Linzertorte

Guest Eurovision blog from Zakia follows:

I took on the Austrian cake Linzertorte which I was reliably informed by Alix would be “simple to make but look impressive”. That’s an aspiration to live by, which made me keen to try it out. It’s apparently the oldest cake recipe in the world, dating from 1693, and became internationally known from the 19^th century. This is one of the Marguerite Patten 1970s recipe cards.

Russian Fish Pie

Last October I made a fish pie, and then lost the recipe card so never blogged it. Yesterday I found the recipe card, handily tucked between the pages of The Pauper’s Cookbook. I can’t remember much about the preparation of this pie, but it was jolly good – here’s the recipe, finally:

Butterscotch cookies

There has been a small amount of golden syrup crystallising in a jar at the back of my carb drawer for about a year now and this recipe seemed like a great way to use it up.   I’ve actually had the jar for so long that the ‘best before date’ has rubbed off the lid.  This recipe is from Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book (6th edition, 1958).

Rosy Baked Chicken

This is from Family Circle Home Entertaining published by Albany Books in 1980.  With chapters such as ‘Wine Sense’, Giving a Cheese and Wine Party’ and ‘A Wedding Buffet Planned at Home’ it offers everything necessary  for one to entertain on a large scale and if this sample recipe is anything to go by it also offers everything necessary to make sure that your guests will think twice before accepting an invitation to future soirees.

Rosy Baked Chicken

4 chicken joints
1 small (200g) can sliced pineapple

Sauce
50g margarine
1x15ml spoon plain flour
2x15ml spoons tomato ketchup
2x5ml spoons dry mustard
1×2.5ml spoon salt
Pepper
1x5ml spoon Worcestershire sauce
1x15ml spoon vinegar

1 (200g) pack frozen peas
1x10ml spoon cornflour

Chocolate Cinnamon Gâteau

This one’s from Cooking With Herbs and Spices by Josceline Dimbleby, published in 1979.  As David Dimbleby’s first wife this book is an intriguing insight into the bizarre eating habits of the rich and famous. Only kidding, it’s a collection of dubious seventies dishes, including Surprise Meatballs – “I love meatballs and there seem to be endless variations to try out. My husband suggested stuffing them with a nugget of cheese…” (It is my experience that if a dish has the word ‘surprise’ in the title then the surprise is very likely to be cheese*). But I wasn’t looking for savoury cheesy treats, but cake recipes, and went for this sumptuous sounding one.

Ginger Drop Biscuits

A recipe from the Drop Cookies sub-section of the Biscuits section of the Reader’s Digest Cookery Year (1976). Confused?

”  Baked drop cookies can be soft with a cake-like texture or crisp and even brittle, often irregular in shape. The soft dough is dropped in mounds on to a baking tray.”

This sub-section also contains recipes for Brandy Snaps and Coconut Wafers.

Cherry Cobblestone Cake

For a barbeque at the weekend myself and Sarah had a vintage cake bake-off. The rules – bake an individual cake (ie no cupcakes) from a vintage recipe, release both cakes simultaneously on the BBQ attendees, and the first cake to be finished wins.  Sarah has already written hers up here, and I must congratulate her as the bake-off winner as her cake was polished off fastest. I feel compelled to point out that her cake was smaller than mine, and next time we might have to think a bit harder about the rules! (nb – am not bitter).

The cake I chose to make was a Cherry Cobblestone Cake, from my current favourite recipe resource, the Alison Burt Super Saving Recipe Cards (note to self – use other recipe books).

Gougére with Chicken Livers and Courgettes with Herbs

Two recipes from Alison Burt’s Super Saving Recipe Cards (first seen here in a spectacular cake fail) which I made together on Good Friday for my dinner. A gougére is savoury French pastry with cheese, and can be small like these or larger with a filling. Alison Burt’s recipe is for a larger gougére with a mix of liver and veg in the centre. The picture shows the dish tastefully arranged against a bit of red cloth, which is quite restrained compared to the presentation on the other recipe cards. The food photographers must have got bored by the time they got to the Pastry and Pies section. The food itself looks like someone was (neatly, admittedly) sick into a baguette.

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: