Chocolate cream cheese fudge

Recently I have made far too many tasteful, sensible recipes, the last (savoury) French dish I made was vegan, for pity’s sake. The time I fried macaroni cheese is so long ago, it’s moved from reality to pub anecdote. (Yes, I am very popular.) It’s time for something ridiculous, and what better to inspire me than the food industry itself, with the recent launch of chocolate-flavoured cream cheese, the thought of which makes me feel faintly nauseous, but this recipe… I was…intrigued.

Macaroons

A generous friend gave me a pack of delicious marzipan to which, this weekend, I felt compelled to do more justice than simply cutting off tiny pieces and eating them and which all but one of my cook books deem suitable only for lagging a cake or dyeing and forming into tiny fruit.

Hurrah, then, for this volume half-inched (well, not really, I asked permission) from the family collection. The Complete Book of Desserts (Ann Seranne, 1952, Faber and Faber for the Cookery Book Club) is just that – 357 pages, divided into 18 chapters including Baked and Steamed Puddings; Gelatin Desserts; Cornstarch, Rice, Farina and Other Creamy Desserts; Dessert Omelets [sic] and Souffles. The recipes assume a reasonable level of cooking ability and are consequently fairly light on detail and some recipes are printed over two pages leading to turning during cooking, never good for the panicked cook. I also like the bright, kitsch slip cover.

Cinnamon Slices

I am greatly enjoying broadening my baking repertoire through this blog and today is opportunity for another experiment. I genuinely have no idea how these will turn out – firm? Crunchy? Crumbly? (This recipe from the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium,Waverly, 1955).

Cinnamon Slices

Ingredients
6oz ground almonds
8oz icing sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
A little egg white
1 tsp flour

Custard Creams

Cream-filled biscuits seem to have dropped out of UK baking fashion in favour of American-style cookies, healthy things containing grated apple or dead easy things like flapjack (nice though all those can be).  The Good Housekeeping Institute’s Cookery Compendium (Waverly, 1955), however, is full of biscuits of every kind, from things like this (pretty much) and this to custard creams! I thought custard creams were dreamed up by some marketing person in, well, the past and I was basically right.  They were a late 19^th century invention, probably by Huntley & Palmers of Reading, probably to capitalise on the new popularity of custard powder. (More info here.)

Chequerboard Cake

This recipes comes from a box of recipe cards I got from a charity shop in Camden for £3 called Alison Burt’s Super Saving Cookery Cards, published by Hamlyn in 1975. I was in two minds about buying them as I’d been at the car boot previously and had a lot to carry home already. But, heck, I’m glad I made the effort, as they’re kind of amazing. It’s a collection of around 200 cards, divided into categories like Budget Entertaining, Oriental Cookery, Scones and Teabreads, Ice Cream Desserts. The recipes are mainly quite sensible but some of them are wonderfully tacky in a vaguely Abigail’s Party way (Kipper Pizza, anyone?), and all of them are depicted on the front of the recipe card with a picture, occasionally featuring some odd set dressing (Dutch macaroons are displayed in tiny ceramic clogs and arranged around a windmill). I haven’t found much online about Alison Burt – Alibris have a few cookery titles by someone of the same name, looks like she did a few cookery titles. There’s enough intriguing recipes in this box to keep anyone going for a lifetime, but I decided to make something from the Special Cakes section: