Mammy's Notes from "Westinghouse speed-electric ranges"

There were a number of these free booklets that came with appliances or in the mail that appear unused, but this one had some stains, some turned down pages, and some notes in it.

Page 40--"Frosting and filling"--is creased and covered with stains. It looks like an electric mixer spewed batter everywhere.

Laplander Frosting
2 whole eggs, or 4 egg yolks
3 tbsp butter or margarine
4 1/2 tbsp cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 squares bitter chocolate

Beat eggs until light. Add other ingredients, then cook in saucepan on "High" until mixture boils, stirring and scraping bottom of bowl constantly. Let oil about 2 minutes, stirring briskly because mixture scorches easily. Remove from unit, then pour into electric mixing bowl or beat with spoon. Beat the mixture until cool and thick enough to spread. For a large cake, double the recipe.

White Icing
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup egg whites
1/2 cup water
3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp white corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla

Boil sugar (1 1/2 cups), water, and corn syrup until it spins a thread. This requires about 10 minutes on "high" heat. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites stiff and almost dry. Add the 3 tbsp sugar to egg whites, then beat egg whites until sugar is all blended. An electric mixer or Dover egg beater should be used. Pour syrup over egg whites, allowing only a thin, thread-like stream to run into egg whites. Be sure to add syrup as soon as it is removed from the range. Continue beating until icing holds a point. Add vanilla.

Mile High Icing
1 cup white corn syrup or 2 egg whites
1 glass, tart red jelly
2 tsp vanilla

Into a large mixing bowl of an electric mixer, place wites of eggs, and orn syrup or jelly. Start beating on "Low" speed, then increase to "High" speed. If electric mixer is not available, use a Dover egg beater. To this amount of icing, add 2 tsp vanilla. When mixture will hold its shape, spread on cake. Never put cake with Mile High Icing under cover. Icing will collapse.

Cream Puff Filling
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cold milk
5 tbsp enriched all-purpose flour
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cup scalded milk
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 egg whites

Mix sugar, flour and salt together with cold milk. To this, add well-beaten egg yolks. Pour slowly into scalded milk. [To scald milk, place saucepan on unit and turn control to "high" heat for about 3 minutes.] Turn to "Medium" and cook, stirring while cooking, until mixture is thick. Add flavoring. Cool. Fold in stiffly-beaten egg whites. For chocolate filling, stir in one square melted chocolate while mixture is cooking.

On page 45--Pastry--there are also some dried something of some sort, along with some notes.

Plain Pastry Westinghouse
2 cups enriched all-purpose flour
10 tbsp lard or shortening
3/4 tsp salt
6-8 tbsp cold water

Sift flour once before measuring, then sift again with salt. Cut in lard leaving pieces of fat as large as peas. Add the water all at once, then mix with a fork, cutting through the mixture with each stroke. When all gathers together so that the bowl is left clean, dough may be chilled or rolled out at once. Chilling before rolling gives a more flaky pie crust. Roll out pastry using flour generously on board and rolling pin. Do not stretch pastry after it has been rolled and is ready to place in pie pan. Roll it on the rolling pin, then unroll it on the pie pan. Recipe will make tow 9-inch shells or one double-crust 9-inch pie.

Mammy has written below this: "10 cups of flour, 2 3/4 lard"

More of Mammy's notes in "100 Tested Recipes"

Allee Young's Light Rolls (hand-written on pg 18)
Dissolve 1 Cake Fleschman yeast with 1 cup of warm water, iron spook of lard, and salt. . 1/2 cup sug.
Enough flour to make a sponge. Let rise overnight. In the morning, add enough flour to make a dough.
Keep in a cool place and ??ed as needed--



The corner of page 53 was folded down. I don't know if she even made any of these, but here's the page:

Filling for Lemon Pies
Juice of 2 lemons
2 cups of sugar
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoonful flour
1 tablespoonful butter
Yolks of 4 eggs, well beaten
Boil all together until very thick. Fill the cooked crusts, and use the whites for meringue on top.

Cocoanut Filling for Pies
1/2 cup butter
2 cups of sugar
Yolks of 5 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoonful flour
1 cup grated cocoanut
Flavor with vanilla and cook until thick. When cold, fill the cooked pie crusts and cover with meringue; put into the oven to brown.



The corner of page 59 was also folded down. So here's what was there:

Fillings For Cakes

Plain Caramel
2 cups of sugar
3/4 cups of maple syrup
cream to wet thoroughly
1 Tablespoonful butter
Put sugar, syrup, and cream on, and when it boils add the butter. Boil it until very thick. Add one teaspoonful of vanilla, take from the fire, and beat until it begins to sugar. Then pour over the cake.

Chocolate Caramel
Same as above, only before it begins to boil add one-fourth cake of Baker's chocolate.

Ice Cream Filling
3 cups sugar
1 cup water
3 eggs, whites beaten stiff
1 teaspoonful vanilla
Boil sugar and water to a candy, pour slowly over the beaten whites of three eggs, flavor with vanilla, beat until it begins to cream, and pour over the cake.



Hand-written on pg 60
Chocolate Icing
4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 lb melted chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 egg yolks
Boil sugar and water until shreds.
Pour over melted chocolate and beaten yolks
Cook and beat until thickens.

The following are all hand-written in the ending pages of the book:

Molasses
1 pt.(?) Molasses
1 teacup of Sugar
1 teacup of Buttermilk
Lump Butter
1 rounding teaspoon of Soda
Nutmeg

Gold Cake
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powd.
yolks of 6 eggs

White Cream Cake
4 cups flour
1 cup butter
3 cups sug
2 teaspoons B.P.
Whites 10 eggs

Cream Tapioca Pudding
Soak three Tablespoonfuls of tapioca in water over night. Put the tapioca into a quart of boiling milk and boil half an hour. Beat the yolks of four eggs with a cup of sugar. Add three tablespoonfuls of prepared coconut. Stir in and boil then minutes longer. Pour into a pudding dish. Beat the whites of the four eggs to a stiff froth, stir in three tablespoonfuls of sugar, put this over the top and sprinkle coconut over the top and brown for five minutes.



Pineapple Filling
Yolks of 8 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 to 2/3 cups butter
1 can grated pineapple
Cook eggs, butter, sugar, and pineapple together until thick, stirring constantly.
Then stir in 1 box coconut, reserving of the to sprinkle on the tops and sides.



Jam Cake
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour milk
3 cup flour
1 cup blackberry jam
3 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
t allspice
nutmeg to taste
teaspoon of soda
fill with ?aron??l



Zelma's Recipe
Marshmallow Paste
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup marshmallow
2 teaspoons hot water
1/2 teaspoons vanilla
Boil the sugar and milk together, melt the marshmallows and add the water. Combine the two mixtures. Add teh vanilla and beat until stiff enough to spread.

Zelma's Snow Cake
1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 egg whites
1/2 cup milk
1 2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 level teaspoon baking P.
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Cream the butter, add gradually the sugar and the vanilla. Beat the egg whites thoroughly and add to the 1st mixture alternately with the milk. Bake in a moderate oven 45 minutes.

Mammy's Notes from inside "100 Tested Receipts"

A lot of the hand-written recipes are stained, smeared, or at times, illegible. So keep in mind this is what I could best decipher.



Theses were written in the front inside cover:

Eggless Cake
2 cup Sug
2 cup Sour Milk
1 cup But
4 cup Flour
1 pt. Jam
2 teaspoon soda
2 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoon cloves
3 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 of a nutmeg

Bulles(?) Seoleh(?) Pie
Put 1 cup of brown sug.
a lump of butter the size of an egg
and enough water to dissolve it on stove.
Cook until it threads.
Then mix the yolks of 2 eggs,
one pt. of milk
one Tablespoon of flour
one teaspoon of vanilla
Stir this in the boiling sugar, but, and water.
Cook until thickens

Eggless Black Cake
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 cups buttermilk
2 teaspoons soda
4 cups flour
1 big cup jam

Soup Jam No. 1
1 pk tomatoes-peal and cook or chop
1 doz carrots-peel and chop
1 doz corn
1 gal ocher
Cook tomatoes 1/2 hr.
+carrots 1/2 hr
+ corn and ocher till done

Chili Sauce
30 Ripe tomatoes
6 green peppers
6 large onions
1 teacup sugar
6 cups of vinegar
salt and spice to taste

Mrs Bogous
1 cup sug
1/4 cup lard
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon Bak. P (Baking powder?)

And in a loose sheet of paper inside the cover was this:

Sponge Cake Balls
Four eggs, beaten separately
one tea-cup full of sugar
one teacup of flour
one teaspoonful of cream of tartar, mixed in flour;
one half teaspoonful of soda in a little water
Bake quickly in biscuit pan,
turn out on damp towel
put in dressing and roll while warm
This is excellent
"Ora Mae Hart."

It's about time!

Growing up, all us Barnes offspring have heard the raving stories about Mammy (aka Bernice Burns Walker Barnes): her impeccable meringue-topped pies, handy craftiness, and sharp countenance seem almost solidified into some sort of mythical immortality. She lives on in our parents' stories, in her handy crafts, in her large drawer of salt in the kitchen, and in her last canned jam from 1976, still sitting in a closet at the farm. My own father always likes to recall her smart independence, which set her apart from other women of her time: she supported herself as a teacher for 15 years before marrying Pappy and even owned her own section of the farm! Goggie, my grandmother, writes that Mammy was, "proud of all the creative things she had done" and that she had an uncanny memory, one that allowed her once to recite "a very long poem as she was cooking in the kitchen."

After our great uncle Tom passed away and we started going through all the drawers and closets in the farm house, we came across a few cookbooks of Mammy's, many with hand written recipes in the margins or inside covers. Thomas and Ekky were kind enough to temporarily lend them to me, as I promised to put the material up on a blog for the whole family. Well, finally, thanks to my new-found unemployment, I've started to assemble this material! However, it should be noted that Mammy often cooked her famous recipes without any notes or measuring utensils, so I don't even know if she used these recipes often.

I'll go book by book, posting the hand written notes and recipes that seem to have been used frequently, due to stained pages or broken binding.

I hope this can also become a family forum where people will feel welcome to share their own memories about Mammy or other family members now gone.

It would be a bit odd here to add some Julia Child-esque "Bon Appetite" sign off here. So, in the infamous words of Pappy:

"Does very well."