Recipe: Grand Diplôme Cherry Pudding

Valentine's Day dessert!

“Cherry pudding, with a meringue topping, can be served hot or cold.”—Grand Diplôme Cooking Course, vol. 3 (1971) 

“If possible fresh red cherries should be used for this dessert; if using canned ones, reduce the sugar in the pudding to 1 tablespoon.” 

“Add the drained cherries to the milk, egg and breadcrumb mixture before baking. Carefully pile the meringue on top of baked cherry mixture before returning pudding to a low oven to bake until crisp.” 

GRAND DIPLÔME CHERRY PUDDING 

1 lb fresh red cherries, pitted, or 16 oz can pitted red cherries, drained 
2 ½ Tbsp sugar 
1 ¼ C milk, scalded 
1 C fresh white breadcrumbs 
2 egg yolks (use whites for Meringue, below) 
Grated rind of ½ lemon 
1 C heavy cream (for serving—optional) 
Meringue Topping 

Preheat oven to 350°. If using fresh cherries, put into a pan, add 1 ½ Tbsp sugar, cover, and cook over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour scalded milk over breadcrumbs and let stand 5 minutes. Stir in egg yolks, remaining 1 Tbsp sugar, and grated lemon rind. Drain fresh cherries (if using) and add drained cherries to mixture. Spoon mixture into a buttered 1 quart capacity soufflé dish, stand dish in a water bath, and bake 30 to 40 minutes or until mixture is just set. Remove pudding from oven and reduce oven temperature to 300o. Prepare Meringue Topping. Spread Meringue Topping over cherry mixture, sprinkle Meringue with reserved sugar, and let stand 4 to 5 minutes at room temperature. Bake pudding 30 minutes. Serve hot or cold with heavy cream (optional) 

MERINGUE TOPPING

Recipe: Peach Supreme

I know it's bad form to post a photo of food that's half-eaten. We couldn't help ourselves. Sorry!

This recipe come from our local Baptist church cookbook. The woman who contributed this recipe commented, “This makes a wonderful cool summer dessert.” It also makes a wonderful mid-summer morning pick-me-up.

Recipe below.

Recipe: Peach Crisp

Life is good.

PEACH CRISP

2 ½ C peaches, sliced or chunked

½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder

¾ C sugar

2/3 stick (1/3 C) butter, melted

½ tsp salt

1 C flour

1 egg

Preheat oven to 375^o. Place peaches in a lightly greased baking pan and sprinkle with cinnamon. Sift together baking powder, sugar, salt, and flour, add egg, and mix with a fork until blended well. “This mixture will be crumbly.” Spread mixture over peaches, drizzle melted butter over top, and bake 40 minutes.

Recipe: Marble Cake

This is an amazing cake.

I recommend a slice with a glass of iced coffee after you've taken your dogs for a run in your pasture, about 9:30ish. And a second slice with several scoops of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream after you've worked in the garden, while you're reading Best of the Web, about 3:30.

MARBLE CAKE
Serves 12-14

2 sticks butter, softened
2 C sugar
4 eggs, separated
2 tsp vanilla
3 C sifted cake flour
3 ¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 C milk
1 C chocolate syrup (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section)

Preheat oven to 350o. Cream together butter and sugar, then add egg yolks one at a time, beating well. Add vanilla. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt, and add alternately to creamed ingredients with milk. Beat egg whites stiff and fold into batter. Pour half the batter into a greased Angel food cake pan. Add chocolate syrup to remaining batter, mix well, and pour over batter in pan. Bake for 1 hour.

Recipe: Devil's Food Pudding

[INSERT PHOTO HERE]

DEVIL'S FOOD PUDDING

2 C flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 squares unsweetened chocolate

1/2 C + 1 C sugar

1/2 C + 1 C milk

1/2 C shortening

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Melt chocolate in saucepan over low heat, adding 1/2 C sugar and 1/2 C milk and working until thickened, stirring constantly. Cool. Cream together shortening and 1 C sugar until fluffy, add eggs and beat. Stir in cooled chocolate mixture. Add dry ingredients alternately with 1 C milk and vanilla. Pour mixture into a "greased paper-lined" tube pan. Bake 1 hour 10 minutes.

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Since we won't be flipping it out of the pan, we omitted the paper lining. 

Christmas is coming. It's time to bake some vanočka!

Merry Christmas (in Czech)!

Unbeknownst to me before I met Mr. Big Food many years ago, Texas has a large population of folks of Czech decent. Count Mr. Big Food's Mom among them. Both her grandmother and grandfather were born in Czechoslovakia. The Czech's have a rich food heritage. Needless to say, this heritage has found its way into Mr. Big Food's Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide which contains (among many other things) recipes for  "Tex-Czech and Tex-Central European foods, handed down from Gran, Tait, and other “old timers” from the Dallas SPJST." 

Because it's Christmas time, Mr. Big Food's Mom and her son will soon be making a vanočka! 

Prepared for vanočka

 I'll post the recipe soon so you, too, can enjoy some Czech vanočka!

UPDATED to correct multiple errors brought to my attention by Mr. Big Food's Dad!

Pie: Pt. 3

The turkey, gravy, dressing "like my mother made," and unseen mashed potatoes

Cranberries, green bean casserole, and PIE.

The winner is Pumpkin Custard Pie.

To be fair, the vote was 2-1. Our dinner guest, The Bart Man, cast his vote for Perfect Pumpkin Pie because it was a perfect pumpkin pie. And that is was.  But the contest was for better pie, not better pumpkin pie. We were not interested in which pie was the pumpkin pie exemplar-- just which pie was better. The rules of these contests can get tricky, especially if you're not there to make them up as we go along.

Pie: Pt. 2 [Vegan update]

The pies, about to go in the oven

Pumpkin custard pie (L); Perfect pumpkin pie (R)

The pies, fresh from the oven

Perfect pumpkin pie (L); Pumpkin custard pie (R)

There will be a "Pie: Pt. 3" post after the sweet whipped cream is whipped, and we decide which pie we like better. "Why is everything a competition?" you may be asking. Because competitions are "critical reviews," says Mr. Big Food.

~~

Miss M. called this morning to tell me she has a new-found respect for me. And she also understands why there was so much cussin' and swearing coming from the kitchen when I was making pie crust. She started cussin' after the first five seconds with her crust. The one I made for these pies, something like "Classic Crisco Crust," was pretty easy to deal with. I even managed to get the fluting around the entire pie. 

Miss M., a vegan, had to make some substitutions in her recipe. Margarine for butter.

I remember calling my mom when I was learning stuff. 

Croquembouche

Croquembouche, from The Creative Cooking Course (1982), edited by Charlotte Turgeon, 

Weathervane Books, New York, p223

Mr. Big Food has just finished the desserts section in The Creative Cooking Course, a cookbook that weighs seven pounds. By the time he's finished with the book, he'll have spent nearly a year working through every page, culling every recipe deemed fit for his Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide. He'll type each recipe or tidbit of information into an individual Word document. I do not believe this is the most efficient strategy-- you should see the structure of the folders under the main "Recipes" folder!-- but with more than 15,000 recipes, it's too late for him to change his strategy.

I'm not going to post the recipe for this beautiful dessert but please click on the photo to enlarge. Those thin threads are spun sugar. The book contains instructions for making spun sugar. Those are creampuffs, with butter rosettes defining each individual puff.

Mr. Big Food was excited to show me this particular photo this morning. Our wedding cake was a croquembouche. :-) We then skimmed through the desserts section, looking at the pictures. We are talking about some serious cooking and baking here. Does anyone these days do this sort of thing-- in their own home? To me, 1982 doesn't seem that long ago, and yet looking at those pictures of steamed puddings, fondant trimmings, and Christmas frozen custard cake, it seems worlds away.