Historic Cooking: Moss Rose Cake, ca. 1948.

Orange flower water.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

I recently had a birthday, and as I have been doing for the past several years, I decided to make my own birthday dessert.  My family means well, but for most of my life they always got me those cakes from the grocery store bakery section, which always tasted stale and chemical-y, and I really dislike them; I would always be "forced" to take home the extra cake (usually about 3/4 of the cake, because my family doesn't love grocery store cake, either) because "It's *your* birthday cake", and it would sit in my fridge for over a week as I tried to get my housemates to eat some of it, but it would end up in the trash ... Despite the slight transgression of birthday protocol in making my own birthday cake, I would rather make my own; I like to bake, and when I bake, I get to decide what to make, plus, I know that it's freshly baked, rather than freshly taken from the freezer ...

Anyway, my niece is also a budding foodie and baker, and she bought me a vintage cookbook (ca. 1948) for my birthday a few years ago; the result of her purchase is that I try to have the cookbook with me when I go visit my parents' house, whenever my niece is also there, and we try to choose a recipe and bake it together.  She likes making cake (we made a Devil's Food Cake, before).  This time around, I decided I wanted something lemon for my birthday, and couldn't decide between a lemon pie -- like I made last year for my birthday -- or a sponge cake with lemon curd filling (but I haven't had good luck with sponge cake; last time the cake broke in half when I tried to get it out of the pan).  We thought this recipe sounded interesting, and as a bonus, you don't have to separate the eggs!  Here is the original recipe:

Moss Rose Cake

2 c. sifted cake flour 

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

4 eggs

2 c. sugar

½ tsp. almond extract 

1 c. hot milk

Sift flour, salt and baking powder together 3 times.  Beat eggs, add sugar gradually and beat until thick enough to hold a soft peak.  Add flavoring.  Fold in flour mixture in small amounts and add hot milk gradually, mixing quickly until batter is smooth.  Turn into lightly greased cake pans.  Bake in moderate (350°F) oven 30 minutes.  Makes 3 (8-inch) layers.  

Cat Rescue Tea 2014 tickets are on sale now!

Downton Tabby Tea 2012.
Photo: Miranda Von Stockhausen 

It's that time again: the 6th Annual Downton Tabby Tea fundraiser is scheduled for March 29 and 30 in San Jose, and tickets have just gone on sale!  They sell out quickly, so be sure to buy yours as soon as you can.  Feel free to dress up for this event, in keeping with the Downton Abbey theme and the opulence of this restored Victorian mansion!

*NOTE: If you have a group of people attending, and you would like to be seated together, you must buy the tickets for your group at the same time (in one transaction), or we cannot guarantee your seating.  If ticket sales go like they have for the past few years, there won't be any available to buy at the door, or in the days leading up to the event!  Only tickets that have been paid for can be considered "reserved"!

Here is the vital information:

Fundraising organization: Friends of 13th Street Cats/13th Street Cat Rescue (www.13thstcats.org)

Dates: Saturday, March 29 and Sunday March 30, 2 to 4 p.m.

Location: a restored Victorian home in the Hensley District, downtown San Jose.  The address will be sent privately to those who purchase tickets.

Event details: prix-fixe afternoon tea plate includes homemade scone, lemon curd, jam, tea sandwiches and savories, nut cup and fresh fruit, tea cake and chocolate, as well as bottomless pots of tea (Satori Tea Bar's Earl Grey Creme or Smitten Kitten herbal tisane from Thompson Tea Co.).  There will be a silent auction and a raffle of a variety of wonderful items; in the past these have included: timeshare vacations, to bottles of wine, to tea baskets, to gear for your pets.  Self-guided tours of the mansion may also be available at the discretion of the owners.

Tickets:

• $40 per person, for a full afternoon tea, Veggie or Regular options; 
• $50 per person, for the full afternoon tea, Veggie or Regular options, plus 2 glasses of champagne; 
• $150 for the Countess Package, full afternoon tea (Veggie or Regular) for 2, champagne for 2, VIP table for 2, 2 VIP badges, 2 tea favors, and advance entry at 1:30 p.m.;
• $300 for the Grantham Package, which is everything included in the Countess Package, but for 4 people.  

Where to buy your tickets: the 13th Street Cats website at http://www.13thstcats.org/info/display?PageID=14639   Tickets on sale NOW!

See you there! 

It's that time again ...

Photo: Joanne Santner.

Time to get ready for the annual Cat Rescue Tea for 13th Street Cats!  This year I'm donating 2 tea baskets to the raffle and a bunch of things to the silent auction, I'm making all the lemon curd again, and I'll be making all the tea on both days of the event.  Tonight is the night to make the lemon curd!

I'm also on costume crew for Lyric Theatre's production of Lerner & Lowe's Brigadoon (go see the show!) this week, including both Saturday and Sunday evening after the tea fundraiser!  I'll have to hurry over to the Montgomery Theatre after finishing up at the house.  It will be a series of long nights ... 

A Victorian recipe reborn -- summer pudding!

Summer pudding.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

It's "too darn hot" around here! Yet, there are festivities where sweet things are expected.  Ice cream and popsicles are always a good thing (I keep a box of popsicles or fudgesicles in the freezer all summer), but what if you want something a little more elegant, but you don't want to heat up the house?  Summer pudding is a refreshing, no-bake, party-worthy dessert.  Opinions differ as to the origins of the recipe; it seems to be a late-Victorian Trifle combined with a Charlotte.  No matter; it's delicious, and easy, and involves 2 minutes of simmering on the stove, so your house stays cool!  I made a summer pudding for a party on the 4th of July, and it went over really well.  Here is the recipe I used, based on a recipe from a book by Elizabeth David, posted to the Leite's Culinaria blog:

12 oz. frozen sweetened raspberries (thawed)
1 box fresh raspberries
1/2 lb. fresh sweet cherries (pitted)
2 Tablespoons plum jam (could use raspberry or strawberry)
1/4 cup sugar
1 loaf sliced white bread, day-old or dried slightly in the oven, crusts trimmed
heavy cream

Time to pick some Meyer lemons!

Meyer lemon tree.

I love having a Meyer lemon tree in the backyard!  I love lemon anything, but Meyer lemons are a whole other kind of wonderful!  I will definitely be making some Meyer lemon curd (using the Gourmet magazine recipe), and anything else I can think of.  Here are some interesting Meyer lemon recipes:

Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake
Meyer Lemon Buttermilk Pudding Cake with Fresh Berries
Meyer Lemon Meringue Pie 
Meyer Lemon and Orange Flower Yogurt Cake

_Gourmet_ magazine to close down!

homemade Meyer lemon curd.
This just in: Gourmet magazine will be discontinued as of the November 2009 issue, after a continuous run of 69 years! This magazine has been almost a cooking bible of sorts to many people, and although I never subscribed to it, I bought my fair share of issues from the grocery store magazine racks. One of my favorite recipes, indeed the only one I use to make lemon curd from local San Jose Meyer lemons, comes from Gourmet magazine, courtesy of the Epicurious.com recipe web site. Here is my adaptation of the original:


Meyer Lemon Curd:
½ cup fresh Meyer lemon juice
zest from 2 to 3 Meyer lemons (or, to taste)
½ cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, cut into 4 to 6 pieces

Choose bright yellow Meyer lemons, since they’re sweeter than the lighter ones. Juice and zest them yourself right before you make the lemon curd for the best flavor. Put a few inches of water in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer. Combine the zest, juice, sugar and eggs in a non-reactive metal bowl, and set over simmering water. Stir continually with a whisk until the mixture is warm to the touch, and then add the butter. Cook, whisking, until thickened and smooth and all the butter is melted and mixed in, and then continue to stir and whisk for 5 minutes more. Force curd through a fine sieve set into another bowl, if desired. Seal in sterilized jars, serve warm or cover surface of curd with wax paper and cool completely. Store in the refrigerator for about a week, or freeze, sealed from the air, for up to a few months. Makes 1 ½ to 2 cups.
-- adapted from Gourmet magazine, December 1999.

Meyer lemons, which are sweeter than regular lemons, do not work well in traditional lemon curd recipes because they contain more sugar, to compensate for the standard lemon tartness. This recipe makes a wonderful, silky lemon curd that doesn’t overshadow the delicate floral flavor of the Meyers. It is one of my favorite recipes, and a favorite one with the Ladies' Tea Guild members, as well as my colleagues at work, who each got a jar of it last spring as a thank-you gift when they did me a favor!

“Conde Nast boots Ruth Reichl, closes Gourmet magazine”
“Gourmet: RIP”

How about some frozen lemon curd and cream?

image from PublicDomainPhotos.com

It has been so hot this last week that I came up with a frozen dessert recipe! Now, I love ice cream but I don't have an ice cream maker, so I am usually able to control my ice cream consumption by only purchasing one small pint of real ice cream every once in a while, and keeping fat-free fudgesicles or popsicles in the freezer for the rest of the time. But now, there is real ice cream danger!

In preparing for the South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild's Tea with Rhys Bowen, I made a bunch of lemon curd and stirred it into whipped cream, to use as a filling for miniature tarts, topped with fresh berries. I ended up making much more than I needed for the tarts, and the rest of it sat in the fridge for several days until I was afraid it would go bad. Then, it struck me: lemon curd freezes well, so will this lemon curd cream freeze well? Boy, does it ever! Especially if you put it in popsicle molds! The danger is, it's too easy, so I'll be making (and eating) this more than I should! Here's how you make frozen lemon curd cream:

2 pints heavy whipping cream (organic, if you can get it)

2 cups homemade lemon curd (I used Meyer lemon curd)

Whip the cream to soft peaks, then slowly drizzle the lemon curd from a spoon (homemade will do this, you'll have to soften it if you use store-bought) over the cream as you continue to beat it. After you have beaten in the first cup of lemon curd, slow down the beating as you drizzle in the rest of the curd. The cream will not whip to stiff peaks, but should retain a light, mousse-like consistency. Use to fill tart shells, topped with sugared fresh berries, or fill re-usable popsicle molds or the small bathroom-sized Dixie cups. Insert popsicle sticks into the center of each lemon cream-filled mold, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze solid.

To serve, remove from the freezer, remove plastic wrap, run warm water over the outside of the mold to loosen the frozen pop, remove from the mold and enjoy! You can also just spoon the unfrozen lemon curd cream into a sealable freezer container, and freeze until slushy, and then serve. You'll have to break it up if you let it freeze solid, but the heavy cream in it will keep it from getting too hard. How easy is that? Dangerously easy!

Lemon Curd recipes (part 2)

Unfortunately, while updating this blog today, Blogger deleted my earlier post about lemon curd, which has been a popular post with readers! I will attempt to re-create it here:

The traditional English tea fare tends to be slightly different from the menu that has become traditional on American tea tables. When I was a student in the south of England in 2000, I indulged my love of tea with good old PG Tips with milk and sugar, and a digestive biscuit on the side. In tea shops, where I loved to stop when it rained (even for 5 minutes), the usual offering was a pot of tea and a plain (unflavored) scone served with Devon cream and strawberry preserves. A variety of cakes and sandwiches were available, as well, but my English friends said that cakes and things were for holidays and other special occasions. Tea (as in, the everyday mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack) was a simple affair: a pot or cup of tea and a biscuit or two, or a piece of toast. The combination of tea, scone, cream and jam comprise the traditional English Cream Tea. The addition of egg and cress, and cucumber sandwiches, with perhaps some biscuits and one kind of cake, made the menu into a traditional English Afternoon Tea.

In the United States, however, Tea has taken on another dimension. For many people, Tea is more of a special occasion than a part of everyday life. American tea tables tend to be well-filled with a variety of foods, under the misnomer "High Tea:" tea shops and individual tea hostesses usually offer a variety of teas -- especially flavored teas and "herbal teas" or tisanes -- to accompany the scones -- also often flavored or filled with dried fruit, chocolate bits or topped with thin icing -- and the most common toppings, which are whipped cream or "mock clotted cream" and lemon curd. Several kinds of sandwiches and savories (formerly known as canapes or mini finger foods), including cucumber sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, mini quiches and sausage rolls, and even, on occasion, bowls of soup, are served with cookies or pastries, and bon-bons, cakes, miniature tarts, and other tempting desserts.

While the traditional English tea table is characterized by elegance, quality, and comfort, the American tea table is an example of variety and abundant luxury, as well as practicality, oddly enough! Americans, in general, don't like to put a lot of effort or money into something if it's too simple; we like to get our money's worth, especially when we splurge on something special!

When I was in England, however -- and according to my English friends -- I hardly ever saw lemon curd, which I happen to love. When I did encounter lemon curd, it was used as a filling for tarts, but not served with scones at the tea table. Knowing that the traditional English Tea descends from the menu popularized by Anna, Duchess of Bedford, in 1840 or thereabouts, I began to wonder how lemon curd came to replace strawberry preserves as the preferred companion to scones, in the United States. Is lemon curd a 20th century delicacy, or did the Victorians know and enjoy it? I looked through my collection of vintage and antique reproduction cookbooks and found little to no mention of lemon curd, but the use of lemons as a flavoring for cakes, puddings, custards, beverages and desserts of all sorts was evident. Then I came upon some of Jane Austen's reprinted letters, which mention "lemon cheesecakes", and a recipe for something called "lemon cheese" and I wondered, is this the same thing as "lemon curd"?

Perhaps the following reciept is what Jane Austen and her friends enjoyed. It is from a Scottish cookbook from 1820, called _The Practice of Cookery, etc._

Lemon and Orange Cheese-cakes.
Grate four lemons or oranges, scrape out the pulp, boil the skins till they are very tender, then take them out and beat them fine in a mortar with four ounces of sweet butter and the grate [grated zest]. Cast [beat] six eggs (keeping out four of the whites) with six ounces of sugar beat and sifted until it is light and white; then mix the whole well together, with two-ounces of orange-peel cut in small pieces. Line some patty-pans with paste; fill them with the meat, and glaze them as before.

Here is another similar recipe, American, this time, from Godey's Lady's Book, May 1860:

Lemon Cheesecakes.--The rind of a large lemon; squeeze half of the juice, three eggs, half a pound of lump-sugar, quarter of a pound of butter, to be melted.

And here is a modern recipe from my friend Helen:

Lemon Curd
Grated rind and juice of 4 medium lemons
4 eggs
100g (4 oz/ ½ cup) butter
350g (12 oz/ 1 ½ cups) caster sugar
1. Place all the ingredients in the top of a double saucepan or in a bowl standing over a pan of simmering water
2. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and continue heating gently for about 20 minutes until the curd thickens
3. Strain into jars and cover (I just prepare the jars by heating them in the microwave and dropping the lids into the simmering water as I am straining the curd.)
Makes about 700 g (1 ½ lb)