Got Leftover Mashed Potatoes? Bake A Cake!

This is another contribution from Grammy's recipe box. I inherited this recipe box as a young girl when my Grammy passed away from ovarian cancer. Over the years, I have cherished its contents. Some recipes date back to my Grammy's mother El and Grammy's aunt Esther in the 1910-20's. If you use a recipe or cooking tip from Grammy's recipe box, I'd love to hear about it.

To see more of Grammy's recipes, click on the "Grammy's recipe box" label at the end of this post.


Despite the outside temperature being close to 100 degrees F today, I decided to embark on baking a vintage recipe from my Grammy's recipe box that I'd never seen made up before.

This recipe is written in fountain pen in my great-great-aunt Esther's handwriting with her name on the top right corner. The title is written simply "Potato Cake".

Okay...

Well, let's see what the recipe says (my editorial comments are in red italics):

2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1 cup mashing potatoes (warm)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons chocolate [Ahhhh! So it's a chocolate cake?!?!]
1 teaspoon each of ground cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg
1 cup chopped walnuts [Can't put those in because Hubby is allergic.]

Cream fat [I guess this means the butter], sugar, yolks, and potatoes. Add milk and dry ingredients. Add stiffly beaten whites and bake in layers. Temp 350 degrees 15 min., 400 degrees 3 min., 350 degrees 30 min. [HUH?] Serve with chocolate fudge filling and walnuts. [Can't find the recipe for the chocolate fudge filling... darn!]

The first thing I did was discard the baking times because I decided it was easier to make this into cupcakes. Then I realized I was out of cupcake wrappers, so I went to the store to buy some. That's when I found the mini cake pans by Wilton that let you put filling inside the mini cakes. Bingo! That's what I wanted!

Everything went smoothly once I got back into the kitchen. I used unsweetened cocoa powder for the chocolate that the recipe called for. Once the batter was made up, I filled the cupcakes and the mini cake pans and baked according to the instructions for the cake pans. The cupcakes baked for about 15 minutes. The mini cakes baked for a little over 20 minutes.

Hubby wandered into the kitchen after the cupcakes had cooled for over a half an hour. He said, "Mmmmm! These smell good!" I told him to try one of the cupcakes without any icing on it. These are his exact unedited words:

"They sure knew what they were doing back then... Nice chocolate flavor and then you get the cloves... That's good! The cloves thing kinda stays with you... And now I want more... And they're fluffy and moist... It tastes very autumnal!"

The cake is a hit! It is a very dense cake although moist and fluffy (and Hubby said). I'm sure that it would work well in a bundt pan best. The cupcakes have the weight of light muffins.

Now what to do about an icing and filling...

I dug through the recipe box and found another recipe for "Caramel Icing & Frosting". It sounded like a possible match. The recipe reads:

• 1 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon butter
• Put sugar in saucepan, add milk and stir until dissolved. Boil 3 minutes. Take from fire, add butter. Turn into a cold bowl and beat until creamy. Add vanilla. May add chopped nuts.

I followed the recipe as written. Everything was going along fine until I started beating the mixture to make it creamy. The mixture started to cool and become more of the consistency of real caramel candy!

Thinking quickly, I decided to add a little more milk and a little more butter. That solved the problem but it was more of the consistency of a glaze then the filling I needed. Realizing that the fat content of our 2 % milk is almost assuredly lower than the fat content of the milk Aunt Esther used, I added a bit of half-and-half, whipped it for a few minutes, and then I added a full cup of powdered sugar. That made the consistency more like a filling I could use with the mini cakes.

With the mini cakes cooled and the caramel icing/filling fixed, I filled the wells of the mini cakes, stacked the two layers, iced the whole little cake, and then put it in the refrigerator to chill. Then I garnished it with whole walnuts (Hubby can easily pick those off).

Both Hubby and I agree that the combination of the flavors, spice and caramel, are a perfect match. Yum! But I'm sure that there are a lot of other combinations you could think up for this classic vintage recipe. Let me know if you come with one and make it. I'd love to hear what you paired Aunt Esther's "Potato Cake" with. I still can't believe it has leftover mashed potatoes in it.

In the Mood for Chocolate Candy

I must be in a very chocolate-y mood today because I've got chocolate on my mind in a serious way! So much so, that I created a new dimensional art piece devoted to chocolate candy.

Great! Now I want to go to See's and get a box of caramels!

This piece of shadowbox art
is currently on sale at my Etsy store.

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From Grammy's Recipe Box: "Chocolate Creams"

This is another contribution from Grammy's recipe box. I inherited this recipe box as a young girl when my Grammy passed away from ovarian cancer. Over the years, I have cherished its contents. Some recipes date back to my Grammy's mother El and Grammy's aunt Esther in the 1910-20's. If you use a recipe or cooking tip from Grammy's recipe box, I'd love to hear about it.

To see more of Grammy's recipes, click on the "Grammy's recipe box" label at the end of this post.


In my continuing exploration in creating vintage recipe dimensional art shadowboxes, I decided today to make up an old recipe out my Grammy's recipe box. This is the first of many recipes I will be making in order to photograph the finished result and then illustrate it in watercolors for the art pieces.

I inherited my Grammy's recipe box at her passing when I was 10 years old. It's a lovely wooden box with her maiden name initials on the front (she didn't marry until her late 20's). The box is full of recipes that span from around 1910 through the 1970's. The older recipes, written in fountain pen, are yellowed with a wonderful aged patina. Some have splatters of batter on them. Some are missing corners or the ink is smudged. Some recipes are actually dated with the name of the person who introduced the recipe, and I was pleased to find a few that belonged to my great-grandmother and must have come from her recipe box.

Very few, if any, of the recipes are illustrated. And I think I've only witnessed a handful of them being made in my presence. Most of them are for foods that I've never seen or tasted. So this culinary and artistic journey proves to be quite an adventure... and today's experience was no exception.

I decided to start with the handwritten recipe for "Chocolate Creams". They seemed simple enough. But as I have discovered with many of the recipes in the box, the measurements on the ingredients are a bit vague--like exactly how much confectioners' sugar goes into the "cream" to make it a stiff paste. As Hubby pointed out, one was probably supposed to learn how to make it from watching someone else do it again and again. So I had to experiment a bit and tweak a little.

The results are these decadent candy delights that feel "sinful" to even have in the kitchen. Hubby did try some of the "oops" candies and deemed them officially "sinful" in every way that a chocolate-covered almond and vanilla flavored sugar-paste ball can be. Of course I had to taste as I mixed to get the flavoring just right. All the recipe said was "6 drops of flavoring" (see what I mean by vague). The tasting alone gave me a sugar buzz that I'm still feeling as I write this over an hour later.

But I have to admit that the many of the finished candies are promising subjects for the watercolor illustrations I'll be painting. I'll be sharing the finished art piece here as soon as I have it illustrated and constructed. In the meantime, if you want to see the other completed pieces that make up the debut collection of my vintage recipe dimensional art, just click here.

This is how the recipe is written (I did some tweaking that I'll note after):

Chocolate Creams
1 egg white
2 T cold water
Confectioners sugar (powdered sugar)
6 drops flavoring
1/4 lb. sweet chocolate

Beat the egg and water together only til mixed; add the sugar til the ingredients form a stiff paste (about 1-1 1/2 cups). Work in flavoring with sugar; then form into small balls. Grate the chocolate and put in a cup over hot water to melt. Dip the balls into it one at a time; using a fork for the dipping. Lay separately on waxed paper and, if necessary, dip a second time.

Now for my tweaks and tips:

• It took more than 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar to create a paste that could be rolled. I just kept adding until it was stiff enough then rolled the centers using powdered sugar to keep it from sticking.
• I used almond extract AND vanilla as a flavoring and it took way more than just 6 drops to fit my taste.
• I used semi-sweet chocolate chips but I think that next time I'll use an even darker chocolate since the centers are so sweet that the darker chocolate would work. It took more than only a 1/4 lb. to have a deep enough bowl of dipping chocolate. Once I had a deep enough reservoir the dipping was really easy with a fork, and it only took one dip to coat the centers nice and thick.
• I suppose you could flavor the centers with about anything that you can think of. You could even color the center paste to make it different too.
• These need to be kept refrigerated (especially in warmer weather). I had some little Wilton's treat bags that I packaged them in to give away to friends.