Grandma's Recipes

Have you recently searched for a quick recipe for dinner or for a seasonal dish? Did you then have to read a convoluted tale about the author's favourite time of year, the colours of fall reminding them of the sprinkle of cinnamon spice or visions of snow at Christmas being associated with a delicious slice of the cake their grandmother used to make? (Recipe below, just scroll until you find it!). There are a bunch of reasons why popular recipe sites do this, Search Engine Optimization, copyright etc but realistically you just want the recipe and to find out how good it is before putting in the effort. Because in fairness, the worst case scenario is that you go buy a bunch of ingredients and spend time and effort making a dish and then nobody will eat it... Except maybe you, because you're willing to still eat the thing because of the sunk cost fallacy - it may not taste as great as you expected but by gum, you made it so you'll eat it...

Anyway. I found a bunch of written recipes that my grandmother used to make all of the time when I was younger. They were cluttering one of the shelves here. Information wants to be free, so I'm sharing them here. If you read them and attempt to make them, you might just find them delicious. If you don't at least the information is recorded somewhere available to more than just the paper sitting on the shelf.

The measurement units from the original recipes were a mix of imperial (Oz = Ounces, lb = pounds) but with Celsius for temperature, I've added the metric and Fahrenheit equivalents as accurately as I can for you. I've made all but one of these successfully in the past. If I can do it, I'd hazard a guess that anyone can. Anywhere that called for Margarine in the recipes I've swapped it for salted butter instead. The 1980s called and they want their horrible crap Margarine back. They can have it too. It may or may not  be better for you but the taste just isn't for me.

And there you have it, that's how a simple post with some recipes turns into a story completely unrelated to them... Sorry. Here's the recipes, I'll try improve the formatting later.

"Light" Christmas Cake

Make this in November and "feed" it with additional whiskey once a week. It'll store well until halfway through January if it hasn't been eaten by then. It's a heavy cake in my opinion.

Ingredients:

• 12oz / 340g Odlums Cream Flour (cream flour contains less raising agents than plain flour but I think either can be used here if you are in a pinch)
• 8oz / 225g butter (use Kerrygold)
• 8oz / 225g  brown sugar
• The Juice & Zest of 1 lemon (the original recipe calls the zest, "rind")
• Half a glass of whiskey (125ml / 4fl oz... ish. See note below in step 10)
• 6 eggs
• 1oz / 28g chopped almonds
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 8oz  / 225g Sultanas
• 8oz  / 225g Raisins
• 8oz  / 225g Currants
• 8oz  / 225g Cherries (I left these out, glace cherries can go live with Margarine)
• 1 tsp almond essence
• 1/2 tsp mixed spice
• A "pinch" of nutmeg
• Additional whiskey to "feed" the cake prior to consumption

Method:

1. Prepare a 9in / 22cm round cake tin or 8in / 20cm square cake tin (you can line it with parchment or grease it with butter)
2. Cream the butter and sugar until light in colour and soft in texture
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well to incorporate each addition
4. Fold in the sieved flour, baking powder, mixed spice and nutmeg
5. Add grated lemon zest, the lemon juice and almond essence
6. Mix in the prepared fruit (sultanas, raisins, currants and cherries) as well as the chopped almonds and half of the whiskey
7. Turn the mixture into your prepared tin from step 1, you can smooth it out now if you like too
8. Bake in a "very moderate" oven (160C / 320F) for 3 - 3.5 hours
9. Check the cake with a skewer after 3 hours, by poking the skewer into the cake. If it comes out of the cake with anything on it, keep baking it. If it comes out clean then the cake is done
10. Remove from the oven and pour the remaining whiskey over the freshly baked cake. If you drank the whiskey already get another quarter of a glass. My gran used a tumbler to measure so this one is a little difficult to estimate but let's say a half a glass is approx 125ml so you're putting in about 60ml each time
11. Leave the cake in the tin until it goes cold
12. Wrap the cake in tinfoil to store
13. I usually leave the parchment on the cake, wrap in tinfoil and then put it in an old biscuit tin
14. Optionally: You can "feed" the cake with a splash of whiskey once a week. If you bake the cake in November and feed it a couple of times before consumption in December it should be good. The intent here is to preserve the cake as far as I know
15. More optionally: If you don't drink alcohol or don't like whiskey you can leave it out of the recipe. If you're doing this, replace the whiskey with some water in step 6

Some people will choose to put a layer of marzipan and then royal icing and decorations on the cake before eating it. Despite it being traditional I have no love for marzipan or royal icing or whatever else so I leave that decision up to you.

Date Pudding

This is also known as Sticky Toffee Pudding if you add toffee sauce to it. I never knew this growing up. A good thirty years of ignorance! Delicious warmed up and served with custard or toffee sauce. An alternative to the traditional plum pudding.

Ingredients:

• 9oz / 250g Dates
• 4.5oz / 125g breadcrumbs
• 3.5oz / 100g plain white flour
• 4.5oz / 125g salted butter
• 3.5oz / 100g brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp milk, to bind if necessary

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together
2. Beat the egg and add to the mix, make sure it's well incorporated
3. Sieve the flour and baking powder and fold in gradually
4. Remove the stones from the dates, if present
5. Chop the dates (I chop them finely, you might want to chop coarsely)
6. Add the breadcrumbs and chopped dates to the mix
7. Make sure everything is well mixed. Note: doing this by hand requires muscle. The resulting mix is seriously stodgy. A stand mixer might work best
8. If the mix is too dry or you can't get lumps of breadcrumbs to mix in properly add a small amount of milk at a time
9. Put the pudding mix into a heat-proof bowl (e.g. a round Pyrex bowl)
10. On the top of the bowl put a layer of baking paper / parchment, followed by a layer of tinfoil. Wrap and tie a string around the rim of the bowl to make sure these stay on during cooking
11. This pudding is best cooked by steaming. If you have a pressure cooker this is the easiest option. Cook in the pressure cooker for approx 1.5 hours. Here's my gran's instructions:
1. Boil a kettle of water
2. Place a saucer, a pot lid or something heat proof on the base of the pressure cooker
3. Put the neatly wrapped up pudding on top of this
4. Fill the pressure cooker with the boiling water until the water level reaches half-way up the pudding bowl
5. At this point you'll have to follow the instructions for your pressure cooker but my gran and my mother used a big metal contraption that went directly on the stove top. The instructions for those were: full heat until the pressure cooker starts hissing, then turn down to low to ensure the hissing continues
6. Cook for 1 - 1.5 hours

Be careful releasing the pressure from a pressure cooker. When I was small those things terrified me. The pudding should be a light brown colour. If it is dark brown and the cake is dry it's overcooked. Custard or an accompanying sauce can help mask any failures here. If you don't have a pressure cooker you can also use a regular saucepan and lid on the stove to cook this pudding. Just make sure that the water doesn't boil dry during the cooking process so keep it topped up. Puddings like this don't rise so the temperature change won't impact the cooking process unlike baking a cake in the oven.

Gingerbread

This one is a cake, not a man like gingerbread man biscuits. Best served spread with real salted butter but you can eat it without any toppings. You can add more ground ginger or crystalized ginger if you like things a bit spicier. I think the last time I made this I just chopped up a small handful of crystallized ginger and threw it in the mix without any other modifications to the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb / 225g plain white flour
• 1/4 lb / 115g golden syrup
• 1 level tsp baking soda
• 2 level tsp's ground ginger
• 1 egg
• 3oz / 85g salted butter
• 2oz / 60g white sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 3 tablespoons milk

Method:

1. Sift the flour, ground ginger and baking soda into a large mixing bowl
2. Make a well in the middle for the liquid ingredients
3. Beat the egg and mix it in well
4. Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan. Make sure not to burn it. This liquid mix is incredibly hot once melted. Be careful.
5. Take the liquid off the heat and stir in the water
6. Allow the liquid to cool until lukewarm
7. Mix into the flour / egg mix until smooth
8. Add milk a little at a time to moisten the mixture
9. Turn this into a prepared tin (I'm guessing 9in (22cm) round / 8in (20cm) square for this, my gran used to always make a square cake for this one. Corner slices were fought over)
10. Bake in a "slow" oven (150C / 300F) for 35 minutes
11. Test with a skewer before removing from the oven
12. Allow to cook on a wire rack

This cake can be sliced and eaten "as is." You can also add a layer of icing to the top (water / icing sugar mix) or whatever else if you're fancy. The closest commercial product I've had to this is Jamaica Ginger Cake although that is far stickier a consistency, this one should be light and have a decent crumb.

Sultana Cake ("Stand-By Recipe")

This is one recipe I haven't made but it's there on the paper so may as well record it. I presume a stand-by recipe was for when a visitor would be coming at short notice, probably on the same day. Back in the day there were no mobile phones, no instant messages so it was either telephone or letter that would be the most likely way to know if someone was going to pop by. I can't see my gran baking this after someone had arrived unexpectedly.

Ingredients:

• 4oz / 115g salted butter
• 8oz / 225g plain white flour
• 4 - 6oz / 115g - 170g sultanas
• 4oz / 115g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• Flavouring (Sherry, Orange or Vanilla)

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar
2. Add the flour and beaten egg
3. Add the flavouring and baking powder
4. Mix well
5. Lastly, fold in the dried sultanas
6. Put into a lined, greased baking tin
7. Bake in a "moderate" oven for 1 - 1.5 hours
8. Put on a wire tray to cool

This recipe was sparse and written in the corner of a page. You could probably make some of it up. Likely would have been served alongside cups of tea. As I haven't made it I can't attest to how nice it would be but I've made similar cakes before and they were tasty enough, a quick search for tea cake (made by soaking fruit in cold tea overnight) should yield something similar.