Category: Cooking

  • Sunset Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    Sunset Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    It’s really hard to make a recipe when you have no idea what the finished product is meant to look like. I think it’s safe to call my latest vintage cooking experiment a FAIL.

    *record scratch* So how did I get here?

    I started by picking the recipe for March 2: Sunset Pudding. Doesn’t that sound evocative? Here’s the recipe:

    The recipe for Sunset Pudding

    This is actually quite a long recipe for this book! It reads:

    Grate the peel of 1 orange and put it into a saucepan with 1 quart milk and 1/2 cup sugar, bring to boil, add 5 tablespoons cornflour mixed to a smooth paste with a little cold milk. Let it boil until it thickens, then remove from the fire and fold in a beaten egg. Divide into three parts, colour one part chocolate with 2 tablespoons cocoa, 1 part pink with red current jelly, or a little cochineal, and colour the third portion with grated orange peel. Drop into a wetted mould some of the chocolate, then the yellow, then the pink; drop it so that the pudding is well streaked through. Let it stand until it is well set, turn out and serve with cream.

    Okay, so basically it’s a traditional cornstarch pudding in three different colours. I figured I could do that. (Also – remove “from the fire”? How old is this recipe?!)

    Ingredients for Sunset Pudding

    I didn’t have redcurrant jelly, but I figured lingonberry jam must be pretty close? Otherwise I had everything required.

    Boiling milk and orange peel

    Here’s the milk, sugar, and orange peel heating up on the stove.

    Adding cornstarch

    Once it hit boiling, I added in my 5 tablespoons of cornstarch, which I’d thinned by whisking in some milk.

    Adding the egg

    Once it had thickened, I took it off the heat. I used a bit of the hot milk to temper my beaten egg, before pouring the mixture in and whisking.

    Separated into three

    Then I separated the pudding mixture into three parts….

    Chocolate pudding

    …and turned one into chocolate pudding by mixing in a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder.

    Adding jam

    With the second, I added jam and mixed until it turned a pinkish colour.

    Three colours

    And here’s where I started to get stumped. The recipe said, “colour the third portion with grated orange peel.” But I already put the grated orange peel in at the start. Did they mean with more orange peel? I don’t really see how that would affect the colour at this point, and besides, I didn’t have another orange anyway. Plus I tasted it and it was plenty orange-flavoured; it definitely didn’t need to be more orange. And I somehow didn’t have any food colouring in the house either. But it was fairly yellowish anyway, so I decided to just leave it.

    So I prepped my mould, which was just a large round bowl. Having flashbacks to the “Mysterious Pudding,” I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to “turn out” the pudding once it was set, so I decided to line it with clingfilm. I knew that might wrinkle, but I was willing to deal with that. So I wetted the bowl a bit, spread out my clingfilm, and sprinkled in a few more drops of water as well. And then… well… “Drop into a wetted mould some of the chocolate, then the yellow, then the pink; drop it so that the pudding is well streaked through.” What in the world does that mean? When I originally read it I thought of it as LAYERS, but now it occurred to me that it was saying something else. I reached out to my friends Amy and Jody, as well as my sister:

    Chat message - layers or blobs?

    Everyone voted for blobs. Blobs it is!

    Adding the pudding in blobs

    So I started dutifully dropping in blobs of pudding, trying to get a good mix of the three colours.

    I think we can all agree this looks NOTHING like a sunset at this point. But remember the recipe: “so that the pudding is well streaked through.” WTF DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.

    Dragging a knife through

    I decided it meant dragging through a knife to marble the three colours together. SO SUNSET, RIGHT?

    Then I put it in the fridge overnight to set up.

    Guess what? Even after 18 hrs, there was no possibility of turning this thing out of the bowl. It was way way too wobbling in the middle; it would have just splatted everywhere. So I settled on just scooping some out for myself and my guests.

    A bowl of chocolate, berry, and orange pudding

    Folks, this was Not Good. Look, I happen to like basic chocolate pudding. I’m not a snob. But I am not a big fan of the chocolate-and-orange combo, of which this is very strong. The texture was also pretty lumpy, despite me whisking the heck out of it and doing my best not to scramble the egg. (I’ve looked at other cornstarch recipes, and the proportions and method here seem in line with them. I think it’s just hard to avoid with this type of pudding unless you’re prepared to put it through a sieve.) And I still don’t get how chocolate pudding, pink pudding, and yellow pudding are meant to look anything like a SUNSET. If you saw a sunset that looked like this, you’d think you were dying.

    I have searched online to see if there are any photos of this dessert, but there are none that I could find. Instead I found a version of my cookbook that dates back to 1930, and in it – on March 4th, in fact – is the very same recipe for Sunset Pudding, credited to one Mrs. E. S. Darby of the Condobolin Branch. That explains the reference to cooking over a fire, I guess! And I guess only Mrs. Darby knows for sure what it’s meant to look like. Maybe it isn’t meant to resemble a sunset at all, but instead is a nice pudding to eat while you’re LOOKING AT a sunset? 🤔 But if I make it again, I’m gonna leave out the orange peel…

  • Taco Monday

    Taco Monday

    I’m doing pretty well in the sweep so far! 🌮 🏆

  • Weisswurst Frühstück

    A man sits at a table outside. In front of him is a stainless steel lidded pot, a bowl of baked Bavarian pretzels, a jar of mustard, beers, and the plate of his companion.

    There’s still a lot to do in the garden – getting the proper outdoor furniture, painting the downpipes, covering the AC unit, hooking up the water feature, actually planting PLANTS – but we still managed our first outdoor Weisswurst Frühstück in a very long time today. ❤️🍻🥨

  • Pressure Cooker Lamb and Barley Stew with homemade bread

    Pressure Cooker Lamb and Barley Stew with homemade bread

    Not really a summer dish, but very tasty! Rodd’s best loaf of bread yet…

  • Mysterious Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    Mysterious Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    It’s time for another recipe from 1965! Continuing our vintage cooking experiment, this time Rodd chose the recipe from February 14 – Mysterious Pudding.

    Mysterious Pudding recipe

    Very simple recipe! It’s basically a cross between a trifle and a moulded jelly:

    Sandwich cake, jelly crystals, bananas. Line a jelly mould with slices of banana, then half fill with alternate layers of cake (sliced thinly) and banana. Fill the mould with the hot jelly, allow to set. Serve with cream or cold boiled custard. A good way of using up stale cake.

    Here are the very simple ingredients we started with. We used a storebought sponge cake, a box of Aeroplane jelly (an Aussie classic!) in “Port Wine” flavour, and a bunch of ripe bananas.

    A packaged sponge cake, a box of flavoured gelatin, and bananas

    We did not, however, have a jelly mould so we made do with a large glass container. Mr. Snook got to work lining it with banana slices.

    Lining a glass container with banana slices

    He also sliced up the sponge into thinner pieces…

    Slicing sponge cake

    …and added a layer above the banana.

    Adding the sponge layer

    It was at this point that I realised each box of jelly only made about 500ml (2 cups) of gelatin. “I don’t think it’s going to be enough!” We decided to instead do two boxes in separate layers FOR EXTRA MYSTERY.

    Pineapple flavoured gelatin

    After agreeing that pineapple would be the bottom (top) layer, I mixed it up while he completed the banana and cake layers. Then we carefully poured the liquid jelly over the cake and fruit, letting it soak in.

    Adding pineapple jelly to the mould

    Then that went into the fridge to firm up a bit…

    Mysterious Pudding in the fridge

    Once it was starting to firm up, we added the next layer of “Port Wine” jelly. Note: as far as I know, this is not a flavour that Jell-O ever produced, so I had definitely never had it in my life!

    Adding the Port Wine jelly

    Then that went back into the fridge to fully firm up overnight. Hey, that looks pretty mysterious!

    Mysterious Pudding in the mould

    But how to get it out of the dish? We started by dipping the container into a sink full of hot water…

    Unmoulding the Mysterious Pudding

    …and then when that didn’t work, we ran a knife down the sides. Then we flipped it over and…

    SHHHHHLLLLUUUUUURP! It was free.

    Unmoulded Mysterious Pudding

    So. Mysterious.

    Rodd started slicing it into pieces, while I used a hand mixer to whip some cream. Hey, that looks pretty cool!

    Mysterious Pudding layers

    We served it with the whipped cream, as directed.

    Mysterious Pudding - layers of jelly, cake, bananas, and whipped cream

    I really liked it! But Jell-O was always a favourite treat growing up. Rodd felt that the red layer didn’t really add anything, and we’d have been better off leaving it out. We both thought the layers of jelly-soaked cake with banana were way better than they had any right to be.

    To modernise this, I’d definitely start by making your own cake. The cake layers were the best, so I wouldn’t bother with any jelly on its own. Rodd also reckons that making your own gelatin – using real fruit juice – would taste nicer than the boxed artificial stuff. We suggest filling the container/mould with the cake layers, and making sure that each layer is fully saturated. You could even do different flavoured jellies for each layer, waiting for each one to set before pouring the next! That would be epic – AND MORE MYSTERIOUS – when you unmoulded it. 😉

  • Sweet Potato Tacos

    Sweet Potato Tacos

    Rodd made the potatoes; I did the fixin’s. 🌮 Recipe is from Smitten Kitchen.

  • Bachelor’s Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    Bachelor’s Pudding – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    It’s time for another recipe from 1965! Continuing our vintage cooking experiment, this time I chose the recipe from January 31 – Bachelor’s Pudding – and happily, I think it was a big success! Here’s the recipe:

    Bachelor's Pudding recipe

    There’s quite a lot crammed into only six lines…

    1 egg, the weight of an egg in butter, sugar and flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, a little grated lemon rind, 1 tablespoon jam, short pastry. Line a shallow dish with the pastry, spread the jam on the bottom, beat butter and sugar to a cream, add egg, lemon rind, flour and baking powder. Pour this over the jam, bake for half an hour. Dust with sugar. Serve with custard.

    First up, what even is “bachelor’s pudding”? Of course, “pudding” is used here in the British sense, meaning simply “dessert.” If you search for “bachelor’s pudding” online, you’ll find lots of old recipes that have currants and breadcrumbs in them… and this recipe has neither. I liked this explanation the best: “Nobody knows for sure how Bachelor’s Pudding got its name but it is suggested that the frugal ingredients lend themselves to single men on minimal means.”

    Ingredients for Bachelor's Pudding

    I wasn’t sure whether a CWA wife in 1965 would be making her own short pastry or not. The recipe just seems to assume that you have some. I decided to keep things simple and go with a sheet of frozen shortcrust. I also went with a carton of custard. For the jam, I went with good ol’ Cottee’s apricot, which I figured would have been easily available at the time.

    Creaming the sugar and butter

    I started by cracking my egg and weighing it, and it ended up around 55g. So I put that much butter and sugar in my mixing bowl and creamed them together.

    Batter mixture

    Then I added the egg, lemon rind, flour, and baking powder. It came together into a creamy batter.

    Dough and jam

    Rodd and I debated on what an appropriate “shallow dish” would be and decided to go with a simple small metal pie plate. I buttered it (not in the recipe but I figured it couldn’t hurt) and then lined it with my thawed sheet of shortcrust, sealing the cracks as best I could. Then I spooned in some apricot jam (probably a little more than the recipe called for) and spread it around.

    Covered in batter

    The batter certainly wasn’t pourable, so instead I spooned it on and then smoothed out as best I could. I’m glad I didn’t go with a bigger dish, as it didn’t even come close to filling it.

    The recipe doesn’t give any guidance as to baking temperature, so I figured I’d go with 180C / 350F and just keep an eye on it.

    Baked pudding

    It actually worked really well! The batter puffed up a bit and the pastry shrank, so I think the proportions actually worked. By 30 minutes it was nice and golden so I pulled it out to cool.

    Sprinkled with powdered sugar

    I sprinkled it with some sifted powdered sugar and then cut it into pieces. It came out cleanly, and the bottom wasn’t too soggy despite the lack of blind baking. You can clearly see the jam layer. I was quite impressed!

    Bachelor's Pudding with custard

    And here it is, served with custard for afternoon tea! It was quite tasty – sweet but not overly so. I think I could’ve gone with more lemon zest as it got lost a bit.

    We debated on how you’d modernise this. Obviously you could make your own pastry and custard, which would certainly zhush it up. I think you could also experiment with the jam layer and try a few different things in there. (Kaya pudding?!) But overall this one was pretty good as is, even with the shortcuts I took and the vagueness of the recipe. Big thumbs up! 👍

  • Coffee Velvet – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    It’s time for another recipe from 1965! Continuing our vintage cooking experiment, we chose a tasty looking recipe from January 19 – Coffee Velvet. Sounds good, right? However, it resulted in our first unmitigated FAILURE. First, the recipe:

    Coffee Velvet recipe

    The very, very vague instructions:

    3 cups milk, 4 tablespoons coffee made from essence, 1 dessertspoon lemon juice, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons cornflour. Bring milk, sugar and coffee essence to boil, stir in dissolved cornflour, add beaten egg yolk, cook until thick and smooth. Turn into pyrex dish, make meringue of beaten egg whites, 4 tablespoons sugar, lemon juice. Spread on top and bake in moderate oven. Serve hot or cold.

    Okay, first up: coffee essence. We went with Bushells Coffee and Chicory Essence as it’s an old-fashioned Aussie ingredient, used in many traditional baking recipes. We opened it up and yowza, it’s basically very strong, very sweet coffee syrup. Here it is with everything else.

    Ingredients for Coffee Velvet

    First I had to make the custard. You would not believe the debate we had about the coffee part. I argued that “4 tablespoons coffee made from essence” meant that I needed to make up a cup of coffee essence plus water as if I was going to drink it, and then take 4 TB from that. However, I could not find a single recipe telling me what ratio of essence to water to use. (The bottle label recommends you put it in milk to make a milky drink with whipped cream.) The Snook however argued that I should use the ratio on the bottle to simply add enough syrup for 3 cups of milk, as if I was making a pot of that drink. His way would’ve involved a lot more syrup, so we settled on starting with 2 teaspoons and then eventually adding a third. I also cut back on the sugar a bit as these recipes are always way too sweet.

    The recipe also has you pour beaten egg yolks straight into very hot milk, which seemed like something we should alter. I decided instead to temper the eggs by adding a couple spoonfuls of the mixture to the eggs. That seemed to work well, and eventually I had it all coming together in the pot. My only concern was the amount of cornflour, which seemed pretty low. (I dissolved it first in a shot glass of water.) I started to worry it wouldn’t set… which, as it turns out, was a valid concern.

    Coffee custard

    But anyway, once it was thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, I poured it into my pyrex dish and set it aside to cool a bit.

    Coffee custard

    On to the meringue! I’m not an expert meringue maker, but I did know to make sure my bowl was clean and free of any fats. I did not know, however, that I should whip the eggs before adding the sugar. I don’t think it made much difference though.

    Beating egg whites and sugar

    See? I still got stiff peaks.

    Meringue

    The custard was still very liquid, so I sort of floated islands of meringue on top until I could smooth them out and cover it completely.

    Next mystery: what’s a “moderate oven”? I did some googling and consensus seemed to be about 180C / 350F. So I preheated the oven and set the dish inside to hopefully start solidifying.

    Custard covered with meringue

    We obviously had no idea how long it would take to cook. I checked on it after 25 minutes and EEEEEK. 😱 The meringue was getting very brown, but I could tell by moving the dish that it was still essentially just hot liquid underneath. I turned the oven down to 150C / 300F and moved the dish to the lowest shelf, hoping that would keep it from overbrowning while it continued to cook.

    Baking Coffee Velvet

    Eventually it became clear after nearly an hour of baking that no solidification was happening, so I pulled it out. Maybe, I reasoned, it would work better chilled? So after it cooled down, I put it into the fridge for a few hours. Later that night once it was thoroughly cold, I pulled it out to give it a try.

    Folks, it was Not Good. Well, actually it tasted all right. It’s basically coffee-flavoured milk and sugar, right? But the custard had completely split in the oven, and it was like grainy scrambled eggs in there. It never solidified at all.

    Split custard

    So, THAT was disappointing. But as with our previous experiment, the Snook was inspired to try to modernise and improve on the recipe. He did some research and discovered something called a Flan Pâtisserie, which is basically a French custard tart. He looked at several recipes for it and realised that they were all pretty similar to the ingredients called for in our 1965 book, just in a different ratio. He then came up with his own recipe for a small serving:

    1 egg + 1 yolk ~70g
    80g sugar
    28g cornstarch
    ~ 1.5c milk
    Tiny pinch salt
    40mL espresso
    Pat of butter 

    Bake 180 fan. 40 minutes. Then top with meringue:

    37g egg whites
    75g powdered sugar
    Dash lime juice
    Vanilla

    Blow torch.

    He documented his process for posterity. First, he weighed out 18g of beans, which is what he uses for a 40mL double shot in our machine.

    Weighing coffee beans

    Then he started heating up the milk gently…

    Heating the milk

    …while he whisked the eggs, sugar, and cornstarch together.

    Whisking eggs, sugar, cornflour

    Then it was time to make the coffee! He ground the beans and pulled a 40mL double shot.

    Making espresso

    He then added the coffee and salt to the milk mixture.

    Coffee milk mixture

    He then used the hot coffee milk mixture to temper the egg mixture, eventually pouring all the milk into the eggs.

    Eggs and sugar mixture

    That went back into the pan and over heat, where he cooked it until it thickened up.

    Cooking the custard

    His custard ended up WAY thicker than mine! The secret, he said, was “way more cornstarch.” (He was supposed to stir in a pat of butter at this point, but he forgot.)

    Very thick custard

    He filled two small ramekins with it…

    Ramekins

    …and baked in 180C / 350F fan-forced oven for 40 minutes. When they came out they were puffed up, but then sank as they cooled.

    Baked ramekins

    He mixed up his meringue, and as he is an expert meringue maker, he knew to whisk the egg whites first and THEN add the sugar. 😐

    Whisking egg whites

    His meringue definitely looked more luxe and glossy than mine. He also added a bit of vanilla.

    Meringue

    He topped the ramekins and then blow-torched them.

    Blowtorching

    I mean, there’s really no contest, is there? Old and busted vs new and improved!

    Original gross Coffee Velvet, and new and improved Coffee Velvet

    Also, his tasted delicious, of course. The coffee flavour wasn’t as pronounced, but the texture was firm and creamy throughout. (If he’d made them in a springform, I reckon they may have even held their shape on their own.) It reminded me very much of the texture of pumpkin pie. The meringue was like a rich vanilla marshmallow on top.

    Coffee Velvet

    So ultimately the Snook was able to rescue Coffee Velvet from the jaws of defeat. If you want to make it, I definitely recommend you use his version!

  • Korean food

    Korean food

    Spicy cold noodles (bibim naengmyeon), made by me! With soba noodles, radish, cucumber, kimchi, and poached egg. 🍜 🇰🇷 (recipe)

  • Peach Marshmallow – CWA 1965 Cookbook

    Continuing with our vintage cooking experiment, for the second week of January we chose what looked to be a very simple recipe: January 13 – Peach Marshmallow.

    Peach Marshmallow recipe

    That looks pretty simple, right? Here’s the recipe:

    Fill up a dozen peach halves (drained from a tin) with crushed pineapple. Top with marshmallow and grill under a slow heat until marshmallows melt a little. Serve with ice cream.

    The first hurdle I ran into was actually getting canned peach halves. Most of the ones on offer in our supermarket were slices. Eventually I found one brand though…

    Peach Marshmallow ingredients

    Rather than making a dozen, I just made 4 for us after dinner. I crushed some of the pineapple and filled each of the peach halves with it, then topped it with a marshmallow.

    This is where I registered a concern: I went with Pascall Marshmallows because I figured they were an Aussie brand and would therefore be closest to what the recipe was asking for. Unlike American marshmallows, these are sold in the candy aisle and are intended to be eaten like sweets. They were coated in cornstarch and had almost a crunchy exterior. I had no idea how they would melt.

    Peach Marshmallow

    I put them into the oven with the top element turned on, but rather low on the temperature (like 170C). As you can see they did start to toast and melt a bit. I think they were in there well under 10 minutes, and I pulled them for fear they’d burn.

    Melted marshmallow

    Here they are, served with ice cream.

    Peach Marshmallow

    It was… okay. I mean, it’s just a peach, some pineapple, and a marshmallow. The canned peaches did get warm, but they were still pretty firm. The marshmallow was sticky and the outside was still rather crunchy, though the middle was gooey. This didn’t feel like that impressive of a dessert.

    Enter the Snook.

    He decided to have a go at modernising it and fancying it up. We started by doing some research on marshmallows, and after talking to some of my older friends, it looks like packaged marshmallows were not readily available here in 1965. Instead people would have been making their own using a recipe like this. “That just looks like a Swiss meringue!” he said, and got to work. He assembled his ingredients. (The plastic container has the rest of the pineapple in it.)

    Peach marshmallow ingredients

    He started by separating the eggs. After some internal debate he decided to do two eggs, which he weighed and then adjusted the recipe accordingly. (He did have a bit left over though, so one egg might have been sufficient.) He didn’t bother with any cream of tartar, and he had vanilla essence rather than a bean.

    Separating eggs

    The egg whites were mixed with sugar and gently cooked over a double-boiler until they reached the required temperature.

    Cooking eggs and sugar mixture

    Meanwhile, he halved and pitted the fresh, ripe peaches, and he brushed them with macadamia oil. (He left the skin on.)

    Prepping peaches

    Then he grilled the peaches on a ridged grill pan.

    Grilling peaches

    Once the egg/sugar mixture was at the right temperature, he took it off the heat, added the vanilla, and began to whisk.

    Whisking

    Eventually it became thick and glossy. (He thinks he might have over whipped it a bit as he was hoping for stiff peaks, but it still looked great to me!)

    Whipped egg mixture

    Time to assemble. He filled each grilled peach with crushed canned pineapple as before, and then added a big dollop of the Swiss meringue.

    Assembling Peach Marshmallow

    And then out came the blowtorch! 🔥 He gently toasted each one to a golden brown.

    Torching the Peach Marshmallows

    And here’s the completed (Fancy) Peach Marshmallow, again served with ice cream.

    (Fancy) Peach Marshmallow

    This version was SO MUCH BETTER. The ripe peach was soft with the perfect amount of bitterness from the char marks. The Swiss meringue was delicious and fluffy with that slight burnt sugar taste from toasted marshmallows. This is something you could serve to guests and rightly feel pretty proud of yourself!

    Future enhancement: Rodd thinks there’s also scope to improve on the pineapple element, perhaps by adding a bit of rum or bourbon? Maybe caramelised and cooked down with some brown sugar and cinnamon? YES, PLEASE.