digging up vintage recipes

A Tale of Petticoat Tails

I’m terrible at keeping my own secrets, so I’m spilling some of the beans about next week’s super=exciting post: it’ll be Scottish themed. I’m working on an exciting main dish but, in the meantime, I thought I’d post one of the accompaniments: Scottish shortbread – or “petticoat tails” as these biscuits are traditionally known.

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A Rugelach Experiment

A teaser: I’m getting a new camera lens (finally), and will be celebrating by going super-traditional in two weeks – keep an eye out for a seriously historical post. Meantime, here’s a little newfangled something I tried out: gorgonzola-fig rugelach.

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A Practice Pie

Enough with newfangled recipes: in advance of Thanksgiving, I decided to try an old Kentucky recipe for cottage cheese pie.  This Southern pie echoes the flavors and ingredients of the Italian torta di ricotta with which I’m more familiar – and is similarly delicious.


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Raisin Hell

Sometimes I order groceries online, and sometimes I get confused about quantities and order ingredients in larger packages than I need. And then there are the exceptional times – like last week, when I not only ordered a massive bag of golden raisins, but managed to accidentally place two in my shopping cart and check out in such a check-out out state that I didn’t notice. This avalanche of raisins, however, shook loose some creativity: I came up with a great recipe for Rum Raisin Bars.

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Hurricane Strudel

Well, the Frankenstorm is raging outside; in an effort to stave off cabin fever (since I’m now officially stuck home tomorrow as well), I decided to take on some projects. I replaced the buttons on the vintage cape I bought last month. And I made strudel. And I cleaned my house. Thankfully, I made strudel before I cleaned – this is not an un-messy baking project.


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Whiskey Cake and Gumdrops

Reason #5,000 I love James Beard: his whiskey cake recipe ends “I like to pour an extra half cup of whiskey over the cake.” I also love that this dense, boozy, fruit-and-nut packed brick is called a “cake.” Really, in modern baked good taxonomy it is probably closer to the “quick bread” phylum than the cake one. James Beard’s recipes and original cookbook, though, hark to a time when baking was more primitive and the primordial soup of “Sugary Things” had not yet separated into sharply defined branches. Well, maybe it had in France. But not here in ‘Murika!


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Taffy Tastes of Summer

First off, please observe the amazingness of my blue milk glass hob nail compote dish-cum-candy bowl. Next, please cast your eye upon the homemade salt water taffy therein. It is rose-flavored.


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