addition. Pour batter into 9X13 pan and bake @ 350 for @ 30 minutes.

This cake, despite the 17 pounds of sugar was not overly sweet. I decided to make a quick icing for the top using:

4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
Melt the butter, brown sugar, and milk in saucepan stirring constantly until it comes to a boil. Remove from heat and add vanilla and powdered sugar. Cool slightly and then drizzle over cake.

Since it is Saturday, I will be partaking in one of the $3 bottles of wine from Trader Joe's...not only is that store amazing, but they also sell pretty decent $3 wines. Life doesn't get much better! My words of advice, do not drink until after baking this recipe! If you decide to do both simultaneously, you will end up with a burnt clump of caramel. This is one of those recipes that requires concentration and attention! :)  

Happy Birthday Mary!

     Today marks what would have been Mary's 98th birthday! I have been thinking for awhile of a way to celebrate this day that would be fitting for her.
     What I remember most about Mary was not just her love for her family and baking, but the act of combining those two by teaching the younger generations how to bake and spending time with them in the kitchen. I did just that to commemorate her special day.
     My cousin Alison and I baked Mary's Sugar Cookie Recipe with her son's Henry and Gus. Mary passed away shortly after Henry was born. He often watches "The Mary movie" that my cousins and I made using all of her slides after her passing, but he never had the privilege of really knowing her. However, I feel by baking her recipe and using her cookie cutters, a bit of Mary was celebrated today.

(Sorry for the poor quality images, I had to use my cell phone to capture the moment)

     Out of all her recipes, the sugar cookie recipe is the one that she made with us the most. Every school holiday party was a chance to bake cookie cutter shaped treats in her kitchen. I whipped up her recipe last night, but between the car ride to the house today and being mushed between the hands of a 5 year old, they weren't quite roll-able. We still managed to eek out a cow shaped cookie and some circles and they were delicious!


Sugar Cookies
(written in green ink on plain recipe card)

3/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
1/2 tsp lemon
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

     Preheat oven to 400. Cream shortening, sugar, egg, lemon, and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Chill for 1 hour. Roll dough 1/8inch thick. Cut on floured board. Cook on ungreased baking sheet for 6-8 minutes. Makes 4 dozen Mary sized cookies so approximately 2-3 dozen in reality!

Happy Birthday Mary!

Say Cheese!

Tomorrow marks the yearly school ritual of school picture day (ugh). I have never been a fan of this day since I was in school, mainly because most of my school pictures needed to be burned. In my early days, school picture day was often forgotten, so I always posed with casual attire...

and the traditional blue background. What I would have done to be able to have the laser background with a chin pose...

  (I would have looked way cooler)

In later school pictures, all which have been stashed away or burned, I adorned flower hats, braces, acne, and frizzy hair. It wasn't until last years school picture, as a teacher, that I finally had a keeper. I gave one to my parents to make up for the years of disappointing school photos. I think that the lighting of the laser background would have done wonders.

Mary always had our photos plastered all over the house in plastic frames. When you handed her a new photo, she would place it on top of the previous photo in the frame. Upon her passing, I got about 4 plastic frames which actually contained about 16 memorable photos all stacked on top of each other.

I will make sure to update you about how picture day goes.

Now to baking. Another football game today so another dessert needed. Today I picked a cake recipe. Mary wasn't big on cakes, but she had quite a few in the box of recipes.

Iced Chocolate Chip Cake
(recipe cut out of newspaper and taped onto plain recipe card)

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup softened shortening
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
Grease and flour loaf cake pan. Cream sugar and shortening; mix well with electric mixer. Add eggs; mix well.
Combine milk, vanilla. Combine dry ingredients; add alternately with milk mixture to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture, mixing well after each addition. Fold in chocolate chips. Bake @ 350 for about 1 hour.

Butter cream icing:
Cream well together:
1/2 stick softened butter
3/4 box confectioners' sugar
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt.
Blend to spreading consistency

Cakes makes 16 slices.

Survival of the fittest...or drunkest?

     Happy hump day! Half way there folks. This week marks the first full week of school and it has already been quite eventful. You would have sworn there was a full moon by the way that our days have been unfolding. The students that I work with have various communication needs so the way they express their sadness, pain, or dissatisfaction ranges from screaming to hitting, biting, and kicking. This makes the first few days back at school VERY interesting. In the end, all you can do is make it through the day, attempt to figure out what they are trying to tell you, praise the good behavior and ignore the bad....and drink (after school of course)!

     There is no secret in the fact that teachers, support staff, or anyone else that works with children like their liquor. Apparently, my love affair with the bottle is no secret. Today, both the school nurse and the administrative assistant informed me that they were buying my staff and I the biggest bottles of wine they could find (Love you Carol & Besty). Hey, you know what? Everyone has a different way of relaxing. I wish mine was exercising or something that dwindled the size of my ass, but alas it is adult beverages and baking! Just like Mary!

So tonight consisted of my one of my two de-stressers: Drinking and Baking (a warning: do not do simultaenously or you will have similar results as I did).

Oatmeal Scotchies

(cut out recipe taped on recipe card with exotic fruit and vegetable motif)

1 cup margarine or butter softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 cups oats (quick or old fashioned)

1 packages (2 cups) Butterscotch Morsels

Heat oven to 375. Beat margarine, sugars, eggs and vanilla until creamy. Gradually add combined flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; mix well. Stir in remaining ingredients. Drop by level measuring tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 7-8 minutes for a chewy cookie, 9-10 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Makes 4 dozen.

These cookies are delicious, however, I attempted to multitask (drink, bake, and do work for school) and didn't hear the timer go off resulting in this:

Better luck with the next couple of batches...once I set aside the school work

The cookies were hot out of the oven just in time for my husband to walk in the door and ask if they were for his work party tomorrow?! He needs to bring a dessert. All I can do is attempt to figure out what he is trying to tell me, praise the good behavior and ignore the bad :)

Blue 42 Chocolate Cream Pie HUT

Fall has to be one of my favorite time of year (well, second after summer). With the season comes various autumnal activities, the taste of pumpkin and apple, and beautiful colors. Mary was born in the fall. Both of my best friends were married in the fall...

 ...so it is a very joyous time. The sounds of fall are....well the sounds of fall in my house are half time shows, crowds roaring, and coaches yelling. Yes, fall marks the beginning of football season.  I face this time of year with mixed emotions. Matt is a HUGE football fan. We have every NFL station/package/whatever they make so there is a football game on practically every night! However, this is a small price to pay for Sundays (ahhhhh...skies open...heaven shines down). From 12pm-6pm or 3pm-10pm (depending on game time) every Sunday, I get the house to myself! During this time, I can watch the game in peace while Matt gathers with his football buddies to drink beer, eat food that will clog his arteries, and consume any baked goods that I send with him...it is really a win win situation.

For tomorrows game, I am making a pie. Its somewhat fancy for football, but I was told that the first Pats game is where they "do it up".

Chocolate Cream Pie
(written on a recipe card with an Italian motif)

Baked Pastry Shell
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
1 1/4cups sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs, separated
2 2/3cup milk
1 tbsp butter
1tsp vanilla

Melt chocolate. Stir in 1 cup sugar and flour. Add milk gradually, stir, and cook until thick (@ 5 minutes). Pour a little of the mix into eggs while beating ( to avoid cooking the yolks). Stir yolks back into mixture and cook for 2 minutes. Add salt, butter, and vanilla. Remove from heat and chill.
Pour chilled mixture into pie shell. Top with meringue made from egg whites and 1/4 cup sugar. Bake @ 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture because the pie went out the door before I could get out my camera :(

The Adventures of Peanut Butter Cookies

I'm back. School started for the students on Wednesday and since then there hasn't been time to cook so I am going to make up for it this weekend!

When I was in school, there were a few grades that I wasn't as "focused" as I should have been. Hiding report cards, saying I did my homework when I really didn't, and reading the cliff notes instead of doing the assigned readings were some of the strategies in my slacker repertoire. I think this is why when I graduated from grade school with a 4.0, my parents were in utter shock and disbelief. One of the most infamous stories from my wayward school days involved Mary, Tom Sawyer, and myself.

Reading. I dreaded it for a long time, especially the classics like Tom Sawyer. I spent many weekends at Mary's, so often times I would have to do a few homework assignments in her presence. Around the age of 10 or so, I was assigned to read Tom Sawyer...ugh.  To try and get me through it, Mary read it to me out loud on the sun porch while I reclined on the sofa listening (tough life). Not one chapter in and BUSTED! My cousins, who were A students their entire lives, walked right into Mary's house in the middle of our reading session. To this day, I cannot recommend a book title or discuss a recent read without being asked if someone read it aloud to me or reminded of the Tom Sawyer incident.

The lesson of the day: Kids, just do your reading yourself. Not only will you learn a lot, it will be one less piece of evidence that your family can use against you!

Now for baking. Last weeks recipes were not able to be distributed to all of the family members (sorry Alison), so I am going to make sure that today's cookies find their way to their house. Mary made two different kinds of peanut butter cookies with two different names: "Peanut Butter Cookies" and "Dubes" (to be made at a different time).  Today, I am going to whip up:


Peanut Butter Cookies
(written on a recipe card with an embellishment of an antique stove)

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cups sifted flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
Preheat oven to 350. Cream shortening and sugar. Add peanut butter and beaten egg. Sift flour with salt and soda. Add dry mixture to wet mixture. Makes a very stiff dough. Form into 2 rolls, roll in waxed paper and refrigerated. Cut into slices and place on a well greased cookie sheet. With the prongs of a fork, flatten out out pressing across both ways (This sentence makes no sense, but I remember her making a cross like design on the cookie with the fork). Bake for 12-15 minutes.

I don't remember Mary chilling the cookies to often when I made these with her. She would scoop a teaspoon of cookie dough onto a baking sheet and flatten it with the fork prongs. If you chose to make them this way, you only need to bake them for 10 minutes.

Is it Chowder or Chowdah?

We had a very lovely meal last night. Coni whipped up a Martha Stewart Menu of Deep Dish Pizza and Tiramisu. We love that bitch...Martha, not Coni.

There used to be a time where we would take pictures of each other drinking and goofing off. Now we just take pictures of each others' dogs. Brewer is one of our photography subjects.

Today marks the last day of vacation *sigh*. Two weeks goes by too quickly. It is 3pm and I still haven't gotten out of my pajamas. Feeling somewhat unproductive, I decided to cook up one of Mary's soup recipes. Mary was a huge fan of chowders, especially seafood chowders. This recipe is not written in her handwriting, but I am not sure who it was passed down from. The card is very tattered and worn, so it seems that it was used quite a bit.

Baked Fish Chowder/Chowdah
(written on a large recipe card with an embellishment of a goose wearing a straw hat...?)
Serves 8

2 lbs Fish Fillet - white
1 or 2 small onions, finely chopped
4 potatoes - pared and finely cut
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dill
1 garlic clove-chopped or pressed
1 oz Dry Vermouth or White Wine
2 Cups boiling water
2 cups light cream

Preheat oven to 375. Put all of the ingredients, except the cream, in a large oven proof casserole dish. Cover and bake for 1 hour. Remove from oven and stir in cream.

This recipe came out great. Its not light in any nature or it will stick right to your hips. It seems like a good meal for the winter months when you need the extra insulation. :)

Toodaloo to Earl...and summer :(

Well hurricane Earl was a bust. If you went to bed at 10pm and woke up at 7am, you didn't even know anything happened. We got some rain and waves, but that was it. I still used my disaster kit (see previous post) despite the lack of disaster. What else was there to do?

Once Earl took a hike, the weather turned out to be beautiful and is staying that way for the remainder of Labor Day weekend...the unofficial end to summer (small tear). No work for us tomorrow, so we are heading over to our very dear friends' house tonight for dinner. Prior to leaving, I wanted to bake up a little something, so I prepared one of Mary's pie recipes to drop off with my parents and their friends.

Prior to my entrance into the family Mary would make pies quite often for Sunday suppers. This tradition had ended by the time I was born so I never had too many of her pies but I heard they were delicious. When I dropped off the pie, the debate about crust began. I have heard that Mary didn't make crust, but my mother "begs to differ" (her famous rebuttal response). She explained, along with the help of my uncle Ricky who was with her that in the earlier part of her life, Mary made her own crust, but as she got older she began to use the prepared crusts. There. Problem solved.

This recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie is "very good" according to the recipe card.

Lemon Meringue Pie

(written on large recipe card with Italian embellishment)

For Filling: 

On the top of a double boiler, mix together

1 cup sugar

4 tbsp cornstarch

3 tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt.

Slowly add 2 cups of boiling water into mixture. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Slightly beat 3 egg yolks. Add to eggs the grated rind from 1 lemon and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Add slowly to cooked mixture and continue cooking for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add 1 tbsp butter.

For Meringue
Beat together 3 egg whites and 1/4 tsp salt using mixer or whisk. Gradually add 1/2 cup sugar. Beat until stiff.
Pour filling into prepared 9" pie crust and cover with meringue. Bake at 325 for 15-20 minutes. Chill before serving to allow filling to set.

Going nuts over Earl

We have a hurricane heading our way tonight, category 2 hurricane Earl. New England is not new to these types of  meteorological events, but the hourly news updates, tips on preparing a "disaster kit" (channel 5 news), and declaration of a state of emergency tends to send everyone into a tizzy.
Here is our disaster kit

Coastal storms and hurricanes tend to do a number in the area where Mary used to live. The houses are situated so close to the beach that there is often flooding and sand ends up in the gardens and lawns.

   (Patriot's Day Nor'easter photo by Kristen Morneau)

My grandmother, who also lives in this neighborhood, believes that anytime the wind is above 20 mph the house is going to blow away.  I was over there for about 5 minutes today and I think she said "Oh God, I hope the house doesn't blow away" about 4 times. This is something that she has worried about since 1948...and the house is still standing. However, the rest of the residents of the community are brave souls and tend to trudge out during the storms in their foul weather gear to see the going-ons.

(Patriot's Day Nor'easter photo by Kristen Morneau)

In honor of hurricane Earl and the state of concern it has caused, I decided to bake Mary's GrapeNUT pudding. This recipe is very simple, delicious, and good for hurricane hunkering down.

Grape-nut pudding
(written on recipe card with old fashioned stove embellishment)

2/3 cup grape-nuts
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups milk
2 eggs
Mix all the ingredients well in a saucepan. Cook on top of stove until thickened. Transfer to a casserole dish and bake for @ 1 hour at 300 degrees.
Makes 4 servings
Note from Mary on recipe card: I double the recipe for family

I took Mary's advice, doubled the recipe, and passed it out to the family so that they would have something to eat tonight while they were riding out the storm ;)

Remember not to peek!

Another hot one on the North Shore today, but I am turning on the oven to attempt one of Mary's main dishes. My aunt suggested that I prepare a main meal so that the world does not think that our family ate unbalanced meals. My grandmother was/is a good cook, so they definitely didn't starve, however Mary, was a much better baker than she was a cook. Actually, she was a pretty bad cook. She has some wonderful recipes for fish, chicken and meat entrees, but she was never able to execute them well. By the time I began staying at her house, we ate two things...American Chop Suey and Tuna Noodle Casserole with peas.                                                                                     

Both of these meals do not have recipe cards because they consisted of approximately 3-4 ingredients. I thought these meals were fantastic, but that was because at home we always had to eat healthy. The only time I got creamed anything was at Mary's house.

In one of my most recent conversations with my aunt and cousin they mentioned Mary's "No Peek Chicken".
Mary made this recipe quite a bit, but never seemed to get it right. She always used instant rice which either formed a giant rock hard mass on the bottom of the pan or became mush. She typically peeked at the chicken periodically as it cooked, defeating the no peek portion of the recipe, and would either under cook it or over cook it depending upon the amount of cocktails consumed during the no peek cooking process.

No Peek Chicken
(written on white recipe card with Italian embellishment)

3/4 cup rice (not instant)
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 can mushroom soup
1 envelope of onion soup
1 can chopped mushrooms
1 can (Yes can) of white wine.

Preheat oven to 350. Spread rice on the bottom of roasting pan. Place chicken on top of rice and add mushroom soup, onion soup mix, mushrooms, and white wine (use mushroom can to measure wine).
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 2 hours ... DO NOT PEEK!

Here is the precooked chicken (along with my precooked cocktail)

 I mixed together the soup, soup mix, mushrooms and wine prior to adding them to the chicken/rice. 

It smelled great while baking and I didn't peek once! When it was finished, some of the rice was stuck to the sides (Just like Mary), so I would have cooked it for less time.

Overall, it was good, but salty. This recipes has enough sodium to make your ankles swell for a week, so don't eat it before a doctor's appointment. Next time I would use low sodium cream of mushroom or possible make my own, but this time I had to make it just like Mary did! It smelled great while baking and I didn't peek once!