Strawberry Shortcake

As you enjoy the Labor Day weekend, what better way to celebrate the end of summer than with a bunch of fresh strawberries and a little homemade shortcake?

Thankfully my 10-year-old friend Geraldine from Fun with Cooking: Easy Recipes for Beginners has the perfect recipe for us to try! Let's get started.

Strawberry Shortcake
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup shortening
Strawberries
Powdered sugar

1) Follow the instructions on page 36 for Baking Powder Biscuits but use the new amounts given above. Be sure to sift the sugar with the dry ingredients. 
 
Beep-beep-beep-beep-be-beep-beep-beep-beep...we interrupt this broadcast for a breaking biscuit recipe! I've never made biscuits before, so this will be a venture into uncharted territory!

 

     Baking Powder Biscuits 
--Sift the flour, baking powder, salt (and sugar) all at once into a bowl.  
--Add the shortening and, using the fork, blend into the flour until you have a crumbly mixture. 
--Make a hollow in the middle of the mixture and into it pour the milk. Stir only until the milk is all taken up and you have a rather sticky ball of dough.
 

--Place the dough on a well-floured board and roll it gently with a floured rolling pin until it is a patty about 1/2 inch thick.
--With a biscuit cutter, cut rounds of the dough, each one just touching the next one, in order to get as many biscuits as possible. Pat the left-over strips into biscuits also.

--Lay the biscuits on a greased pan, not too close together, and bake in a hot oven, 450 degrees, for 10-15 minutes, until they are lightly browned on top.

Okay, now that we've made our biscuits, let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming!

2) Wash and pick the strawberries. Mash them a little with a fork, leaving a few whole ones. Sweeten by stirring in a spoonful of powdered sugar.
(I didn't quite do this step--I prefer my strawberries to be fresh and natural, but this syrupy strawberry mixture would be delicious, I am sure.)

3) Split each biscuit and put some crushed strawberries over the bottom half. Then put back the top half of the biscuit and add more strawberries. If you like, finish with a dab of whipped cream sweetened with powdered sugar.

And there you have it! Featuring: baking powder biscuits (plus sugar) all dressed up as strawberry shortcake. Taylor added a little ice cream and some hot fudge to his, and I stuck with whipped cream. Next time, I'll roll the dough a little thicker so that the biscuits are taller and fluffier. And I might add a bit more sugar to sweeten the shortcake, too.

Hey, look at me! I'm cooking!

Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwich

It's been about two weeks since I opened my Peanut Butter Sandwich poll. If you recall, the agreement was that Taylor would eat whatever sandwich received the highest number of votes. I bet you've been dying to know the winner.

Well, wait no longer. The winning PB combo is.......

Peanut butter and bacon!

In a close second was peanut butter and cream cheese, followed by peanut butter and jelly, and a rogue fourth place vote for peanut butter and nutella. Still, bacon came out on top, so let's get to it!

Peanut butter and bacon sandwich
Blend 1/2 cup peanut butter with 1/4 cup cooked minced bacon. Makes 3 full-sized sandwiches.

Sounds simple enough! Clearly the biggest task in this exercise would be cooking and mincing the bacon. I've made bacon a handful of times, and it's pretty easy. I put a few slices in the pan, turned up the heat to medium-high, and let the bacon do its thing.

Once the bacon was extra crispy, I patted it dry with a paper towel and chopped it up into tiny little pieces.

Then I folded the minced bacon into the peanut butter, and spread the mixture onto a couple of slices of toast.

And there you have it! A peanut butter and bacon sandwich. I poured a glass of milk and set out my test kitchen creation for Taylor. Sheila was on standby.

Like a good sport, Taylor took a big bite...

 ...carefully considered it....

 

...took a swig of milk...

...and asked me, "why are we doing this again?"

I reminded him that peanuts are good for him and that he should find more creative ways to eat them, specifically citing this blurb from Powerlifting Peanut in the National Peanut Council cookbook:

Look what he gets in a handful of peanuts:
More protein than a serving of beefsteak
More iron that a serving of spinach
More B Complex vitamins than a serving of oatmeal
More niacin than 5 slices of enriched bread
More calories than a big dish of ice cream.

That last one isn't so much a selling point for me, but otherwise, wow, go peanuts! That's impressive!

After a few more bites, I asked Taylor what he thought of the sandwich. His review: "It's dry, crunchy, and I can't really taste the bacon." I took a taste and would probably add "super salty" to that description, but overall, not bad. I think we were both surprised that the recipe called for the bacon to be minced. Taylor pointed out we could have achieved a similar taste and texture (without the cholesterol) if we'd just swapped the bacon for some rice krispies. But where's the fun in that? Bacon.4.Life.

Chocolate Milkshake

With summer coming to a close, I'm trying to enjoy every last bit of ice cream before the weather turns cooler. Remember when we made frozen vanilla cream? I still had plenty leftover, but it was beginning to crystallize with freezer burn, so I wanted to find a creative use for it. Good thing I found this recipe for chocolate milkshakes:

Is that a new cookbook, you ask? Why yes, it is! This recipe comes from Fun with Cooking: Easy Recipes for Beginners, by Mae Blacker Freeman. It was published by Random House in 1947.

As soon as I picked up this cookbook, I knew I had to have it. Check out the Introduction--

It reads: This cook book is for beginners. The recipes are interesting yet not difficult, and each step is carefully explained. The recipes are for things youngsters like to eat, so that the young cook can enjoy the results of her own work. A girl who makes the things in this book, following carefully all instructions, gains enough experience to go on to more complicated dishes. Geraldine Miller is the young cook in the pictures. She is ten years old and lives in Woodlyn, Pennsylvania.

I mean, this book was written for me. I'm hardly a youngster, but there isn't a thing written here that doesn't apply to me. I'm even willing to overlook the inherent gender bias in this Introduction because I am just so desperate for victory in the kitchen! (See what I did there? That's the name of this blog, remember?)

Okay, back to the chocolate milkshakes. As you might have noticed from that first shot, before we can make the milkshake, we must first flip to page 44 and make our hot fudge sauce. Yes, folks, this is a multi-page recipe!

Hot Fudge Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Salt
1 cup hot water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1) Put the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and a dash of salt into a saucepan and mix well.
2) Stir in the hot water, then add the vanilla.

3) Put the saucepan over a small flame and cook the fudge sauce until it is thick, stirring all the while.
4) This fudge sauce can be poured hot over ice cream to make a hot fudge sundae. Or you can store it in the refrigerator in a covered jar and use it cold for sundaes, milk shakes, or poured over cake.

Bingo! I decided to chill my fudge sauce in a covered jar so that I could use it for milkshakes later. After a couple of hours in the fridge, I flipped back to page 10 for the very complex task of making a milkshake.

Chocolate Milk Shake
1 cup cold milk
1 tablespoon chocolate syrup (page 44)

1) Put everything into a clean jar that has a tight screw cap. Shake well until frothy. (One or two spoonfuls of ice cream added just before you do the shaking makes the milk shake taste especially good.)

You guys, the recipe seriously says this. It's a book for beginners, after all. And I'm not saying it wasn't helpful.

2) Pour into a glass and serve.

Doesn't that look delicious? People, I'm here to tell you it was. I added the whipped cream and chocolate chips, and that made it even more delicious. (And more photogenic for the blog.)

While I was drinking this delicious concoction, I started reading more "About Milk" from my cookbook for beginners. The book depicts an old milk bottle alongside the description, which I remembered seeing at a local antique mall a few weeks ago:

About Milk
Milk is one of our most valuable foods. It contains many important minerals and vitamins. Every child should drink a quart of milk a day. Milk is made up of millions of very small drops of butter-fat floating in water. They are so tiny that all you can see is an evenly white liquid. When a bottle of milk stands for a while, the larger droplets rise and flow together. This is the cream which you see in the upper part of the bottle. 

The top part is cream. The bottom part is skim milk. All mixed together it is whole milk.

Oh. Cool. I think I'll stick with my homogenized chocolate milkshakes, thanks.