Archive for Baking

Thanksgiving Turkey

November 21, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Cooking, Family, Turkey

It’s turkey time.

November 1980

Thanksgiving is coming up this month and that usually means roasting a turkey for the holiday dinner. Elaine Broadhurst of Broadhurst Turkey Farm has cooked a lot of big birds in her time and they always turn out moist and succulent.

 

Roast Turkey

Choose either a hen or tom turkey since both have equally good meat. Rub the exterior of the turkey with fat. I prefer rendered bacon fat, but butter can be used instead. Use generously. Then rub salt inside the big cavity, the neck cavity and the outside of the bird. A 20 to 22 pound turkey takes 2/3 cup salt while a 10 to 14 pound one requires 1/3 cup of salt.

Place turkey on a rack in the bottom on a large roaster. Put on lid, but leave the vent open. Bake at 325°F oven 6 ½ hours for a 20 to 22 pound turkey and 4 ½ hours for a 10 to 14 pound turkey.

Set giblets to boil in 2 or 3 cups water and cook until tender. Cut into small pieces. One hour before the roasting time is completed pour off the broth that has collected in the bottom of the roaster. Remove roaster lid and bake the remaining hour uncovered so the bird will brown.

Make dressing with part of the broth and make gravy with the rest. To make the gravy use 3 cups of hot broth or broth and milk mixed. Combine ½ cup of flour with an additional cup of cold milk. Add this flour paste to the hot broth and stir and cook until thick. If it gets lumpy, beat with an electric mixer. Add the giblets. Season to taste. Keep hot until serving time.

Take turkey out of oven at correct time and let it stand 20 minutes at room temperature before slicing and serving. (Lift turkey from the roaster with the rack supporting it.)

 

If you want a different pumpkin dessert to finish off the big dinner, try this cake roll. It requires no last minute work. It also makes a nice dessert for a club meeting or a party, I got the recipe from Eleanor Schirer after she brought one to work. Her father, Calarence Schirer, farms north of Sedgwick

Pumpkin Cake Roll

Cake:

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup pumpkin

1 teaspoon lemon juice

¾ cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

 

Filling:

1 cup powdered sugar

6 ozs. Cream cheese

4 tablespoons margarine

½ teaspoon vanilla

To prepare cake beat 3 eggs for 5 minutes. Gradually beat in one cup of sugar. Stir in the pumpkin and lemon juice. Sift dry ingredients.

Fold dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture. Spread on greased and floured 15” x 10” x 1” inch jelly roll pan. Top with the nuts.

Bake at 375° for 15 minutes. Turn out on towel sprinkled with powdered sugar. Roll towel and sake from narrow end. Cool. Unroll. Spread with filling. Roll and chill. Slice and serve.

 

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Apples

October 18, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Cooking, Farming, Kansas, Nutrition, Pie · Tagged

Last weekend was my birthday and as usual I got treated with apple dumplings. Despite all the nutritious value found in apples that my Grandmother describes below, those dumplings should probably not be enjoyed more than once a year, though they are quite delicious.

October 1982

As my farmer and I sat on the porch this morning eating our breakfast between the dark of the night and the light of the day there was an unmistakable feeling of fall in the crisp air.

The rising wind sighed through the windbreak and rustled the leaves of the little spring- planted cottonwood tree into an early morning song. Gleaming dull gold, the milo field stretched to the south while across the road George Miller’s cattle grazed in the tall Sedan grass, silhouetted in the misty haze.

Four young robins winged in from the vegetable garden and settled in the driveway to busily run about in search of grain, looking for all the world like plump Dutch matrons hustling about their morning chores.

Out west the last of the apples hung high on the tree where they had escaped all my efforts to reach them with a ladder and a grappling hook. The sparrows and the blackbirds are pecking away at them for an early snack.

The apple tree is old and broken and each year we say, “This crop will surely be the swan song for that tree.” It was planted soon after our marriage and for over 35 years has kept the family supplied with apple pies and cobblers, apple crisp and apple sauce, as well as apple dumplings.

The children used to eat so many green apples I just knew they would have a stomach ache, but they never did. This year two small grandchildren took up the green apple eating tradition with no ill effects.

Each April the old tree blossoms into a beautiful halo of flowers and sets on a crop of apples that grow plump and red by August. Then, we begin making applesauce for the freezer.

My farmer and I spend many companionable evenings removing the worms and bad spots from the raw apples, cooking them and pushing them through a colander before sacking the sauce in plastic bags for freezer or, if it is full, canning them.

Applesauce sprinkled with black walnuts or pecans, with light cream poured over the top is a delightful winter dessert after a heavy dinner.

Sliced raw apples freeze well and can be used in any recipe the same as fresh ones. Incidentally a food processor makes fast work of slicing them.

The good news about apples is that nutritionists are rediscovering what your grandmother knew – apples are not only good, they’re also good for you.

Apples are high in fiber. Fiber is the name for a quite a few indigestible substances namely cellulose, lignin, pectin, hemicellulose, and gum. Apples contain lots of pectin.

Quite a few authorities think fiber reduces the incidence of some types of cancer. It is also suggested that fiber may help to protect people from heart disease by its effect on cholesterol- lowering effect on the body.

While this research on heart disease, cancer, and diet is still in the beginning stages and not conclusively proven it looks as if you can enjoy apples with a clear conscience. These recipes make the most of the apple’s juicy, tart flavor.

Cheese Crumble Apple Pie

Topping:

½ cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

5 tablespoons butter

Filling:

5 cups apples, sliced

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 ½ cups shredded Cheddar cheese

4 teaspoons flour

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Make one 9-inch pie crust with a high rim using your favorite recipe. For the topping combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter with pastry blender. Set aside.

For filling, toss together apples and lemon juice. Mix cheese, flour and nutmeg; toss with apples. Arrange this fruit mixture in the crust. Sprinkle with topping. Bake at 375° for 40 to 50 minutes.

Serves 6-8.

 

Apple Dumplings

1 ½ cups white flour

1 cup lard

1 ½ cup whole wheat flour

1/3 to ½ cup cold water

½ teaspoon salt

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in lard with pastry blender until size of peas. Add the smallest amount of water in driblets that you can and still have the dough stick together. Roll out ¼ inch. Cut into 6 or 7 squares. Set aside.

Core and partially peel 6 apples of a large and juicy variety. Then prepare this syrup:

Syrup:

1 cup water

3 tablespoons butter

1 cup brown sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Boil for 3 minutes. Place apples on each pastry square. Fill cavities of apple with mixture of:

½ cup sugar

1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

Bring opposite points of pastry up over the apple. Overlap, moisten and seal. Place separately in shallow baking dish. Pour hot syrup around dumplings.

Bake at once at 425° for 40 to 45 minutes until brown and apple is tender. Serve warm with the syrup and Half and Half.

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Fall in Kansas

October 11, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Canning, Farming, Gardening, Kansas · Tagged ,

Fall is a wonderful colorful season. Below is a beautiful description of fall in Kansas.

 

October 1979

 

A Report on Fall

 

In the southwest sky the sun glows red and the drowsy air is satiated with the incessant chorus of the locust. The fields of milo are sculpted in bronze and copper heads reaching in stately ranks toward the blue arc of the heavens. Nearby, the soft violet of an alfalfa plot is slashed to pale green by each round of the swather.

 

Out by a weatherbeaten shed an ancient apple tree is weighed down with a crop of Red Delicious. The apples that were wormy, bird pecked, half rotted, or windfalls are all made into applesauce and resting safely in the freezer.

 

Pheasants with their half grown young run across the road to a brushy shelter to escape the wheels of a passing car. Knowing at first hand what man and a gun can do to their delicate bodies, doves are wary of all movement.

 

Sunflowers bloom extravagantly in any available spot. Where the soil is moist, smartweed grows luxuriantly, putting out great feathery clusters of dainty pale lavender plumes. The goldenrod is thick along the roads wherever it has escaped man’s effort to tidy up the countryside with a mower.

 

Toward dusk a moth hovers over the petunia bed sticking its long proboscis into each bloom and sucking out the nectar. A few bees are flying about gathering honey. The usual brisk Kansas wind is a gentle zephyr as it blows over the ripening land.

 

Overhead, momentarily, is the roar of an airplane and in the distance is the continual drone of tractors. The wheat fields are worked and fertilized awaiting the magical moment when each farmer knows in his bones that it is time to plant. The black walnuts are hanging thick on the trees along Emma Creek with the early drop offs being carried down stream by the current or laying water soaked in a quiet inlet.

 

In the garden the last planting of sweet corn is finished. Watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers can still be found, but the vines are shop worn and seedy looking. Tomato plants have escaped their trellis and wire cages and sprawling every which way, but with fruit still ripening in abundance.

 

The fall planting of green beans is ready to be picked. The radishes planted in August have been pulled and September planting is coming in. The turnips and beets have grown good globes, one white and one red according to the imprinted message of their seeds.

 

Queen of the late garden is the okra – a plant growing over five feet tall that can – oh, blessed thought – be picked with the pickee in an upright position. It has an olive green five pointed leaf growing from a main stalk that is about one or two inches thick. This soft green stem is streaked and splotched with dark red coloring. The flower is conical shaped before opening to five creamy yellow petals with a maroon base. Inside is a stamen ending in a blood red bulb divided into seven small velvety cushions. Okra is prolific. A small patch will produce enough pods each day for a large family. It is almost a miracle – the more you gather the more there is the next day.

 

In sorting out the images of fall I find the one sure portent is the daily passing of the school buses as they rumble by picking up and delivering children, that most precious asset of any farm, to school and bringing them back home in the late afternoon.

 

Bread and Butter Pickles

 

12 medium cucumbers

3 teaspoons celery seed

8 onions

¼ cup white mustard seed

4 green peppers

1 ½ teaspoons turmeric

1 medium cauliflower

2 teaspoons prepared mustard

¾ cup cooking salt

1 teaspoon ginger powder

6 ½ quarts water

 

Sauce:

7 cups sugar

¼ teaspoon mace

6 cups vinegar

Few dashes red pepper

 

Slice pickles, onions, peppers, cauliflower and soak in salt water over night. Boil syrup with ½ quart of water. Boil three minutes. Add vegetables and boil 20 minutes or until clear. Seal.

 

Apple Cake

 

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon soda

¼ cup butter or margarine

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

5 large apples, finely chopped

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup white flour

½ cup raisins or nuts

 

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and apples. Sift dry ingredients. Add to first mixture. Add raisins or nuts. Pour into greased 8 x 8 inch pan. Bake at 350° F for 35 minutes. Allow cake to cool.

 

Sauce

 

½ cup water

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon flour

½ teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons sugar

 

Put first 4 ingredients in a pan. Cook until thick. Add vanilla. Spread over top of cake. Serve warm or cold

 

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Peaches

August 30, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Nutrition, Pie · Tagged , , ,

I can never get enough peaches in the summer time. This column is full of delicious recipes for peaches. Though eating them fresh and plain is just as delicious as well.

September 1983

Biting into a juicy, tree- ripened peach is one of the remembered joys of summer. We are lucky to live close to plenty of good peach orchards and to have a bountiful supply.

A family can jump in the car, drive to the orchard and go peach picking. It is fun to select the plumpest and smoothest specimens. Coming home with peach-filled kids plus a couple of bushels in the car trunk they are all set for some choice eating.

If you can’t get around to eating all of them, fresh peaches freeze well. They are easy to skin by just scalding for a couple of minutes and immersing in ice water. The skins will slip off easily. Scalding too long ruins their color, so work quickly and do small batches at a time.

I like to put a few in small plastic bags and open them on a winter night. They make a delightful bedtime snack served while still slightly frozen with a drizzle of light cream.

Old- Fashioned Peach Pie

5 cups sliced peaches

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon almond flavoring

2 tablespoons butter

Pastry for 2 crust pie

Roll out bottom crust. Combine all ingredients. Pour into crust. Roll out top crust. Cut slits. Moisten crust’s rim. Press on top crust. Carefully pinch edges. Bake at 400° for 40 minutes on bottom rack of oven. If top isn’t brown then raise to top rack for five minutes. Serve while still slightly warm.

Note: 2 tablespoons of red hots instead of the cinnamon gives a nice pink color.

Fresh Peach Cobbler

Pastry for 2-crust pie

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup water

1 tablespoon butter

5 cups sliced peaches

2 tablespoons flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Roll pastry. Line 9-inch pan. Roll top crust. Mix sugar and cornstarch. Add water and butter. Cook until thick. Stir in peaches. Cool. Pour into crust. Sprinkle with flour and spices. Cover with top crust. Bake at 425° for 35 minutes.

Peach Dumplings

Pastry for 2-crust pie

Syrup:

1 cup sugar

2 cups water

3 tablespoons butter

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Filling:

6 peaches, peeled, halved & seeded

½ cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

2 tablespoon butter

Roll pastry 1/8 – inch thick. Cut into six 7-inch squares. Bring syrup ingredients to boil. Boil 3 minutes. Put whole peach in center of each pastry square. Fill center with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Dot with 1 teaspoon butter. Bring points of pastry over peach and pinch together. Pour 1 cup of the hot syrup in pan. Put in dumplings. Bake at 425° for 45 minutes. Serve warm with rest of syrup poured over dumplings. Cream is nice to pour over, too.

Glazed Peach Pie

6 cups sliced peaches

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

½ cup orange juice

Pie shell, baked

Sweetened whipped cream

Mash enough of the peaches to make 1 cupful. Reserve rest of peaches. Combine sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon. Stir in orange juice and mashed peaches. Cook on top of stove or in microwave until thickened. Spread half over the bottom of pie shell. Arrange the sliced peaches over glaze. Spoon rest of glaze over peaches. Chill 3 hours. Top with whipped cream.

Pecan Peach Pie

4 cups sliced peaches

¾ cup sugar, white

3 tablespoons flour

1 ½ teaspoons lemon juice

1/3 cup brown sugar

¼ cup flour

3 tablespoon butter

½ cup chopped pecans

1 unbaked 9” pie shell

Combine sugar, peaches, the 3 tablespoons flour and lemon juice. Mix well. Combine brown sugar, the ¼ cup flour and butter. Cut in butter with pastry blender. Add pecans. Spread ½ of this mixture in bottom of unbaked pie shell. Arrange peach mixture over this. Top with remaining pecan mixture.

Bake at 400° for 40 minutes. Chill. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

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Whole Wheat Flour and Making it Yourself

July 19, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Bread, Wheat · Tagged , , , , ,

On July 5th I posted an article from July 1979 about making your own flour, here is an article from a year later with further information on making your own flour, if you are willing to invest a little money. Please note that this article, as well as the previous one, was published in the Co-op News, whose audience was primarily farmers.

 

July 1980

 

For some time I’ve felt ripped off selling wheat for around six cents a pound and buying it back at the grocery store at these prices for one pound,

.13 white flour

.17 whole wheat flour

.45 white bread

.69 whole wheat bread

.80 white soda crackers

1.60 whole wheat crackers

2.20 snack crackers

So in protest I bought a flour mill attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. It cost less than one hundred dollars (now about $130) and has been a genuine money saver while at the same time increasing our use of wheat. Four bushels of wheat kept us in flour and breakfast cereal for a year. The wheat was stored in tight metal containers and ground fresh each week. Newton wheat made the best flour for me.

One cup of whole wheat flour has 400 calories and contains 18 grams of protein, and two grams of fat. It is an excellent source of thiamine, niacin, and riboflavin, a good source of iron, and a fair source of calcium. The bran in wheat supplies bulk for the digestive process.

Even if you buy whole wheat flour at the grocery store it is a wonderful nutritive bargain. This past year a wheat flour especially designed for home bread making has appeared in local stores. Its cost is higher than all- purpose white flour, but it does give superior results.

Since getting my flour mill I’ve been determined to experiment until I produce a 100% whole wheat loaf with a soft crumb. So far I’ve never been able to go much over 80% whole wheat flour and get the softness and texture my family wanted. Here is the recipe I’ve liked best so far. If any of you have a better one I’d like to hear from you.

 

Whole Wheat Bread

 

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup bread type white flour

1 cup oatmeal

1 package dry yeast

2 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

1 cup warm potato water

1 cup milk, scalded and cooled to lukewarm

2 tablespoons shortening

2 ½ cups whole wheat flour approximately

 

Combine the first six ingredients in a large mixer bowl. Add molasses, potato water, milk and shortening. Beat on medium speed five minutes. Remove beaters. Add the last whole wheat flour gradually, stirring with a spoon. Turn out on floured board and knead until smooth. Be careful not to work in to much flour. The dough should be a little tacky to handle.

Set to rest in a bowl rinsed out with warm water. Cover with a damp towel and let rise for 1 ½ to 2 hours at about 80° F. Punch down. Divide into two balls. Cover and let rest five minutes.

Shape into loaves and place in greased bread pans. Let rise for an hour or until indentation made with a finger remains and doesn’t spring back.

Bake at 400° F for 30 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on racks.

 

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Pie Crusts Part 3

July 11, 2013 · Filed under Baking, Pie · Tagged

Here is the final part of the 3 part series on pie crust. The first part can be found here, and the second here.

June 1983

For a fitting climax to this 3- part series on pies, I went to the queen supreme of pie bakers, Eleanor Manning, for advice. Her pies have melt- in- your- mouth goodness and the crusts are tender layers of flaky goodness. Behind her stretches a lifetime of pies, and she’s still going strong. Apple, cherry, rhubarb, custard, lemon meringue – name the pie and Eleanor has made it.

“Surely she has a carefully guarded secret for perfect pies,” I thought.

When I asked her, “How do you make such perfect crusts?” Eleanor quickly went to the kitchen and returned carrying her old high school home ec book, Basic Principles of Domestic Science, by Lilla Frich. The cover was worn and bespattered. The pages perilously loose, but the recipes were all still there – having served a lifetime dating from Eleanor’s marriage in 1917 when she was only eighteen years old.

While Glenn ran a dairy farm Eleanor cooked for hired men and her three children, Norman, Martha and Elizabeth, plus friends and relatives they collected from far and wide.

In the community she was active in Eastern Star and went through all the offices. She was a devoted member of the Christian Church and the Ladies Aid Society and helped by tying comforts and quilting.

Eleanor and Glenn loved to travel and went to every state of the union, Canada three times, to Nassau, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Europe, Nova Scotia, and Mexico many times. They often drove in a camper.

When they weren’t working or traveling they were square dancing or having fun. Eleanor has a rare gift of friendship and their home overflowed with guests, both family and friends.

They spent many summers in Colorado – often with some of their 10 grandchildren and their young friends. They all knew grandma would welcome them with open arms and feed the whole gang. In the winter for the past ten years they went to Texas where in 1982 they celebrated their 65th anniversary of marriage.

After Glenn’s death last year Eleanor has lived at their home in Sedgwick where she leads an active life and entertains often. Even though she tragically lost two grandchildren in the prime of their life she perseveres and is an inspiration to those who know her.

When asked her secret for such a rich, full life Eleanor replies, “We worked hard and drank lots of orange and grapefruit juice. We were always ready to take up anything we wanted to do.”

PIE CRUST

1 ½ cup flour ½ cup lard or Crisco

3 tablespoons water, cold ½ teaspoon salt

Sift flour before measuring. Mix flour and salt. Cut fat in with pastry blender or rub shortening in with hands (I prefer my hands). Add cold water. Combine lightly to form a ball of pastry. This makes one 2-crust pie or two 1-crust shells.

Bake at temperature called for in pie recipe.

LEMON MERINGUE PIE

Filling: 1 cup sugar 3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup boiling water Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

2 egg yolks

Meringue: 2 egg whites 2 tablespoons sugar

Directions for filling: Mix sugar and cornstarch. Add boiling water. Cook until clear and thick. Add beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, butter and rind. Cook for a minute or two. Pour into baked shell.

Directions for meringue: Beat whites until stiff. Add sugar gradually. Spread over filling to edges. Brown at 350° until delicately colored.

COCONUT CREAM PIE

Filling: 2 cups milk ½ cup sugar

2 or 3 eggs, depending on size 3 tablespoons cornstarch

½ cup coconut

Meringue: 2 eggs whites 2 tablespoons sugar

Extra coconut

Filling: Combine sugar and cornstarch. Add milk. Cook until thick. Add to beaten yolks (save whites). Add coconut. Cook another minute or two. Pour into baked shell.

Meringue: Beat whites until stiff. Add sugar gradually. Spread on pie. Sprinkle with coconut. Brown lightly in 350° oven.

CUSTARD PIE

2 eggs 1/3 cup sugar

2 cups milk Nutmeg

Beat eggs and sugar. Add milk. Pour into unbaked shell. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes. Turn oven down to 350° to finish. Bake until jiggly in middle. No exact time. Be careful not to overbake.

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