Blast from the past - July 2012

Five years ago I was nearly finished the Book Arts MA and making work for the degree show in September. A lot of it was about cookbooks, based on those of my mother and grandmother, brought from Germany in the first case, and many needing to be replaced after a house fire in 1973. So there's a lot "wrapped up" in those books (and wrapping was something else I did for that course.)

Somehow all this culminated in a favourite recipe.

Easy-peasy brownies

My contribution to the pot-luck lunch was a panful of brownies. Not for me the complications of carefully melting the chocolate and creaming the butter - it's all done in a saucepan, and I use cocoa rather than chocolate. The recipe comes from a cookbook (of my favourite recipes) I compiled a good few years ago, as the project for a course at library school (actually, the project was the index to the book - but first I had to compile the book in order to index it; and while I was at it, why not print off 150 copies, sell enough to pay for the paper, and then have the rest to use as xmas presents? - after all, there was a gestetner machine living in my pantry, and all I had to do was retype all the recipes onto stencils, and run them off, collate the book, cover and bind.... ah, the energy of youth! Did I mention the preschool child, the absent husband, and the part-time jobs, one of which was the reason for the gestetner machine living in the pantry?).

The brownie recipe was written for a 9" square pan - and my favourite pan is 10" square, hence the annotations. I'll rewrite it - with metric measures - at the end of the post.

One after another, the eggs turned out to have double yolks - why is this? is it the time of year? They were large eggs, so I used three; when they are medium-sized, I use four, but have made this recipe with even fewer and it's worked ok -

double, double, toil and trouble

The pan went along to the pot-luck lunch, and even though they'd baked a little too much, the contents soon disappeared -

ideally, brownies are less baked (more squidgy) than this

So, the recipe. Numbers before the / are for the smaller pan; those after it, for the larger pan. Do not confuse the two! Also, I now use less sugar than in the original recipe. (btw, this site is useful for converting between types of measurement)

Easy-peasy brownies

Heat oven to 350F, 180C (160 for fan oven), gas 4. Butter a 9"(22cm)/10" (25cm)pan.

In a saucepan, melt 200 grams/300g (1/2 cup / 3/4 c) butter (or margarine). Take the pan off the heat.

Add 50 g/75 g (7 Tbsp/10 T) cocoa
        220 g/330 g (1 cup / 1 1/2 c) sugar
then add 3 eggs / 4 eggs
and then add 1/4 tsp salt [can be left out]
         100 g / 150 g (3/4 c / 1 1/8 c) plain flour
         1 tsp/ 1 1/2 tsp vanilla [this enhances the chocolate flavour!]
once these are mixed, add 75g / 100g (3/4c / 1 1/8 c) walnut pieces

Spread in pan, pop into (preheated) oven, set timer for 30 mins. Check the brownies - if they are almost firm to touch in the middle, they are ready. If not, set timer for 5 mins and check again. 
Once they are almost firm to touch, take out of oven and cool in pan 15 mins, then cut into squares. Or oblongs. Or diamonds?
Your brownies are ready to eat. In UK they often get cream poured over them; in North America they sometimes get chocolate frosting. 

cookbook cover, from a drawing by Thomas, aged 4 1/2 

a bit of the index, with the colophon

Tis the season...

...to be baking! My efforts this year include, left to right in the photo, Vanillehörnchen, Husarenkrapfen, Haselnussringen, and Schokoladenschäumchen, recipes from a German cookbook first published in 1911 that belonged to my mother. I don't think she used it much - her favourite was Dr.Oetker. But it does have over 100 cookie/biscuit/Plätzchen/Kekse recipes, and another section on cakes - rich pickings!

The recipe for Vanillehörnchen is here. Shortbread with ground almonds, and not too sweet, they are our default xmas cookies.

Husarenkrapfen - hussar's doughnuts - are this year's discovery - they melt in the mouth, and the speck of jam gives them zing.

Haselnussringen should, or could, be cut with a ring cutter, but I had to make do with a round cutter with an interesting edge. If you can get hold of coarse sugar to sprinkle on top, all the better.

Schokoladenschäumchen - chocolate meringues - are "under development" at my place. They need to be small so that they dry out and are crispy - what I thought were small shapes turned out to expand rather in the baking; the soft centres were very chewy and the outsides extremely crunchy.

It's amazing how many different results can be had with various combinations of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and additions of nuts, chocolate, etc. My project is to bake more of these "lost" recipes ... lost to me, without my mother around to bake them, but very much alive on www.chefkoch.de - 275,000 recipes (not all for cookies, of course; check out the tempting photos).

Husarenkrapfen (hussar's doughnuts)

150g butter

65g sugar, including a tsp vanilla sugar

2 egg yolks, plus an extra one* for brushing (optional)

160g flour

about 2Tbsp (raspberry) jam

Cream the butter, beat in the sugar and egg yolks, then add flour. Make little balls (slightly smaller than a walnut) with the dough and dent the tops with your finger or a thimble. Let stand in a cool place or the fridge for 1-2 hours.

Brush with the extra egg yolk*, put a tiny bit of jam in the indentation, and bake in a moderate oven (350F, 180C, gas 4) for 30 minutes. Makes about 30.

*Alternatively, dust with icing sugar once the biscuits have cooled.

Haselnussringchen (hazelnut rings)

250g butter

250g sugar

2 eggs plus one yolk

500g flour

90g ground hazelnuts

Cream the butter, add other ingredients one at a time. Let the dough rest for an hour, then roll out 1/3cm (1/8") thick and cut, preferably with ring shaped cutter. Spread with a beaten egg yolk and sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts and Hagelzucker (coarse granulated sugar). Bake at moderate heat (350F, 180C, gas 4) for about 30 minutes, till golden. Makes about 60.

Schokoladenschmäumchen (little chocolate meringues)

2 medium egg whites (60g)

10g vanilla sugar

340g icing sugar (270g plus 70g)

80g dark chocolate

30 g cocoa

Grate the chocolate on a medium grater and set aside. Beat the egg whites till stiff, then beat in the 10g vanilla sugar and sift in the 270g icing sugar. Mix in the grated chocolate and sift in the cocoa.

Put the 70g icing sugar on a board (or the counter) and onto it the mixture; flatten the mixture to 3/4 cm thick, then cut into small (2 – 3 cm) shapes. Lay the shapes onto a buttered baking tray, leaving 2cm between them and let stand for 1-2 hours to dry. 

Bake in a low oven (275F, 140C, gas 1) for 1-1½ hours; it’s more drying than actual baking. Wait 5 mins before removing them from the baking tray.

Makes about 50, depending on the size of your shapes.

Tala icing set

Having worked out this bit of the instructions in the recipe for "Russische Waffeln" -

und spritze auf einen Teigstreifen kleine Quadrate von 1 cm. Alsdann zeichnet man an diesem Streifen durch leichtes Eindruecken mit einem nassen Bindfaden 2-3 cm breite Waffeln ab

I needed to find my piping bag. It's part of a Tala Icing Set, bought for $1.00 at a garage or yard sale in Halifax, NS, round about 1979. It's rarely used but reminds me strongly of my mother, who always used a cloth bag and perhaps never owned a "syringe". She used the star nozzle a lot to add pipings of whipped cream onto Obsttorten and Butterkremtorten, and oh how we loved it! She surely enjoyed doing that decoration, and certainly the cream added to the deliciousness of her legendary cakes.

And there, in a top cupboard, was the set, "Made in England", with its two sets of instructions, English and French - sold in Canada.

Goodness, it's a No.1705 and it'll set you back £12 or more these days! Or nearer £30 if you buy it new.

Tala has been going since 1899, when it was established as Taylor Law & Co. It became known as Tala in the 1920s. In the 1970s it was acquired by a French company and the brand became much less visible, but in the 2000s ownership passed to two British entrepreneurs and products returned to being made in the UK and bought as part of the resurgence of home cooking.

Apple glut continues

It would be a shame to waste those apples ... this compilation of recipes may help. One can only make so much jelly, applesauce, apple butter, apple chutney - not only does the supply of saved jam jars run out, but there's still the jelly, applesauce, etc from previous years to eat up ...

Gathering together some recipe ideas, I quickly tired of the internet and started looking at the neglected cookbooks on my own bookshelves, many of which date back to the 1970s.

These two apple cakes are from the BBC Woman's Hour website; one has an interesting way with fractions -

'Cakes: Regional and Traditional' by Julie Duff, Published by Grub Street, ISBN 1904943195.

	Potato and Apple Cake Recipe

I do admit that I find potato an unlikely addition for cakes, but on the other hand potato flour is often used in Europe so why should it be any different here? Certainly, once I began looking into the use of potato in cakes I realised that whilst not common, it was an ingredient that was used and after all it is not that much different to adding carrots, which are now so acceptable. This Potato Apple Cake is excellent and well worth experimenting to quell such prejudices. 225g / 8oz self raising flour 115g / 4oz cooked and mashed potato ½ teaspoon mixed spice 2 large cooking apples 150g / 5oz butter 2 eggs, lightly beaten 115g / 4oz soft brown sugar Little milk if necessary Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas Mark 4. Sift the flour and spice into a bowl and rub in the butter until it forms the texture of fine bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar and the potatoes. Peel and core the apples and dice them into small pieces, stir into the flour mixture, finally adding the eggs and mixing to a soft dough. Add a little milk if necessary. Spoon into a greased and lined 900g / 2lb loaf tin and bake in the centre of the oven for approximately 1 ¼ hours or until well risen and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out cleanly. Remove from the oven and turn out gently onto a wire rack  Apple Cake made with Oil Ingredients Of all the apple cakes, this is my favourite. It is a moist cake, particularly good at the end of a meal with a dollop of cream. It is also one of the few cakes made with oil instead of butter. Use a mild Ligurian extra-virgin olive oil if you can, but ordinary olive oil will do just as well. Serves 8 to 10 3 quarters cup golden raisins 2 thirds cup olive oil 1 cup golden sugar 2 extra-large free-range eggs 2 + 1 third cups Italian 00 flour 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 + half tsp baking soda Half tsp cream of tartar Half tsp salt 1 pound dessert apples, peeled and diced small grated peel of 1 lemon, preferably organic or unwaxed Method Soak the golden raisins in warm water for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 350F. Pour the olive oil into a bowl, add the sugar and beat until the sugar and oil become homogenized. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until the mixture has increased in volume and looks like thin mayonnaise. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Add the dry ingredients gradually to the oil and sugar mixture, folding them in with a metal spoon. Mix thoroughly and then add the diced apples and lemon peel. Drain and dry the golden raisins and add to the batter; mix very thoroughly. The batter will be very stiff at this stage. Butter and flour an 8-inch springform cake pan. Spoon the batter into the pan and bake for at least 1 hour until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out dry. Remove the cake from the pan and cool on a wire rack. Tagliatelle al Limone e Erbe Odorose is one of the recipes in Anna del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy (Pavilion Books, ISBN: 1862051666, 29.95.

The one I wanted, immediately after hearing about it on the programme, was said to be on the website but wasn't there yet when I looked... Apparently it uses a lot of apples, from which the cake gets its moisture, not needing milk - and oil is used instead of butter.

There are of course a million recipes for apple cake, variants on a few basic recipes, with or without cinnamon, some with raisins, others spiked with booze, using sliced, chopped, or grated apple - or even applesauce. A while back we had some starter for Herman the German Apple Cake, which is delicious, but throwing out half the starter rather bothers me, and after a while you've had absolutely enough of the cake, and the freezer still has several, so you give up on the whole project.

This is a good apple year, except our tree keeps dropping the fruit, and most apples have mothy bits that need cutting out (treat for codling moth next year).

As far as apple desserts go, we are getting tired of apple crumble. Here's a simple but delicious, in fact amazing, apple dessert -

Pan fried apple slices

Version 1: Mix 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon with 1/2 cup (110g) sugar. Core, peel, and thinly slice 2 apples. Toss the apples in the sugar mixture while 2 Tbsp butter is melting in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat till the apples are tender, about 10 mins.

Version 2: Quarter, peel and core one apple per person, and slice thinly. Melt lots of butter (almost tablespoon per apple) in a heavy frying pan and add the apples. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, till the apples are almost done. Then add sugar - a tablespoon or two per apple, according to how sweet you like it - and cook till apples are done. The sugar will melt into the butter and make a lovely sauce. Serve warm with whipped cream or pouring cream.

Another idea is "Crepes Alsace" (The Brunch Cookbook (1972), p154) - which involves making crepes, sauteeing apples with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then adding vanilla, brandy, orange juice, and orange zest. When cool, fill the crepes, which are placed in a rectangular dish or pan, drizzled with butter, baked in a 180C oven for 5 mins, and served with whipped cream.

Cakes and desserts are not the only use for apples - you can't beat applesauce (or stewed apples) with potato pancakes, of course, but a trawl through the indexes of my cookbooks brings a few other savoury suggestions to light. 

From the 1953 edition of THE classic American cookbook you can get recipes for an apple and onion dish, apple and sauerkraut salad, apple-onion-and-raisin dressing, apples filled with sausage meat, sauteed apples and bacon, and apples stuffed with sauerkraut. 

Chez Panisse combines apples with cabbage, cooked or raw, and other exciting salads.

My standby in the late 70s, More-with-Less has only sweet uses of apples (but the argentine spinach pie looks promising ... another time ...)

 Two recipes for the liver-apple combination - the other uses chicken livers.

 Sweet things from Germany, but among them are rice with apples and Himmel und Erde - potatoes cooked with apples, mashed, served with bacon and onions.

Green apple salad, from one of the 101 Recipes series, is based on green mango salad.

Even without a juicer, you can make a healthy beetroot-carrot-apple-ginger juice -

Or, blend 11 large green apples (2.2kg), cored and chopped, with a large raw beetroot (200g), peeled and chopped, and a 5cm piece of ginger, chopped - then push through a sieve. Makes about a litre of juice.

If you don't have rocket to hand, you can use baby spinach -

 Finally, an unusual soup - apple and cherry - from Iran -

and cauliflower and apple soup, recipe here. And red cabbage and apple soup, recipe here or here.

Book du jour - not a cookbook

Today we take "the work" to the exhibition space, and the tutors check that it all fits together into a harmonious exhibition - does anyone's space have to be moved because their work jars with that of their neighbour, that sort of thing. I'm apprehensive because there is work that I find very jarring. However, "ours not to reason why" ... that sort of thing ...

I have many small things left to do, but the main work is ready. The long scroll is long enough; it just needs the dark, unstitched bits adding at the top (time estimate - half an hour).

The Blue Distance is ready - it needs a little box making for the cute little LED light that will illuminate one of the four books, shining through from behind. I haven't tried this out; fingers crossed that it will work! Time estimate: half an hour.

A plinth for the memory balls is ready, and the balls are wrapped in a box, ready to go. This part of my display has a title: Memory's Minefield - and some of the individual pieces have names. There's meant to be a book about them all, giving a pic of "inside" as well as of the finished item, and their name, and perhaps a bit of text (a quote) about each -- but this is all still in my head and in the camera. (Estimated time? 4-6 hours)

The real stinker is the bookshelf of "bits" - no title yet, nor are all the books finished. Perhaps more will appear after the assessment, if time permits for finishing some of the abandoned ones. Here's one of them, almost ready -

 The inside won't be shown -

The covers will be glued together, so that the book is "about" the words leaving it; indeed, it's about the inaccessibility of the contents. The words are the verbs that have been cut out of the recipes' instructions. They will be coated with wax, for protection and also for meaning. The (embroidered) title, Kochfahigkeitsverlust, might be a real word or it might not - it's put together as well as I can from my limited German vocabulary because (a) the book is in German and (b) there's no comparable English word - cooking-ability-losing is what it means.

I'm writing this post early in the morning to help get myself going on the things that need doing in the next 2.5 hours. To break through this fast-approaching-deadline paralysis.

Book du jour - "Baking"

A chunky, square book found in a charity shop one Monday morning on the way to the dentist, Baking cried out to be altered. Which is not to say I haven't used some of the recipes - the red onion tarte tatin was delicious - a similar recipe is here  (you need a frying pan that can go into the oven, but instead of making your own pastry you can use bought puff pastry).

There seemed to be lots of verbs in the instructions, so I started cutting out all of them, which made some nice holey pages but after the first thrill wore off, seemed utterly pointless. I saved the cut words, and kept them separate in little bags, perhaps with a view to joining them up later -

First, though, some went back into the holes left in the pages. The selection of verbs used in cooking directions doesn't make for poetry, or even absurdity -

so I started being more selective about what part of the photograph to desecrate (which has no relation to the subsequent filleted recipe) -

As my scalpel hand got tired, the selectivity got ever greater -

The project isn't finished and probably won't even be part of the assessment material - it feels too silly and unfocused, even though it arose from the "forgetting how to cook" part of my "loss of memory" theme. It's degenerated into something trite.

The recipes are still usable, even without the verbs. After all, "back in the day" a recipe consisted of just the list of ingredients, as every cook knew how to put them together. And not so long ago, a recipe in a cookbook wouldn't necessarily have the ingredients listed in the order they were to be used.

Book du jour - Cooking from Memory

After the photoshoot, making the book -- taking ever more words out of the recipe, as the pages go on.

I've kept the cut-out words but don't think they're needed. One idea, though, is to attach cut-out words to the photo beneath, so that at first glance the recipe looks complete, and only when you turn the page do the holes appear. In this case the words to cut would be those that are remembered, not those that are forgotten.

A page of filletage -

 and my favourite photo -

Now, sewing and a cover.

Photo shoot

The idea of a memory-loss cookbook is with me still. I've tried various things, and the latest involves finding a recipe to make and photographing the results. I've chosen Cream Scones from my old Fanny Farmer (Boston Cooking School) cookbook: "Wedge-shaped with lightly browned sides and tops, cream scones and English tea are traditional partners. Serve with a plump mound of butter and some marmalade or jam."

A rummage through the cupboards found dishes I'd forgotten about, and a further rummage found tablecloths and napkins.

The making of the scones was the quickest bit! They were scarcely cool when I started to set up "tea for two" -

After the photography, we tucked in - delicious! Now dishes and cloths need to be put away, and the book made....

Cream Scones - makes 12 wedges


2 cups (280g) flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup (100 ml) cream


Preheat the oven to 425F (220C). Lightly butter a cookie sheet.
Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Work in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal.  Add the eggs and cream and stir until blended.
Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead for about a minute.
Pat or roll the dough about 3/4 inch (1.5cm) thick and cut into wedges.
Place on the cookie sheet and bake for about 15 minutes.

(My dough was still very floppy even after adding flour during the kneading, so I put the circle of dough on the baking tray and scored it before baking, then cut the wedges when the scones had cooled a bit.)

Book(s) du jour - cookbook progress

It's true, doing is better than thinking. Having made the two maquettes as planned yesterday, I feel I have a better idea of where this is going, and what to do next. Tony and Thomas, my resident advisers, gave thoughtful and useful feedback - for which I am always grateful, even if it's hard to take in sometimes!

first ...

Let's start with the book I made before getting so confused and frustrated - "Kochfahigkeitsverlust". The title is a word I made up (that's meant to be an umlaut on the A) and with any luck it really does mean "loss of being able to cook". It's embroidered on linen, which is stretched over card for the front and back covers.  

 The pictures (from a 1970 german cookbook) are glued inside the covers -

 and the one page of recipes is stitched in. The ends of the stitching thread dangle outside the book, and the words cut from the pages are glued to those and other threads. Perhaps they will be covered in wax...

 Turn the page and you're at the end of the book -

This is a sample and apart from the embroidery on the cover, perhaps, isn't very interesting - in fact, not very comprehensible! But ... you get an idea and you have to DO it before it lets go of you ...

... and ...

On to the next, the german/english maquette, printed on the wrong paper with a malfunctioning printer. It consists of five sheets of pictures and four pages with recipes -

The idea is to glue the pic onto the cover, as in the first book. Or maybe, to have a separate endpaper -

 The recipes can be lifted up to show the missing words, some of them anyway, printed onto the photos -

 On the final recipe page I started cutting the verbs, but haven't taken them out yet -

To carry this idea forward, I'll use only english-language recipes - I'm emotionally attached to using german, to having that sense of losing language as well as the competence of cooking or baking, but there's too much going on all at once - the main point is that loss of competence, not the confusion of the languages.

That decision leaves the way clear for using the filleted recipes to show the progressive loss of ability to cook - in the first page only a few words will be missing, and as you progress through the book you'll see more and more falling out. Perhaps the words will fall onto the picture behind. Perhaps the same recipe, and the same picture, will be used each time. Probably this book needs a different format. I'm eager to try this out...

... finally

I also made a small english-only sample, printing the photos onto heavy photo paper. I forgot to print the back of the recipe page in the solid colour of the paper, but never mind, this is just a try-out.

The format of the recipes means that all the action happens in the centre of the pages. I took the verbs and glued them on the back of the page, where the ingredients are listed in the recipe. This makes no logical sense (hmm, that's perhaps the point?);  I liked the look of it and carried on -

 The orderliness of the list belies the confusion, the nonsense, when you read it: "blend, cream, add, mix and sieve, add, add, grease, fill in, smoothing, spread over this, place, bake, dust the cake". The verbs are in what I remember as "imperative mood" - so it feels like you're being given orders that make no sense - which is appropriate for "loss of language, loss of ability".

The filleted centrefold -

 Same thing happens on the back of the page for the other recipe -

The recipe is for Prinzregententorte, which my mother made for special occasions, including my wedding. Although she loved to pipe whipped cream onto other cakes, she left this cake with the plain chocolate icing. It consists of seven layers, baked separately - a labour of love. Cooling layers would completely fill the kitchen counter, and then were assembled with thin layers of butter cream filling. 

Where to with this pamphlet? Perhaps there could be a series of recipes overlaying the picture of the result, with the "imperatives" - the sequence of actions - presented in a more (what? compelling? readable? attention-grabbing?) way. 

Simplify ... simplify ... !