Tag: recipes

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue cooks Wheat Cereal

VintageJenny
Sue and Ruth Ann make wheat cereal in 1920s double boilers.

On her third cooking lesson, Sue cooks Wheat Cereal with Dates. This lesson took place on Saturday December 9 according to When Sue Began to Cook. This would be considered a warm winter breakfast, although some Twenties families served it throughout most of the year for its nutrition.

If you missed the first two installments, you can start the series with When Sue Began to Cook. Lesson 2 is Sue Cooks Frizzled Beef.

Sue’s notes from the lesson explain why they are making cereal for their Saturday cooking lesson:

It all came about because Ruth Ann told us her Grandmother was always fussing at her because she wouldn’t eat any breakfast food. “But I just can’t, Aunt Bettina. Not even for Mother’s sake!” she said. “I’m never one bit hungry for breakfast.”

Eating breakfast

Ruth Ann is an emotional child, and when she told us about the great big dish of oatmeal her Grandmother set in front of her every morning, her eyes filled with tears, and she shivered almost as if she were cold. “In a thick old bowl, too!” she added. “No wonder I hate it!”

“What’s the bowl got to do with it?” jeered Robin, who always hangs around on our cooking days. “You don’t have to eat the bowl too, do you?”

We all laughed at that, although Mother shook her head at Robin and told him to run out and feed his rabbits. “I know just how you feel about the bowl, Ruth Ann.” she said. “Because I was your kind of a little girl myself once. Of course you must eat your breakfast food, but I’m going to show you just how you can do it and really enjoy it. First, you’ll have to make it yourself!”

Ruth Ann making her own

Ruth Ann looked doubtful. “Maybe Grandmother won’t let me,” she answered. “And besides I don’t know how.”

“You can soon learn,” said Mother. “In fact, you can learn today. And then I am going to give you a little blue bowl to eat it in, a bowl I had when I was a little girl.”

“Oh Mother, the one that used to be Aunt Mattie’s?” I cried, very much surprised. I knew that was one of Mother’s chiefest treasures.

“Yes, dear, Aunt Mattie’s,” Mother said. “Ruth Ann may have it for hers, and I know she’ll take good care of it. See, Ruth Ann!”

I was full of envy when Mother brought out the lovely little round porridge bowl, so thin and dainty. She would scarcely let Robin or me touch it, not to mention using it for our breakfast food!

“It seems to me even oatmeal would taste good in that,” said Ruth Ann with shining eyes. “That is, if I didn’t have to eat too much of it!”

“Wait till I show you how to make my kind of wheat cereal with dates,” said Mother. “It will give you as big a breakfast appetite as Robin’s! But in order to have the charm complete, you must do a third thing for me.”

“Oh, I will! I will! What is it?” cried Ruth Ann eagerly.

Nutrition and exercise go hand in hand

“While the cereal is cooking in the double boiler, you must put on your coat and hat and run around the house six times, no matter how cold and snowy it is.”

“Of course I will if you say so, Aunt Bettina!” (Mother isn’t truly her aunt, you know. She only calls her so because her Mother and mine were such good friends when they were little girls.)

“And then you must come in, finish cooking the breakfast food, and eat a good sized dish of it in the little blue bowl.”

“Oh, I will! I will! And I’ll write and tell Mother all about it!”

“Splendid! said Mother. “But now we must get to work on our third cooking lesson and learn exactly how to make Wheat Cereal with Dates.”

Make it yourself

Here’s the recipe for Wheat Cereal with Dates as it appeared in the book.

Print Recipe

Wheat Cereal with Dates

from How Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 3 cups boiling water
  • ¾ cup wheat cereal such as Cream of Wheat
  • 1 tsp salt Don't forget this if you want it to be good
  • ½ cup seeded dates, cut fine

Instructions

  • First, we looked over the dates and washed them well. Then we took out the seeds with a sharp little knife. Then we cut them very fine. (The dates, not the seeds.)
  • We each put three cups of water in the top of our own double boiler and set it directly over the fire. We had the under part of the double boiler half full of hot water on another part of the stove. We let the three cups of water come to a slow boil and then we added the salt. We stirred the cereal in slowly, mixing it with a spoon all the time. (Mother told us not to let the water stop dancing while the cereal was being added.)
  • * Note: Today's double boilers are not usually designed to sit on a stove's heating element without the bottom portion. Only the bottom part fits on the stove. If you use a double boiler, it will take longer to bring the water to a boil with both sections together. Or you can use a heavy pot directly over the flame, but it must be stirred well or it will stick and scorch.
  • When all the cereal was in, we let it boil hard for about three minutes, stirring it all the time.
  • Then we each set the utensil (I mean the upper part of the double boilder holding the cereal) into the lower part that had water in it, and let it cook that way slowly for about forty five minutes.
  • After the cereal had cooked for thirty minutes we added the dates and let it cook fifteen minutes more. ("The kitchen clock is the cook's best friend," Mtoher says.)
  • If you'll just try it yourself and serve it warm with sugar and cream, you'll never say again that you don't like breakfast food! Mother says we can use raisins or seeded prunes cut fine the next time we make this cereal, but as for me, give me dates!

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Cooks Frizzled Beef

VintageJenny

When Sue Began to Cook, one of the books in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series, tells the story of Bettina’s young daughter Sue and her adventures in the kitchen. On her first Saturday lesson, she and her friend Ruth Ann made Cocoa Drop Cookies. You can find that post here. For Lesson 2, Sue cooks Frizzled Beef on Toast. This recipe is known over the midwest and southern United States as chipped beef, SOS, S— on a Shingle, as well as by other names.

Basically, Sue and Ruth Ann are learning to make a white sauce. Many Twenties recipes used a good white sauce as gravy over a main dish course. Or perhaps mixed into left over meat and bread crumbs to make timbales or patties. A good white sauce also forms the base for some cream soups. All in all, learning to make white sauce is a good beginning step for any cook, because it’s a skill utilized in the kitchen over and over again.

Sue’s thoughts on the lesson

Here are Sue’s comments on the recipe, from her cooking class notebook:

When Mother said at breakfast this morning that she was going to let us make frizzled beef for our cooking lesson today, Robin butted right in and said, “Jinks! I don’t call that anything to make! Why don’t you make cream puffs or fudge or something folks really like?” (Meaning by “folks,” himself and Ted that always hangs around anytime there’s any cooking going on. Especially doughnuts or candy or frosting.)

“Maybe you and Teddy think we’re doing this cooking just for your benefit!” said I scornfully, looking as sarcastic as I could. [At times Sue could be a nicer older sister.] “Ruth Ann and I are learning to be practical cooks, and we aren’t planning our lessons just to suit two silly little boys that can’t even do their arithmetic problems without help!”

I had him there, as Father says. Even though he is a boy, I’m lots better at mathematics than he is and many’s the time Mother has to help him in the evenings.

Frizzled beef for lunch

“Don’t quarrel, children,” said Mother, not noticing that as usual it was Robin who was doing all the quarreling. “This frizzled beef is going to be just as good as doughnuts or fudge or icing. And we’re going to have it for lunch today, too. So if Sue and Ruth Ann are willing, you may ask Teddy to stay, Robin.”

Robin seemed quite pleased at that. Just as pleased as if he hadn’t said anything about the frizzled beef. And he went off whistling.

The frizzled beef was so easy to make — lots easier than the Cocoa Cookies. And it was awfully good, too, all brown and creamy and curly just the way it ought to be. I had thought mine would be enough for us all (Father doesn’t come home at noon). But the boys were so hungry that Ruth Ann very generously had us eat hers too. (Of course she stayed to lunch.) We had big baked potatoes with the frizzled beef, and big glasses of milk, and cookies and applesauce. After Robin had been served three times at least, he was polite enough to say that it was the best meal he had in a long time. But not one bit of the beef was left for Father!

Continue with the series

You can find Sue’s first lesson and recipe at When Sue Began to Cook.

Make the Recipe

Not only Sue cooks frizzled beef. You can make it, too. Here’s the recipe, directly from the pages.

Print Recipe

Frizzled Beef on Toast

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Breakfast, Luncheon
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • ¼ pound dried beef
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 4 tbsp flour Leveled off smooth with a knife
  • 1 tsp salt Also leveled off with a knife. Nearly everything has salt in it if it's really good.
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 2 cups milk
  • 4 slices nice fresh toast I cut mine in triangles and it looked so nice and partified.

Instructions

  • We tore the beef all up in tiny little pieces. Then we each put the butter in a frying pan over the fire (not too hot a fire!) and when it was all melted and bubbling, we added the dried beef. Then we let it cook, and kept stirring it around all the time till the edges began to curl up. Then we added the flour and mixed well. We let the flour get light brown (we kept stirring it all the time!) and then added the salt, pepper, and milk (still stirring!) and cooked it slowly till it was all thick and creamy.
  • Mother had us make our toast first, so it was all ready waiting on two hot little platters. We poured the frizzled beef over it as neatly as we could, and then decorated it with little sprigs of parsley from Mother's parsley box in the kitchen window. It looked almost too pretty to eat!
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

When Sue Began to Cook

VintageJenny
Illustration from When Sue Began to Cook

On a rainy, dreary November afternoon, Sue complains to her mother that there’s nothing to do. Her brother is at a friend’s house, As for her best friend Ruth Ann — well, she cries all the time now that her mother has been sent away for her health. This is the beginning of When Sue Began to Cook, the last book in the Bettina storybook trilogy by Louise Bennett Weaver.

The complete title of the book is When Sue Began to Cook with Bettina’s Best Recipes. Bettina’s Best Recipes became the brand name of a whole line of cookbooks in the 1920s. Bettina was an authority on cakes and cookies, desserts, sandwiches, and salads. And each topic found its way into one of the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbooks.

Like all the Bettina books, Sue’s story begins with some really bad poetry:

To every other little maid
Who longs to learn like Sue,
But feels a tiny bit afraid
It’s all too hard to do,
To all the little girls who sigh,
“I need a simple book
To help me!” “Here it is!” we cry,
When Sue Began to Cook

Dedication, When Sue Began to Cook, Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron

Bettina suggests that Sue invite Ruth Ann over for weekly cooking lessons. Then Bettina will teach them both to cook. The plan will occupy Sue at the same time that it gives Ruth Ann something to think about besides her sick mother. (In 1924 when the book was written, Ruth Ann’s mother probably has tuberculosis and was sent to Arizona for the dry air in hopes that it would cure her. The book, however, never says.)

Sue loves the idea, and runs to tell Ruth Ann about the new Saturday plans. The girls’ story unfolds from the notes that Sue keeps after each cooking session. Here are her notes from the first day:

I found Ruth Ann crying, as usual, but it didn’t take her long, after she heard about the Cooking Class, to hustle into a clean dress and hurry over. And oh, the cookies were delicious! 

I intended to save mine for dinner tonight, but of course Robin and Ted came in perfectly ravenous and teased so hard that I had to give them ten or twelve apiece and that doesn’t leave many for Father when he comes. But how proud he’ll be to try his daughter’s first cookies. That is, the first ones I’ve made entirely alone, even to lighting the oven and washing the dishes afterwards.

When Sue Began to Cook, page 14.

As a first recipe, Sue and Ruth Ann make Cocoa Drop Cookies. Then the next week they start at the beginning and learn to make Frizzled Beef over Toast. This recipe is known regionally under many different names in the United States. Chipped beef, SOS, and S—- on a Shingle are but three of the ways people refer to this dish.

Each week Sue and Ruth Ann tackle a new recipe or cooking method, and they build a nice repertoire of recipes through the year. A winter Wheat Cereal with Dates progresses to gingerbread. Then spring brings Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes. The heat of summer brings recipes for Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce, Fruit Sherbet, and a Fruit Gelatin. Then the autumn rolls around again, with its traditional Twenties recipes for doughnuts, peanut brittle, and popcorn balls.

In Chapter 52, the last week of the year’s lessons. the girls present a party for their friends. They cook an entire meal from recipes in the book, and proudly present the fruits of their yearlong course.

When Sue Began to Cook makes a good beginning cookbook for teens interested in cooking history, for cookbook collectors, and for people who want to learn to cook simple recipes. Currently this book is unavailable in any free downloadable format, so you’ll have to search out a 1924 copy yourself.

If you’re new to the world of Bettina cookbooks, I wrote about the first one in the post A Cookbook Worth Reading.

Print Recipe

Cocoa Drop Cookies

Taken from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, cookies, Twenties

Ingredients

  • ½ cup lard Mother says butter makes them too rich.
  • 1 cup light brown sugar No lumps, remember!
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 tbsp water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2⅓ cups flour
  • 4 tbsp cocoa Leveled off with a knife blade.
  • 2½ tsp baking powder Leveled off with a knife, too. This is important.
  • ¼ tsp salt All good cookies have salt in them.

Instructions

  • Mother had us each put the lard in a nice round-bottomed yellow bowl and cream it. (That means mash it down with a big spoon until it is very soft.) And then add the sugar and keep on creaming until the mixture looked all one color. Then we broke the eggs into a little dish and added them one by one to the sugar mixture. (Mother said to break and add them one by one so as to be very sure they were good.) Then we kept on stirring with the big holey spoon for two whole minutes. Then we added the water and the vanilla.
  • We put a little more than two and one-third cups of flour through the flour sifter and after it had been sifted once, we measured it out and took exactly two and one-third cups of it. Then we put it back in the empty sifter and added the cocoa, the baking powder and the salt. We sifted them through twice all together.
  • (Mother says we must always be very sure about the level spoonful. She had us take a knife and level the filled spoons off very carefully. This is important.)
  • We dumped the flour mixture into the bowl with the other things, and stirred just enough to be sure everything was well mixed.
  • Then we each greased our cooky-sheet with a clean piece of paper that had been dipped in a little lard. (Several pie pans will do instead, Mother says.) Then we took up a little of the cooky-dough on the end of the mixing spoon and scraped it oiff on the cooky-sheet with a knife. (She told us to be sure these little cooky mounds weren't too large; they oughtn't to be more than an inch across.) We dropped these bits of dough about three inches apart on the greased sheet and flattened each of them down a little with a knife that had just been dipped in warm water.
  • Then we baked the cookies in a moderate oven for about fifteen minutes. [Moderate oven: 350-375º F] Mother had us light the oven a few minutes ahead of time, and then turn it down so it wouldn't be too hot when the cookies were put in.
  • Chocolate or cocoa cookies burn easily, she said, so we looked at them often. Sometimes those on the edge of the pan got done first and had to be removed carefully and slipped onto another flat pan to cool. All our cookies couldn't be baked at once, so we kept the dough in a cool place (not near the stove!) until the oven was ready again.
  • As soon as the cookies were all finished and cool, we each packed them carefully away in a stone jar.

Notes

This recipe is taken directly from When Sue Began to Cook, copyright 1924, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron.
Parties and Visits · Vintage Entertainment

Your Afternoon Tea Shelf

VintageJenny
top half of a tea cart, set with two cups and saucers, a creamer, a covered sugar dish, a large metal coffee server, and a bowl of fruit. From 1923.

What can you throw together when a friend stops by for a chat? If your pantry’s afternoon tea shelf is stocked, worry no more. Pull out a few tasty nibbles and treats you can combine quickly, assemble them on a tray, and pour the tea.

This idea comes from 1923, and like many ideas it needs resurrection from its current space, buried within the pages of a woman’s periodical. The general emergency shelf concept wasn’t new. It took its place among the solid advice offered to new homemakers: Always have a small shelf of ready to use foods for unexpected guests or that long day away.

Your Own Afternoon Tea Shelf

The afternoon tea shelf, however, gives a new twist to the idea. Especially if you like the idea of holding tea parties to entertain close friends, you might see the advantage in the suggestion. You clear off a shelf in your pantry or a small shelf in a corner cupboard that you don’t often use. Designate it the Tea Shelf. But what do you put on it?

Of course, you would include a box of crackers. Pour them into a bowl, set them out side by side covered with 1/4 slice of your favorite cheese, or spread with a bit of cream cheese and sprinkle with a flavoring spice like garlic, Italian seasoning, or your favorite mixture. (Better yet, combine the flavor with the cream cheese before spreading.) You may even want to include two boxes of crackers. Simple rice crackers always taste light and airy, while a heavier entertainment cracker like Ritz or an allergy-safe alternative creates a great base for simple spreads.

Another good idea is a box of favorite cookies that have a long shelf life. Oreos, chocolate chip, or Vienna wafers give you some ideas, but the cookie aisle is filled with options. Choose a favorite.

Easy Shelf Stocking Ideas

Here are some other ideas:

  • Make some cookies and store them on your shelf. It will ensure that you visit the shelf often as you eat them before they become stale.
  • Marshmallows, either mini or regular.
  • Chocolate in small bar or individually-wrapped form. You will want to unwrap the chocolate before you present it, however. Guests seem to have an aversion to opening sealed items.
  • Nuts, either one kind or mixed. Small containers don’t take up much space. This is not the time to buy a huge container of Costco peanuts.
  • A jar of marmalade or preserves.
  • Small jar of honey. Again, a small container works here. Store the 2 pound glass jar that you use for everyday cooking on another shelf.
  • Sugar, turbinado sugar, or brown sugar that you can use to sweeten the tea.
  • A small jar of mayonnaise if you don’t always have some in the fridge, for savory sandwiches.
  • Peanut butter
  • Dried fruit, with or without extra sugar: cherries, pineapple, crystallized ginger.

Once you have all these things, plus the refrigerated items you always keep on hand (like cream cheese), you can combine them into all sorts of novel treats.

Easy Combinations from Your Stash

Use the cookies as the base for a sweet sandwich. Take a couple tablespoons of cream cheese and stir in 1/2 teaspoon sugar and some melted chocolate or 1/4 tsp cocoa powder. Spread this on molasses cookies, vanilla wafers, or sugar cookies. Press two of them together to make a sandwich.

Stir a few chopped nuts into a spoon or two of honey and use that to glue two cookies together in a sweet sandwich.

To add spice to those plain table crackers, stir together some peanut butter, a teaspoon or two of half-and-half or full cream (if you have it on hand, milk or milk substitute if you don’t), and some confectioner’s sugar. Use it as a cracker sandwich filling. You can also mix peanut butter with honey for an excellent filling, or peanut butter and some leftover frosting from that cake you made a day or two ago (This is why I never throw away that 1/2 cup of leftover frosting. It may need to make its way to a cookie or cracker.)

Take a marshmallow, place it onto a cracker or round cookie, and stick it in the oven at 350° F for a few minutes until it puffs and begins to brown. Bring it out of the oven, and if you like, decorate the top with a nut or piece of dried fruit like a cherry or pineapple.

Bread slices, cut into 3/4-inch wide pieces, after de-crusting, can be toasted. Then while warm spread with butter and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. This is a grownup take on the ever-favorite childhood breakfast of cinnamon toast.

Adding Cake or Muffins

If you have time to whip up a cake (this is where boxed mixes can shine), bake it in one or two loaf pans. When it’s cool, cut it into thin bread-slice type pieces. Then mix together 1 cup powdered sugar with a Tablespoon or two of milk. Add whatever flavoring you like and stir in some chopped nuts for texture and added nutrition. Then use the frosting as a filling between two pieces of cake. Cut each sandwich into thin finger strips if you like.

Mini muffins can be made from the simplest recipe if you cut off the top, scrape out a bit, and fill the hole with a bit of marmalade or preserves before popping the top back on.

Savory Options for Your Table

Create a savory topping by mixing 2 hard boiled eggs, some diced or ground deli ham, a tablespoon or two of grated cheese, and either dijon mustard, mayonnaise, or a mixture of both to hold it all together. Spread on crackers, or take two to three slices of bread, remove the crust, cut into quarters, toast, and top with the mixture. Voila! Eight to twelve open faced sandwiches.

Top cheese crackers with mayonnaise mixed with nuts. Or spread them with mayonnaise mixed with minced celery. This, of course, will require a larger cheese wafer than your ordinary small 1-inch square cracker. If you have the small kind on hand, toss them into a bowl for free snacking.

Entertain with Impunity

Keep enough small, prepackaged things on hand that you can throw together a tea party at a moment’s notice, and with little to no anxiety. Life is too short to stress over cups of tea and finger sandwiches. Using only three of the ideas from this list will give you an inviting, tasty tea table. And because most of the ingredients came from your afternoon tea shelf, you have the time and energy to enjoy your friends.

If you want more complicated (and impressive) recipes for your afternoon tea party, check out this post on a collection of Recipes for Your Porch Party.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

A Christmas Dinner from 1924

VintageJenny
Large metal bowl filled with unshelled and half-shelled walnuts. A metal nutcracker sticks out of the nuts at an angle. In the background we see part of a large Victorian style window and a small portion of a huge blazing fireplace.

Traditional meals look really big to us today. For those raised on hamburgers and french fries, or pizza and a soda, the multi-course meal seems huge. To give you an idea, here’s a Christmas dinner from 1924 along with a few recipes. Here you’ll find recipes to make Oyster Cocktail, Chestnut Stuffing, and Frozen Maraschino Pudding.

Why were these meals so lavish? Why did they contain so many courses? Well, for one thing, these big meals hearken from a time when they were cooked by servants and served by servants. Therefore, the person in charge of the meal only cooked. He or she wasn’t engaged in working full time outside the home. Actually, the cook also needed to complete no other housework or errands. The food could be delivered to the house. As a result, the cook could focus completely on turning out dinners like this one, night after night.

Given all that, why do we put forth all this effort? If you want to emulate the habits of the wealthy of old, what better time to go all out than the holidays? Plus, feeding a houseful of people really does take more food. One way to stretch the turkey, or whatever you plan to serve, is to include extra sides and an extra dessert. Even though this creates more work, in the long run it’s easier than making a second turkey or a second main dish.

This Christmas dinner from 1924 was designed to be carried out by one young cook in her early twenties. The magazine touted it as the “new bride’s Christmas dinner.” Can you imagine? This would take a lot of advance planning to pull off well as a solo cook.

Christmas dinner men

Oyster Cocktail
Tomato Bouillon, Whipped Cream
Toasted Saltines
Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing
Giblet Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Onions Squash Soufflé
Jellied Cranberries
Endive French Dressing
Cheese Sticks
Frozen Maraschino Pudding
Sponge Cake
Coffee
Nuts Bonbons

The courses

This dinner would be served in five or six different courses, one after another. No normal Twenties dining table contained the space for such a repast if served all at once. So, to give you an idea what this looks like, here’s a possible breakdown of the meal:

Course 1: Oyster Cocktail. This is the appetizer.

Course 2: Tomato Bouillon with Whipped Cream. This is the soup course. The whipped cream is unsweetened. It’s just cream, whipped. The saltines accompany the soup.

Course 3: Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing, Giblet Gravy. Accompanied by the vegetables, which are Mashed Potatoes, Baked Onions, Squash Soufflé, and Jellied Cranberries. This is the main course.

Course 4: Endive with French Dressing. This is the salad course, and it appears at the end of the meal. The Cheese Sticks listed under it accompany the salad.

Course 5: Frozen Maraschino Pudding, Sponge Cake, and Coffee. This is the dessert course.

After dinner: Not really considered a course, nuts and candy or mints sit in bowls on the table for nibbling after the completion of dinner. Perhaps guests enjoy them with a second cup of coffee.

If you want to undertake this or a meal like it, most of the items above are easy enough to replicate. Perhaps you already have recipes in your file. Maybe some of them you’ve committed to memory, like Mashed Potatoes. Really, you only need to roast a turkey once to know how it’s done. The next time, and after that, you only need to check to make sure the oven is set, look on the wrapper for hours to cook, and you’ve got it.

If you’d like it vegetarian

Or maybe you’d prefer to replace the turkey with a great nut roast, and make the meal vegetarian. If so, the best nut roast recipe I’ve ever made is the Cheese and Nut Loaf from the Greens cookbook. While this recipe isn’t vintage, it is really good! To help you find your own copy, I’ve linked to a slightly modified recipe from Epicurious in case you don’t have the cookbook on your shelf.

Oyster Cocktail

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup tomato catsup
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
  • few drops Tabasco sauce, optional
  • 3 dozen oysters
  • 1 stalk celery, for garnish
  • 1/2 green pepper, for garnish

To the catsup add the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and celery salt. If you want to add a few drops of Tabasco sauce, do it now.

Add the oysters to the mixture and chill. Serve in cocktail glasses, garnished with finely chopped celery and strips of green pepper.

If you like, you can replace the oysters with clams, lobster, crabmeat, or shrimp.

Recipe makes six servings.

Chestnut Stuffing

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups chestnut puree
  • 1 cup soft bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup melted butter
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
  • 1 tablespoon grated onion
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 cup cream

To prepare the chestnut purée, boil a quart of large French chestnuts until tender. Let cool until you can touch them safely. Remove the shells and skins and rub through a sieve. (A food processor would probably also work.)

To the puree add the bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings. Moisten with the cream and mix lightly.

Use this to stuff the turkey, or bake in a casserole dish. To bake in the oven separately, turn the mixture into a buttered or oiled baking dish. Cover the dish with foil. Bake the dressing at 400ºF for 30 minutes. Then, if you want a crispy topping, remove the foil and continue baking for 15 minutes or so until the top is golden brown.

Frozen Maraschino Pudding

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup candied pineapple
  • 1/2 cup maraschino cherries
  • 1/4 cup juice from cherries
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 2 egg whites
  • pinch salt
  • 1 cup cream, whipped
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Cut the pineapple into small pieces and halve the cherries. Add the cherry juice and let stand several hours.

Beat the egg whites until they are stiff.

Boil the sugar and water together until the syrup spins a thread (238ºF). Pour the hot sugar slowly onto the stiff egg whites. Add salt and beat until cool. (This will cook the egg whites. If you are concerned, you can use pasteurized egg whites in this dish.)

Fold in the cream, which has been whipped until stiff. Add the vanilla, lemon juice, and fruit mixture.

Freeze for three hours before serving.

Recipe makes six servings.

An alternate fluffy dessert

If you like the idea of the whipped cream and fruit dessert but the egg whites give you pause, here’s an alternative. This recipe for Fruited Cream Dessert contains many of the same ingredients, minus the egg. You can substitute candied pineapple and cherries for the fruit in this recipe, if you like. Be sure to soak the pineapple in the cherry juice before using. The soaking softens the pineapple.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Homemade Christmas Candies

VintageJenny
1920s illustration. Blue bowl sits on a table surrounded by red and green holly. The bowl is piled high with candy of all different shapes and colors. Pink, green, white, and brown squares and rounds fill the bowl.

The candy counter was a popular destination for shoppers. Chocolate Hershey bars, Teaberry gum, and a host of other sweets kept everyone’s sugar-loving tooth happy. For a nickel you could take home a small candy bar, if you made it that far without devouring it. Even so, one of the most popular Christmas gifts continued to be homemade Christmas candies.

Friends and far-flung family alike anticipated the arrival of the yearly candy box. Special homemade Christmas candies such as taffy, fudge, hard peppermints, and even gumdrops nestled happily against one another in the small tin. Some looked forward to the arrival of the tin all year. Homemade Christmas candies were a gift to treasure, and few turned up their noses at such an offering.

This worked to the candy maker’s advantage as well. For the price of a little sugar, chocolate or cocoa, and flavorings (some of which lasted for years on the pantry shelf) a home cook turned out enough candy for the family at home as well as friends and family local and far. A candy recipe makes a huge amount of sugar-laden food for one or two people. Fitting two or three of each kind of candy into a box made a beautiful presentation, and enough filled boxes left the candy maker with just enough of the sweets for home use.

Today I offer some of the old recipes so you can get a start on your home homemade Christmas candies box. Or platter. Or however you want to serve it, send it, or eat it. These recipes for Persian Sweets, Christmas Fudge, Boston Cream, and Frosted Gum Drops are only a few of the candy recipes available.

Note: If you are making candy, and boiling sugar of any kind, you will need a large, deep saucepan. A three to four-and-a-half quart pan should work well. Sugar will boil up and over the top of a pan, creating a burn hazard. The large pan helps to safeguard against this. Please be careful.

Persian Sweets

This recipe is uncooked and easy to throw together if you have the ingredients and a few holes in your candy box. Why this is called Persian Sweets, I have no idea. Other variations of this, with different fruits added, are known as Fruit Rolls. You will need:

  • One cup chopped raisins
  • 3/4 cup chopped dates
  • 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1-2 cups powdered sugar, or enough to cover the candy
  • waxed paper

Mix the raisins, dates, and nuts together. This will be sticky. Knead on a board that you’ve covered with powdered sugar. Knead it until the mass sticks together well.

Roll the candy with a rolling pin, also coated with powdered sugar so it doesn’t stick. Roll until the candy is 1/2-inch thick.

Cut into small squares, no more than 1-inch square. One-half inch squares would make nice cubes, somewhat like Kraft caramels.

Roll the cut squares in powdered sugar until well covered. Wrap each square in waxed paper.

This will keep quite a while if packed in a tin or airtight container. It would be a good candy to send long distances.

Christmas Fudge

This is a chocolate-flavored fudge with a little molasses. It also contains no cream. You will need:

  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 2 rounded Tablespoons butter (each Tbsp would be about 1 1/3 Tbsp, so 2 2/3 Tbsp total)
  • 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, bar form, grated (Lindt and Ghiradelli both offer baking chocolate)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Large, deep saucepan
  • pans for holding the fudge: 8 x 8 baking pan, loaf pans, etc.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, but do not let it brown.

Remove the pan from the heat. Mix in the sugars, molasses, and water.

Boil the mixture 2 minutes. Add grated chocolate and boil for 5 minutes. Always count the time from the point that bubbling begins.

Remove from the heat and add the vanilla. Cool. Then beat vigorously and spread into pans.

Mark into squares. When the mixture is cold, cut the pieces apart with a sharp knife.

Boston Cream

This is reminiscent of the Boston Cream Pie, without the cake.

You will need:

  • 3 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 cup white syrup (Karo or another brand corn syrup)
  • 1 cup sweet cream (whipping cream, whole cream)
  • 1 cup chopped pecans
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
  • 3 oz unsweetened chocolate (Lindt or Ghiradelli baking chocolate)
  • Large, deep saucepan
  • Buttered pans for cooling the candy. A loaf pan would work well, or even several miniature loaf pans.

Boil the sugar, syrup, and cream to a soft ball. In other words, you bring the mixture to a boil. Take a tiny bit on the tip of a spoon and drop it into a glass of ice cold water. The mixture should form a ball in the water but squish when you bring it out of the water. That is a soft ball. It is also 238ºF on a candy thermometer.

Once it reaches soft ball stage, remove the pan from the heat. Beat until the candy is white and smooth. This is going to take a while if you do it by hand.

Beat in the nuts and the flavoring. Turn into deep buttered pans to cool.

When cold, melt the chocolate and pour the chocolate over the top of the candy. Let it stand for several days to ripen.

Cut into slices to serve.

Frosted Gum Drops

These red and green jewels will brighten any candy plate.

You will need:

  • 4 level tablespoons gelatin
  • 1 1/2 cups boiling water
  • 1 cup cold water
  • 4 cups granulated sugar
  • red, yellow, and green food coloring
  • wintergreen or peppermint flavoring oil
  • clover flavoring oil
  • lemon flavoring oil
  • rose oil or flavoring extract
  • granulated sugar for rolling
  • Large deep saucepan for candy making

Soak the gelatin in the cold water for five minutes. Stir in the boiling water until completely dissolved.

Add the sugar and boil for 25 minutes from the time boiling begins, stirring constantly. If you don’t keep it moving it will stick and burn.

Pour the syrup into 4 heatproof containers. When it cools, flavor and color them. Use a drop or two of lemon oil for the first container. Do not color it. For container 2, use a drop or two of green and flavor with wintergreen. For container 3, use yellow coloring and rose flavor. If you use extract rather than oil, you will need a bit more than a drop. For container 4, use red and flavor with clove.

Pour each candy into a small pan that has been dipped into cold water. Loaf pans or other small pans would work.

Refrigerate overnight. Cut into cubes with a knife dipped in boiling water. Roll each piece in granulated sugar until well coated.

Set aside for two days to crystallize.

Note: These flavor and color suggestions are very vintage. If you’d rather use blue food coloring and blackberry flavoring, do so.

More options

Once you get started, candy making can become an obsession. It’s fun to do and generally popular. Taffy pulls bring people together. For that matter, so does a big plate of fudge surrounded by fresh cups of coffee!

Every candy box has a hole where you can tuck just one more thing. If you find yourself in that position, take a look at this no-cook recipe for Easy Fondant Cream Mints. They were a huge hit at my house.

Parties and Visits · Vintage Entertainment

Vintage Halloween Party Menu

VintageJenny
Halloween menu list bordered by a jack o'lantern, a bet in a spider web, and a cake with a witch on it.

Bring vintage entertainment right into your living room when you host a vintage Halloween party. This is the second installment of a series on throwing a Halloween party, Twenties style. If you missed the first part, you can find it here. This time we’re going to focus on food: adding a vintage Halloween party menu to your plans.

When you plan a vintage party menu, the first thing you have to remember is to keep it simple. Gathering people together for an evening of fun trumped ornate, formal entertaining. Most party hosts bought some crepe paper in the appropriate holiday colors (in this case, black and orange). They then spent a few evenings crafting party decorations at home.

Although paper companies released catalogs and idea books filled with ways to decorate with pre-packaged paper items, most party hosts preferred a handmade touch. While a vintage homemaker might buy a printed crepe paper with pumpkins on it, she would be likely to cut out those pumpkins and use them as part of a larger decorating scheme. It created a handmade I cared enough for you that I made it myself touch. Plus, those preprinted sheets of crepe were eye-crossingly busy. A partygoer could only take so much.

Your vintage Halloween party menu

1924 brings you not one vintage Halloween party menu, but two. The first one is very informal and would welcome breaking into the popcorn table centerpiece mentioned in the first Halloween party section.

Menu One

  • Jack O’Lantern Salad
  • Brown Bread Sandwiches
  • Cake of Fate
  • Orange Ice
  • Witches’ Brew

Jack O’Lantern Salad

For Jack O’Lantern salad, select as many large, red apples as there are people to be served. Cut off the top of each one and scoop out the inside. Carve eyes, nose, and mouth on one side like a Jack O’Lantern.

Chop the apple you removed and mix it with an equal amount of diced celery and chopped ripe (black) olives. Put the mixture back into the shells and serve with a dollop of mayonnaise dressing piled on top.

Note: If you want to keep your apple from turning brown, dip it in a little lemon juice. Mix a small amount, a teaspoon at a time, into the cut apple before you combine it with the other ingredients.

Brown Bread Sandwiches

You can use whole wheat, rye, or any other bread that you think would go well with the filling. A bakery loaf is best for this recipe, because you want it whole when you begin.

Slice the bread very thin (in about 1/4-inch slices) and cut the slices into circles with a round biscuit or cookie cutter. For the filling, use 8 oz cream cheese mixed with 2-3 Tbsp drained, shredded pineapple and 1-2 Tbsp chopped pecans.

The Cake of Fate

1920s illustration of a Halloween cake. Layer cake covered in white icing, with a bat, cat, and owl drawn onto the side with chocolate. On the top a witch cut from black paper flies vertically over the top of the cake which is designed like a sundial.
The Cake of Fate……

To make the Cake of Fate, make a two layer cake from any recipe and cover it with firm, white icing. After the icing sets, pipe or draw the clock face, cats, bats, and owls with either a fine clean paint brush dipped in melted chocolate (semi sweet chocolate chips would work well), or chocolate icing in a decorating bag with a fine round tip. The paint brush and melted chocolate is traditional; the cake decorating bag with tip is a modern application.

The witch decoration for the cake is made from black card stock. Print the illustration below and use it to trace onto the sheet of card stock. Cut two witches, and glue them back to back with a wooden chopstick or skewer between. Stick that in the top of the cake.

Traditionally, three items were placed inside the cake: a ring, a thimble, and a silver coin. They were placed inside after baking, as the cake was assembled. Often they rested in the icing between the two layers.

If you want to continue this tradition, you can cut small pictures of a ring, thimble, and silver coin into about 1″ x 1″ squares. Wrap them in Saran wrap or a comparable cling wrap, and slide them between the two layers in three different places before icing the final covering layer over the cake. If you do this, you must tell your guests to look for a piece of paper in their cake. I don’t recommend using the real items because they are all serious choking hazards for a population not accustomed to looking for metal or plastic items in their desserts.

Another option is to get an assortment of cake decorations in the shape of rings, thimbles, and coins and use those to decorate the top of the cake outside the clock. That way everyone gets a “fortune” and they can see it as soon as they look at their piece of cake.

Witch illustration for the Cake of Fate.

Orange Ice

Mold the orange ice in cone shapes. You can get paper ice cones at Amazon. If you look during the summer you can probably find them locally and stash them away for Halloween ice treats. If you want to use a silicone mold that’s cone shaped, Wilton has one but it forms a cone only 2.5 inches high.

To mold an ice, you will make the mixture by the directions and then pack it solidly into whatever mold you are using. In a pinch, a muffin tin would work. Cover the top of the mold with wax paper and then put it into the freezer to freeze for at least two hours. Unmold by turning the container upside down on a platter and wrapping each section with a towel dipped in hot water and wrung out.

In the top of each cone put a crepe paper (or card stock) cutout of a bat, a witch, or an owl.

Since you probably don’t have a recipe for Orange Ice sitting around in your household cookbook, here’s one:

Orange Ice Recipe

2 cups sugar 2 1/2 cups orange juice
4 cups water Grated rind of one orange
3 Tbsp lemon juice

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for five minutes.
  2. Cool the syrup mixture, and then add the fruit juices and orange rind. Let stand an hour.
  3. Strain, and then freeze in an ice cream maker.
  4. Pack into molds as described above or place in a freezer-safe container with a lid. Cure in the freezer at least 2 hours before serving.

Witches’ Brew

For the Witches’ Brew, use any cider punch recipe that you have and love. If you need a recipe, you can use this one:

Cider Punch

2 oranges, juice 1 quart grape juice
2 lemons, juice 1 cup sugar
1 quart cider 2 quarts water

  1. Grate some of the lemon and orange peel, and set aside.
  2. Juice the lemons and oranges. Add the grape juice.
  3. Add the peels to the juices.
  4. Stir in the cider, sugar and water.
  5. Pour in a punch bowl in which you have floating a block of ice.
  6. Serve in small punch glasses.

Menu Two

The second menu is a bit more formal than the first.

  • Creamed Chicken in Cream Puffs
  • Apricot Ice
  • Gold Cake with Chocolate Icing
  • Nuts
  • Popcorn Balls
  • Coffee
  • Cider Punch

Creamed Chicken in Cream Puffs

Creamed Chicken in Cream Puffs is the autumn version of chicken salad in cream puffs. If you don’t know where to find cream puffs locally, and you are up for some invigorating stirring, A Pretty Life in the Suburbs posted a good, doable recipe. I have made cream puffs before from scratch, and this looks similar to the recipe I used.

Creamed Chicken Recipe

3 cups cold cooked chicken, diced
2 1/2 cups milk
5 Tbsp flour
1 pimiento cut into tiny pieces (optional. This is a roasted red bell pepper.)
1/8 tsp pepper (feel free to use more if you like)
5 Tbsp fat (oil, butter, ghee, etc)
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon celery salt

  1. Scald the milk.
  2. In another saucepan or skillet, melt the fat/heat oil over medium heat and add the flour, salt, and pepper. Use a whisk to get the lumps out.
  3. Add the milk slowly to the flour mixture. Stir constantly until the mixture bubbles and thickens.
  4. When thick, add chicken and cook long enough to heat the chicken. Add the pimiento last if you are using it.
  5. To fill cream puffs with the creamed chicken, cut the top off the puff, hollow out the puff leaving 1/4 inch or so around all the edges, and fill with a spoon of warm chicken mixture. You can replace the top of the puff or leave it off, as you please.

Apricot Ice

A fruit flavored ice provided a unique, light dessert for the vintage host.

You will need:

1 1/2 cups apricot pulp, 1 20 – 28 oz can or 2 15 oz cans
2 cups sugar
3 cups water
1/2 cup lemon juice

Use canned apricots and put through a coarse sieve. If you have neither the patience nor the equipment for that, give them a whir in the blender or food processor.

Boil the water and sugar together for ten minutes in a large saucepan. This makes a syrup.

Cool the syrup and add with the lemon juice to the apricot puree.

Freeze in an ice cream freezer to a mush. Transfer to a freezer-safe container let stand one hour or more in the freezer to ripen. Or freeze in individual molds as detailed in the Orange Ice instructions above.

Gold cake with chocolate icing

This is simply a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Use whatever recipe you have. Even a boxed cake with canned icing will work. Keep it simple.

Nuts and coffee

Meals like this typically ended with nuts or mints, little nibbles to clear the palate. Serve whatever nuts you like as long as your guests aren’t allergic to them. They can go in a small bowl in the center of the table or into individual nut cups at each place setting.

Coffee is self explanatory. Serve whatever you like, however you like it.

Popcorn balls

The original article offered no recipe for popcorn balls. This recipe from Taste of Home is pretty standard. Popcorn balls last for several days wrapped in cling wrap film, so you can make them in advance.

Cider punch

See the recipe above under Witches’ Brew.

Next time

Now that you have the decorations and your vintage Halloween party menu under control, the next thing we need to discuss is games for the evening. Stay tuned for the next installment!

The Vintage Kitchen

The Best Vintage Leftover Ham Recipe

VintageJenny
White plate, holding a small baked potato covered with a creamy ham sauce.
Ham in a cream sauce over a baked potato. Delectable.

Everybody has leftover ham sometime, if they eat ham at all. It might be from last night’s celebratory dinner, or perhaps some deli ham is about to go south in the refrigerator. When that happens, this delicious recipe comes to your rescue. It is the BEST vintage ham with cream sauce recipe I’ve used so far. It’s tasty, the family loves it, and it uses up the ham that would otherwise molder in its refrigerator box.

The cookbook actually called this Ham with Cream Gravy. You may call it Delicious. The original recipe, of course, was written in one dense paragraph. I’ll break that down for you into steps in the recipe.

Making the ham and cream sauce

The technique is very simple. First you chop or dice the leftover cooked ham, and brown it in a pan on the stove. If you start with ham slices, learn about the benefits of snipping instead of chopping in this post I wrote about Ten Uses for Your Kitchen Scissors.

Ham cubes in a pan on a stovetop.
The beginning to a quick and easy dinner

Once the ham is toasty warm and a browned as much as you like, remove it to a bowl. The browning on the ham pieces give it flavor. While you don’t want to burn it, a bit of the brown brings out that savory-sweet ham taste.

Next, you will make a white sauce.

Pan on stove cooking a white sauce. A whisk stirs the mixture.
White sauce in process, ready for the diced ham.

Then, once your white sauce is thick and bubbly, re-introduce the ham to your pan. Let it simmer for ten minutes or so over low heat to combine the flavors, and then stir in salt and pepper to taste. It’s that easy, and that delicious.

A pan of small ham cubes floating in a thick sauce.
Ham in Cream Sauce thickening for dinner

Serving it up

Although the recipe included no serving tips, I’ve found that one of the best ways to serve this is with potatoes. Any potatoes. I’ve used cubed fried potatoes, frozen potato tots and crowns, baked potato, and mashed potatoes. The beauty of Twenties recipes is that simple foods combined with imagination make some great meals. Use what you have. It will be awesome.

It will, however, appear very beige. A side salad or a green vegetable goes a long way towards making this a full meal. Steam broccoli on the back burner while you make the gravy or throw a simple salad together while the the finished sauce cooks on low to meld the flavors.

Actually, my absolute favorite way to serve this is in a tortilla wrap like a burrito. Place a light layer of cubed fried potatoes, top with a layer of the ham mixture, and roll up. Unfortunately, most gluten free tortillas don’t have the strength of those made with wheat flour. So unless you have a really strong gluten free tortilla in hand, this assembly becomes a frightful mess quite quickly. Because of that I abandoned the bread wrap and started serving it plated. And no one complained. They snarfed it down just like the wrap version.

Plus, tortillas don’t appear in many 1920s – 1950s cookbooks in the U.S., so if you add one to this dish you strike out into uncharted vintage cooking territory. It’s tasty, though. You may decide this is the best vintage ham with cream sauce recipe, too.

Since we don’t use much whole ham here, I buy one and dice it for this recipe, storing the rest in the freezer in 2-cup allotments. That way I always have “leftover” ham on hand!

Print Recipe

The Best Vintage Leftover Ham Recipe: Ham with Cream Sauce

Use that leftover ham in this cream sauce that goes over vegetables, biscuits, or even wrapped in a tortilla.
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American
Servings: 5 1/2 cup servings

Equipment

  • large saucepan or frying pan
  • small whisk
  • small bowl

Ingredients

  • 2 cups cooked ham, diced
  • 4 tbsp butter, margarine, or oil
  • 2 cups milk

Instructions

  • Cook the diced ham in a hot pan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Remove the ham to a bowl, leaving any grease in the pan.
  • Check the amount of grease in the pan. If cooking the ham left a substantial amount, add butter or oil until you have about 4 tablespoons. If cooking the ham left no grease at all, add all 4 tablespoons of the butter or oil.
  • Add the flour to the melted butter, oil, or grease, and whisk together until completely mixed and smooth.
  • Pour in the milk slowly, stirring all the while. Continue to stir until thickened, and then return the ham to the pan.
  • Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for ten minutes. Taste, and then add up to 1/2 teaspoon and up to 1/2 teaspoon pepper if you like.
  • Serve over potatoes, biscuits, vegetables, or wrapped up in a tortilla.
Parties and Visits · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Recipes for Your Porch Party

VintageJenny
Table filled with tea sandwiches, dessert, coffee, and cake for a porch party.
Put together a porch party your friends will remember.

In the Twenties and Thirties porch parties gathered people together. In a day before air conditioning, home owners and guests embraced any opportunity to spend time outside. Picnics on the grass weren’t for everyone, although they were popular. The porch party gathered everyone onto the cool front porch. They sat in comfortable chairs and enjoyed special nibbles or even a full luncheon. And if the gang didn’t gather for a special occasion, such as a shower, guests usually brought along their workbags. Knitting, embroidery, tatting, and crochet kept hands busy while conversation flew. Porch parties were so popular that entire menus often appeared in magazines and cookbooks.

Revive this tradition and host a porch party of your own. All you need is a clean, nicely decorated porch, a few guests, and some food. Invite a few favorites over and give these recipes a gander. These recipes for your porch party will fit your vintage (or not so vintage) gathering perfectly. They were designed for outdoor entertaining in warmer weather.

You could add hot tea to this menu and call it an afternoon tea. Or use the Peruvian chocolate recipe from the list and call it a luncheon party. (You may want to have a pitcher of water available, however. The Peruvian chocolate recipe is very rich, iced or hot.)

Add a small bowl of mixed olives and a bowl of mixed nuts to the foods listed here and you have a beautiful Twenties porch luncheon. The cream mints provide the perfect ending to a vintage luncheon. They cleanse the palate after a meal, and appeared on tables regularly.

1. Sweet and Savory Sandwiches

These Sweet and Savory Tea Sandwiches offer four options for quickly made, tasty sandwiches. Serve them at your next vintage-style small gathering or formal tea. And if you’ve never hosted a formal tea but always wanted to, these sandwiches will start you off.

Read More

2. Peruvian Iced or Hot Chocolate

This Peruvian chocolate tastes like something between a normal hot cocoa recipe, and the thick drinking chocolate that you find in cafés. This is a drink to savor. It’s not too sweet. Enjoy this one with a friend or friends and some good conversation.

Read More

3. Fruited Whipped Cream

If you’re looking for a light and cool dessert for warm weather, look no further. This Fruited Cream recipe from the 1920s fills the requirement. It’s smooth, fruity, sweet, and cold. And Fruited Cream gives us an example of some of the best from the Twenties kitchen.

Read More

4. Many Layered Jam Cake

The Many Layered Jam Cake is one rich cake. A bit more involved than an everyday cake, Many Layered Jam Cake definitely tastes like more than a sum of its parts. This is a delicious, decadent cake for your next vintage gathering.

Read More

5. Colored Cream Mints

Looking for something to add sparkle to your next small get-together? These easy fondant Cream Mints are simple to make and they taste great! And even better, this 1920s recipe was almost lost to time.

Read More

Use these recipes for your porch party. Or your patio party. Or your pool party. These dishes will make your party, whatever it is, a memorable event.

The Vintage Kitchen

Easy Fondant Cream Mints

VintageJenny
Leaf-shaped mint candies in a white bowl. The mints are colored yellow, green, and pink.
Easy Fondant Cream Mints can brighten your next get-together.

Looking for something to add sparkle to your next small get-together? These easy fondant Cream Mints are simple to make and they taste great! And even better, the recipe was almost lost to time.

Before I started these I did a pretty extensive online search on cream mints. I got… nothing. Then I started hunting through my collection of vintage and antique cookbooks. Finally I found one mention, then another. Along the way I stumbled upon this easy fondant cream mint recipe.

Usually, cream mints are made from fondant. Not cream cheese, not marshmallows. Fondant. Like the creamy white or pastel centers you find in chocolate covered candies. It’s the same stuff. 

Fondant Wars: Cooked vs. Uncooked

Fondant comes in two varieties: cooked and uncooked. Making cooked fondant requires sugar, water, cream of tartar, patience, a candy thermometer, a stand mixer or really strong arms, time, and patience. Did I mention patience? 

One of the issues with cooked fondant is that it takes so much time. It creates a wonderful product that you can then use in all kinds of candies, but it takes two days to make. Literally. First you cook it and then it has to sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours to “ripen” so it’s ready to use. Once it’s ready you assemble a set of cooking utensils again and complete the candies.

While cooked fondant is fun to make (especially if you have the patience), today I’m going to talk about uncooked fondant. This recipe for easy fondant Cream Mints takes about half an hour to 45 minutes, plus drying time. (Cooked fondant requires drying time, too.)

Perhaps this uncooked fondant recipe fell out of favor in the United States because it calls for an uncooked egg white. I have a great substitute for that, and it’s meringue powder. Meringue powder is pre-cooked and safe to use. It’s what cake decorators use to make Royal Icing, that rock-hard icing used for cake decorations that will break your teeth if you chomp too hard.

Several different companies sell meringue powder, and you can get it online or locally. If you don’t have a local cake supply store, you should be able to find Wilton meringue powder at your local grocery or craft store. One container of it goes a long way. 

Flavors Old and New

To flavor your mints you will need a food-grade oil such as LorAnn. I’ve used LorAnn oils for many years in candies and they work very well. You’ll only need 1/4 teaspoon of the oil, unless you want them really strong. 

Today when we think of mints, we automatically picture the mint flavors: spearmint, peppermint, wintergreen (wintermint). That was not true for the vintage cook. Mint flavors in the 1920s and 1930s included lime, clove, and cinnamon in addition to mint. If you truly want to put a modern spin on this vintage recipe, you can make your mints taste like black cherry, fruit punch, or root beer. All these flavors are available from the LorAnn website, plus many more –– but they also make the traditional flavors of lime, clove, and cinnamon. Whatever you choose, get a flavor you like. These tiny bottles go a long way.

Using Your Mints

In the vintage household, nuts and mints often finished the meal along with a cup of coffee. A small dessert usually accompanied the meal. The sweet course already completed, the thoughtful hostess served coffee with mints rather than chocolates or anything heavy after a well-designed dinner or party. Mints cleansed the palate. They tasted refreshing. And they believed (perhaps rightly) that mints helped with digestion.

You can use these mints to spice up a small party. Color them to match your theme, or leave them pristine white. Include them in little nut baskets at each person’s place at the table. Or you can fill a small candy dish with them and watch them disappear as the evening continues.

Begin to include them after meals for your own dinners. They are easy to make, you can create whatever flavors you like, and you are no longer dependent upon the mint manufacturers of the world who produce peppermint and spearmint. Want clove-flavored mints? Make them!

The Basic How-To’s

To make these easy fondant Cream Mints, you will mix together meringue powder and water to equal two egg whites and then whip it with your mixer (or a whisk) until it bubbles. Then stir in your flavoring. If you want less than the 1/4 teaspoon called for in the recipe, use less. For a very light flavor you may want to only use a few drops. 

Mix and knead

Add a little salt, and then stir in, a little at a time, up to four cups confectioner’s sugar. It may take awhile, and this is where your electric mixer comes in handy. You won’t stop until the mixture has a clay-like consistency. It won’t be as stiff as Play-doh, the wheat-based clay many of us grew up playing with. It will, however, be close. Your fondant needs to hold its shape. 

Ball of fondant that looks like a lump of white clay in a silver bowl.
The clay-like fondant ball is flavored and ready to tint.

When it reaches its clay fondant stage, remove it from the bowl and place on a flat surface to knead it until it’s smooth. If you have a marble pastry board, great! I don’t, so I used a silicone pastry mat. After all, a hallmark of the vintage life was use what you had at hand.

Three balls of white fondant sit on a pink mat. Each one has a different colored food dye bottle sitting next to it: red, yellow, and green.
Now the ball is divided into three, and waiting for two drops of color to be kneaded in.

Color it beautiful

If you want your mints to be two or three different colors, this is the time to divide it. I divided mine into three balls about the same size. I poked a hole in each ball and added two drops of McCormick liquid food color. That was enough to get vibrant pink, yellow, and green. If you want even lighter pastel colors, only use one drop. If you want to color the entire batch one color, you’ll use 5 to 6 drops of color or less.

Small balls of fondant sit on a dark pink mat. The balls are pink, green, and yellow in color.
Pink, green, and yellow balls ready to roll and cut.

Cut and dried

Then you’ll roll the fondant out. Use your cutter to cut small shapes, no larger than an inch. I had an ivy fondant cutter on hand. Bento cutters would work, as would any set of mini cookie cutters. 

Note: You can’t use metal cookie cutters on a silicone mat. They will cut right through it. Lift your rolled fondant to a cutting board or a sturdy platter if you want to use metal cutters and you use a silicone mat to protect your countertop.

Once your mints are cut out, you let them dry. Move them to a wax- or parchment-paper covered cooling rack. Let them dry for several hours, and then turn them over to finish drying overnight. Place your finished mints in a storage container. These do not have to be refrigerated, but you will probably want to separate colors with paper if you keep them all in one container. These should keep for several weeks in an airtight container.

Print Recipe

Easy Fondant Cream Mints

Make these cream mints to add pizzaz to your vintage meals.
Prep Time30 minutes
Cook Time0 minutes
Drying Time23 hours
Total Time23 hours 30 minutes
Course: Candies
Cuisine: American
Keyword: dinner mints, fondant
Servings: 12 people

Equipment

  • Electric stand mixer, OR whisk, large bowl, wooden spoon, and lots of energy
  • Pastry board or mat for kneading and rolling
  • Rolling Pin
  • Small cutter for shapes
  • Cooling racks
  • Wax paper or parchment paper for drying

Ingredients

  • 2 tsp Meringue Powder I used Wilton brand. It’s what I had on the shelf.
  • 2 tbsp water
  • 1/4 tsp LorAnn Super Strength Oil Flavor, any flavor I had spearmint, so that's what I used.
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 4 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, divided You will use 4 cups in the recipe. The rest is to keep the surface from sticking while you roll it out if necessary.
  • 5-6 drops McCormick's liquid food coloring or an equivalen I used 2 drops in each of three different colors.

Instructions

  • Combine the meringue powder and the water in the bowl of the stand mixer. Beat until frothy. If you have a whisk attachment, it works well for this.
  • Scrape the sides to make sure that all the meringue powder is dissolved. Add the salt and the flavoring.
  • Remove the whisk attachment, if you used it, and replace it with the general mixing attachment.
  • Add up to 4 cups of the confectioner's sugar, a little at a time. Mix on a medium speed to combine everything. At first the mixture will look like frosting. Keep adding the sugar. After awhile it will begin to clump together.
  • Turn the mixer off and inspect the mixture. Does it stick together in your hands like clay? If so, you're finished. If not, continue to add a bit at a time until it does.
  • When it reaches its clay fondant stage, remove it from the bowl and place on a flat surface and knead it for a minute or two until it’s smooth.
  • If you want your mints to be two or three different colors, this is the time to divide it. To make three different colors, divide the dough into three balls. Poke a hole in each ball and add two drops of food color. This is enough to get vibrant pink, yellow, and green. If you want even lighter pastel colors, only use one drop. If you want to color the entire batch one color, use 5 to 6 drops of color, or even less.
  • Roll the fondant to about 1/8” (3mm) thickness. You can make them a bit thicker if you like but they may take longer to dry. Use your cutter to cut small shapes, no larger than an inch.
  • Note: You can’t use metal cookie cutters on a silicone mat. They will cut right through it. Lift your rolled fondant to a cutting board or a sturdy platter if you want to use metal cutters.
  • Cut as many shapes from each color as you can, and move them to a wax- or parchment-paper covered cooling rack. Let them dry for several hours, and then turn them over. Let them dry several more hours, preferably 24. Move the finished mints to a storage container. These do not have to be refrigerated, but you will probably want to separate colors with paper if you keep them all in one container. These should keep for several weeks in an airtight container.