November 21: Peanut Butter Cake Supreme

I've been wanting to try this recipe for months, but other recipes kept taking precedence.  It is from The Carter Family Favorites Cookbook by Ceil Dyer (1977).  Who would know more about peanut butter than a peanut farmer who became president?

I bought the cookbook at an estate sale shortly before Former President Carter announced that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer a few months ago.  I was drawn to the book because I have other White House/presidential themed cookbooks.  As a Georgia native, how could I resist?

When President Carter was in office and this book was published, we lived in Conyers, a suburb of Atlanta.  I had attended Montessori schools since the age of 2 (see January 24: Allgood Pineapple Upside-Down Cake) and then attended Honey Creek Elementary in fourth and fifth grade. My parents' rule was that I was only allowed to watch two hours of television per week.

I had a terrible time deciding between Little House on the Prairie at 8pm on Mondays, The Waltons at 8pm on Thursdays and Wonder Woman, starring Lynda Carter, at 8pm on Saturdays.  I had the daunting task of keeping track which show's reruns to watch during holidays and summer break based on which shows I chose to watch during the regular season.  I would often get to watch whatever I wanted on TV at Mama Judy's and Papa's house when I spent the weekends there.  But, Mama Judy thought that Wonder Woman's costume was a little risqué, so I felt like I couldn't watch Lynda save America there.

This was all taking place during the Energy Crisis and President Carter would preempt broadcast shows for crisis updates and press conferences during the eight o'clock, prime-time hour.  It seemed to only happen on Mondays and Thursdays; the specific days that I was looking to get my precious TV allotment.  I would protest and complain to my Mom who would simply tell me that I would be able to watch the rerun, and to be quiet so that she could hear what the president was saying.

"Doesn't Jimmy Carter know that I only get to watch TWO HOURS of TV a week??!!"

I suppose that my mom got tired of listening to my protestations and told me that if I thought President Carter shouldn't broadcast during my prime-time shows, I should write a letter to the White House.  I did.  I cannot remember exactly what I said in the letter, but I received a form-letter response from the White House Correspondence Office a few weeks later.

Fifteen years after that, I applied to work for the US Secret Service and I remembered my complaint letter to the president.  The background investigation process sent Special Agents to talk to neighbors we had when I was three years old, former teachers, and employers.   It wasn't far-fetched to believe that they would also search some sort of White House database of letter-writers, too.  I was certain that sitting across from three senior agents for my hours-long panel interview, I would be asked about my complaint letter.  Worse yet, what if it would come up during the polygraph exam?  I worried about anything and everything.  The entire hiring process took two years and nine months from the time I applied until the job offer came (during which there was a government hiring freeze, most applications are processed in a year).  I was never asked about my TV letter once.  After being hired, I found out that the USSS only cares about letters that contain threats.

Peanut butter paperweight

The Peanut Butter Cake Supreme was actually pretty Ex-treme.  The recipe says to make it in four layers in 8' cake pans, but it turned out too tall for my cake dome!  It called for smooth peanut butter in the cake, along with self-rising flour.  The icing contains crunchy peanut butter and is cooked in a double-boiler.  I bought real peanut butter from Plains, Georgia at a roadside stand during the summer (re-run season).  But it was not sweetened, not salted and a little too crunchy for cake - not enough crunch for the icing.  I used Skippy instead.

The icing has a creamy, smooth consistency and looks alarmingly like some of my caramel icing fiascos - although here, the lumps are peanuts.  The cake is very soft and tender, but the icing is the very best part.  When I make this cake again, I will make it in 9" layers to make it less imposing and easier to store.  It might make fun cupcakes, too.

I have now acquired the Wonder Woman episodes on DVD, and I have some catching-up to do.
So, please excuse me...  Don't make me write a letter!

Next Saturday:  Granna's Nut Cake

May 23: Snow Cake

I love shopping at estate sales.  They are the best sources for inexpensive cookware, books of all types, vintage table linens, vintage hats, and vintage sewing notions.  It is sometimes difficult to see a person's belongings exposed and for-sale once he or she can no longer use them, their home thrown open to the public.  I admit that it makes me sad to see framed family photos or diplomas for sale when I imagine that the owner had always assumed that personal treasures like those would go to their next-of-kin.  But, I am sure that the owner kept all of their books (or hats, or buttons) because they valued them and I would like to think that he or she would be happy that someone else values those items, even if it is not a family member.

Two weeks ago, I made a terrific find at an estate sale!  I purchased a 1929 edition of The White House Cook Book.    Of the cookbooks for sale at the home, it was the only cookbook that looked as if it had gotten any use at all.  Judging from the other cookbooks and the appearance of the house, I believe that this cookbook was a family heirloom, not a cooking companion.  The owner of estate was an avid ballroom dancer with closets full of dance costumes and well-worn, gorgeous dance shoes.  She had flair!  Although her kitchen indicated that she did cook, it obviously wasn't her primary passion.

I bought The White House Cook Book even though it looks a little worse for wear, because I already own the revised and updated edition from 1996 and I had never seen another copy of the original for sale.  On the front and back covers there a rings of damage where an earlier cook had used the book as a trivet.  On the back cover, a yellowed paper doily has found itself permanently fused.  The previous owner, or perhaps the estate broker, attempted to repair the cover-to-spine joint with Scotch tape.

The original version was a 1887 copyright, written by the White House steward to Grover Cleveland.  My revised and updated version is a mere shadow of the original.  I purchased it from the Smithsonian Institution gift shop on an excursion to the museum.  When I lived in Washington, DC, I would spend many of my days off from the Secret Service visiting historical sites and museums.  Accompanying me on most of my adventures was another special agent, my friend, Darcy.  Since we worked at the White House and the book contained excerpts from the original book, we decided that I needed a copy.  As part of updating the book, Bazel and Ross included Hillary Rodham Clinton's cookie recipe and updated versions of the recipes they chose to reprint from the original.  The updated versions of the recipes read like methods of torture; using "liquid Butter Buds" reduced-calorie margarine and egg substitute to try convert an 1887 recipe on each page into a health-consious version printed on the facing page.  Grover Cleveland was, no doubt, turning in his very ample grave when this book came out.

Two versions, side-by-side, on my antique enamel topped table that I bought on a excursion with Darcy

As I very carefully perused the fragile pages of my newest acquisition, I found one page of the cake recipes that, judging from the stains on the paper, got a lot of use.  In the middle of the page is a recipe for Snow Cake with "delicious" in parentheses next to the title.  It caught my eye for both the parenthetical epithet and the fact that it uses arrowroot as the flour thereby making it gluten-free.

The instructions are minimal and antiquated, but I have grown accustomed to recipes of this sort.  It calls for "pounded white sugar" which would be granulated sugar, historically sold in cakes then pounded down to the flowing grains of sugar we recognize.  I decided to use caster sugar in case the pounded sugar turned out finer than our granulated sugar today.

In addition to being old-fashioned, the instructions seemed contrary to baking science.  I creamed the butter and sugar and gradually added the arrowroot as instructed.  Then I beat six egg whites to "a stiff froth."  Then I aded "them to the other ingredients and beat well for twenty minutes."  Two problems:  The other ingredients, when combined, had the consistency of dry oatmeal and I had always been admonished that over beating a dough or batter after adding eggs made the texture tough.  But, I decided to forge ahead as instructed in the book and get a workout by beating the batter by hand (no Kitchen Aid in 1887) for twenty minutes.  It calls for baking in a buttered mold or tin and I chose my larger tube pan.  I only baked it for forty minutes instead of the prescribed "one to one and a half hours."

My better judgement told me that twenty minutes of beating would overwork the eggs and I was right.  The resulting cake rose hardly at all and had a rubbery internal texture and a crispy dry crust.
But the flavor was sublime.  It tasted buttery, without feeling buttery like a pound cake.  It was not very sweet and would go beautifully with coffee or toasted and topped with jam or lemon curd.  So, rather than accept a terrible texture for a cake with flavor potential and gluten-free ingredients, I decided to make a second cake today in an attempt to remedy the problems I found with the original recipe.

I added 3/4 cup of whipping cream (alternately with the arrowroot) to moisten the batter before adding the egg whites.  I gingerly folded the egg whites in until just combined with the arrowroot mixture.  I used my smaller tube pan to give more height to the rising cake.  Although this improved the rise and the texture, the result was still rubbery evidence of overworked egg whites.  I think I will have to put some more work into salvaging this recipe to live up to its "delicious" hype.

A couple of days ago, I went to collect mail from our post office box and found a pleasant surprise.  Darcy had sent me a cookbook as a belated birthday present.  The book was a reprint of Ellen Emlen's handwritten recipe book from the collection of the  Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

As a contemporary of Grover Cleveland, Mrs. Emlen will be happy in her eternal rest knowing that no one printed her book with low-fat, low-cholesterol facsimiles included.  I hope that she will also be happy that I hope to use a recipe from her book in some future posting here.




Next Saturday: Pecan Molasses Bundt Cake with Bourbon Glaze

May 9: Queen of Sheba (Reine de Saba)

In honor of Mothers' Day, I asked my mom to decide which cake I should try this weekend.  She thought for a while and then requested a Queen of Sheba cake.  The Queen of Sheba cake is not one that I had ever made, but it is a cake from Julia Child's original television series.

Champagne, coffee, Julia and the Queen of Sheba.

Mom and Mama Judy used to watch The French Chef with Julia Child together on Sunday nights in back room of their home on Rawlins Street in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta.  When the series started in 1962, it was the first show of its kind.  The show and the Kennedy's French chef at the White House led to tremendous American interest in French cuisine during the 1960's.  Julia Child opened the door for all cooking shows and the networks devoted to them.


Mom bought herself The French Chef Cookbook the year I was born, and she gave me her copy a few years ago.  The recipes from the original series are all included in the book along with the same step-by-step directions that Julia gave on television.  I remember watching re-runs of Julia's shows with my mother in the 1980's.  We bonded over watching Julia rake clutter off the counter, seemingly onto the floor! We loved viewing the exotic ingredients (eels, for example) and hearing Julia provide straightforward tips for the kitchen (peeling skins off an eel with pliers by nailing its head onto a board for leverage).

The best parts of the show were always the moments when Julia licked a spoon, or dunked a finger into a bowlful of batter to take a taste.  She enjoyed her work, and we could certainly identify with the desire to lick the spoon or bowl.  As a child, getting to lick the bowl or beaters was my reward for helping my mom bake a cake, just as it had been for her helping Mama Judy; sifting flour into a delicate mountain on a sheet of waxed paper or cutting wax paper circles to fit into the bottom of the cake pans.

After my second hip replacement surgery in 2013, Mom came to stay with us to help keep the household running during my long recuperation, just as she had with my first hip in 2010.  During the day when the house was quiet, after physical therapy, we watched DVDs of  The French Chef episodes from the original series.  The rich, chocolate Queen of Sheba cake fascinated us but it was quite a while before I was back to baking.

Mom remembers trying to make the cake one time during the late 60's.  She remembers only that it atypical of southern cakes and that her attempt did not turn out well.  It is a very French-style of cake, being only one layer and flavored with rich ingredients like rum and almonds.

Semi-Sweet "Bits"

When she makes this for the 100th episode, Julia instructs her audience to place all of the ingredients for the cake on a tray at the outset of the process, so that you won't forget to add any of the ingredients.

Julia used semi-sweet morsels (she called them "bits") instead of chopping squares of baking chocolate.  The key to this cake is the texture; achieved by baking the cake only until the outside is completely baked, about 25 minutes.  The middle of the cake should still be liquid.  I tested several spots with a toothpick at the 25-minute mark to check for the right amount of doneness.

My cake turned out exactly like Julia's televised version.  In the original series, Julia prepared the Queen of Sheba cake to serve at a "Champagne and Coffee" party.  We celebrated Mothers' Day with Mom and the Queen of Sheba in a more casual way: with coffee and iced tea on the screened porch.

Next Saturday:  Lemon Tunnel-of-Love Tea Cake