Monday, June 14, 2010

Handwritten Recipe Gems: Lady Baltimore Cake

The pamphlet pictured is the one I picked up on the way home from Disney, at the Orlando I. Airport. It is a collection of store owner Brady Keys Jr.'s Mom's handwritten recipes. She was a chef, and he found bags of her recipes in her closet after she died. He even scanned in some handwritten gems. In the midst of trying to entertain and feed the two boys during the extra two hours of waiting, I was thrilled to find this. My husband couldn't believe I found a vintage cookbook at the airport...

Because the copyright is 2006, I can't print recipes from that pamphlet but I pulled out one of my boxes of handwritten recipes. This one is for Lady Baltimore Cake, a very popular and well known cake that appears in many of my cookbooks. It uses egg whites, and Lord Baltimore uses egg yolks. This version gives almost no directions, though - could you make this?

Lady Baltimore Cake
1/2 C. butter
1 1/2 C. sugar
4 egg whites
3 C. sifted pastry flour
1 C. liquid:  1/2 milk, 1/2 H2O
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. B.P.
Fold egg whites in last.

So - no baking time, or pan size, or oven temp. Interesting. If you really wanted to do this, you could compare it to the many versions of this out there in modern websites.

I read Katie MacAlister's  Steamed: A Steampunk Romance (Paranormal Romance (Signet))on the trip as I'm getting a bit into Steampunk. Love the atmospheric details, and Katie makes fun of the genre while in it, talking about goggles, and corsets worn outside of clothes, etc. Cute romance. Great beach read.

Feeling trip letdown today for sure. Deadlines loom for various freelance projects, and I have some shows coming up. Back to work tonight. All of these are things I enjoy, but at the moment am wishing I could take a steampunk airship back to Disney!

3 comments:

Sassy Lassies Vintage Life said...

What a great find. Most gals of that generation knew how to bake, so she did not need directions, just proper measurements. Cakes are cakes...usually. You cream the sugar and fat (butter) till nice and fluffy then add the dry ingredients alternating with the wets until all blended and them fold in the whipped (I would say almost stiff) egg whites. Bake in a 350 degree oven using two 8" or 9" pans. Of course those pans would also be greased and floured in preparation for the batter. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until cakes pull away from the sides.

I know you know how to do this..but it felt good writing it down. Did I miss anything?

Kathleen Ernst said...

Handwritten recipes - what a treasure! Great find.

Unknown said...

"Ghosts of Manhattan" by George Mann is a recent steampunk entry set in an alternate 1930's NYC where most of the planet is still dominated by the British Empire. The hero is a steampunk version of the Shadow.