Vintage Betty Ad Sunday

Hi everyone! Very long time no see! I'm quite horrified at myself for letting this blog go for sooooooo long especially since vintage recipes and cookbooks are my passion. I'm going to try this again and hopefully this time I'll have some staying power.....

Every Sunday I'm going to post a vintage Betty Crocker ad and try to find out a little bit of history about the product in the ad. I thought it would be fun to mix things up a bit as I get back into making the cookies. 

The first Sunday ad is:

Custard Chiffon Cake

I just love this ad! The beautiful pink icing on the light, fluffy cake. This cake has you making a custard first and then adding it into the batter later on, hence the name. 

 I found out from my beloved Wikipedia that in 1927 the Chiffon cake was invented by a Californian Insurance Salesman named Harry Baker (tee hee). He was a caterer in the local area. Twenty years later, he sold his secret recipe to General Mills. Betty Crocker introduced the newly named Chiffon cake in 1948. A booklet was published that year with 14 recipes and variations of the cake. I so want a copy of that booklet for my collection. Here is a picture of it:

The Researching Food History blog has an awesome entry about Chiffon cake here. 

Did you know that in America, March 29 is National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day - awesome!

Chiffon Cake, "The biggest cake-making news in a century!"

3 - Chocolate Drop Cookies

I made these cookies earlier in the week but as anyone with young children would know sometimes it's hard to find some time to yourself to do things like blog!

OK so onto our first (of many I'm sure) chocolate cookies. As I've mentioned before I'm not a massive fan of chocolate cookies although I think I'm slowly being converted.

Here's the ingredient list:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
3/4 cup buttermilk or soured milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chopped nuts if desired (I DID NOT desire!)

I was excited to see a recipe using buttermilk because I know how yummy it is in baking. I was also surprised because I thought it was a more modern ingredient to use.

To start these cookies off you mix the butter, sugar, egg and chocolate well. Then stir in the buttermilk and vanilla. Sift the flour and combine with the soda and salt then blend into the wet mix. If you're using nuts then stir them in now. You then need to chill this mixture for an hour like the Applesauce cookies.

Here's what mine looked like after all that. This dough was so delicious! Really light and fluffy. Yum!

Drop rounded spoonfuls of the dough onto a lightly greased baking tray then bake at 400F 8-10 minutes 'until no imprint remains when touched lightly'. Then if desired you can frost them with either Browned Butter Glaze, Mocha Butter Icing or Marie's Chocolate Icing. Oh the choices! I chose not to ice them as again I made these too late and couldn't be bothered. They were fine without anything on top and the next day I thought were even nicer.

I'm guessing all these Drop Cookies are going to be cake-like. I'm looking forward to moving onto the crispier cookies but that doesn't appear to be happening for some time.....

The next three cookies are variations on the Chocolate Drop Cookie. The Cocoa Drop Cookie, Chocolate Cherry Drops and Double Chocolate Drops. I guess I have to do all of these since the challenge was to bake ALL of the recipes from the book. Cocoa Drop Cookies are exactly the same as above but with cocoa powder instead of chocolate. Oh well it'll be chocolate central in our house for a bit.

Happy Baking :)

2 - Orange Drop Cookies

Cookie number 2 is the yummy Orange Drop cookie. This was the other one I'd tried before when I first started this blog so I was more than happy to make these again. This is another cakey type cookie. There's a little blurb about this cookie that says it came to Betty Crocker from a Mrs Paul Lindemeyer from Mason City, Iowa. So thank you Mrs Lindemeyer for sharing your delicious recipe with the world!

Orange Drop Cookies

2/3 cup shortening (butter)
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tbsp grated orange rind
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Okay so you first heat your oven to 400F (190-200C). Mix the butter, sugar and egg thoroughly.

Then add the orange rind and juice. Stir all the dry ingredients together and blend into the wet mix. Mine looked like this:

You then drop rounded spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie tray and bake 8-10 minutes or 'until delicately browned on edges' as Betty says.

Here's how mine turned out. This mix is meant to make 4 dozen 2 inch cookies. Mine are bigger than that though. All the pictures in the book are of small cookies. I guess that just shows how our meal sizes have changed over the years. Even our cookies are bigger!

Betty instructs us to frost these cookies so I just made up an orange icing with butter, icing sugar and some orange juice. Here's the finished product:

These are very flavourful but don't eat too many as they will make you feel ill. I ate waaaay too many one night. My boys weren't too keen on these but I enjoyed them.

Next up is something they will enjoy though - Chocolate Drop Cookies. I'm not a huge chocolate fan so I'm not expecting to love these. They have buttermilk in them which I thought was interesting.

Happy Baking!

:)

1 - Applesauce Cookies

I'm going to preface this blog post by admitting that I cheated on this recipe twice maybe three times if you count the fact that I halved the recipe as cheating. So with a clear consience let's go!

I have to admit I've made these cookies before when I started this blog back in March but never got around to posting the results so because I'm having a fresh start I made them again yesterday afternoon.

Applesauce Cookies

1 cup shortening (I used butter)
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup cold coffee
2 cups well drained thick applesauce (I just boiled up some apples and whizzed them up to make this)
3 1/2 cups flour (Gold Medal Flour???)
1 tsp bicarb soda (baking soda)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves
1 cup raisins (I used sultanas I didn't have raisins hmmm is this cheat number four???)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts (I omitted the nuts)

Here's the ingredients gathered together:

So you mix together the butter, sugar and eggs:

That's where mistake number one happened. I halved this recipe because it makes 7-8 dozen cookies according to the book and there's no way we'd get through all those and plus I have heaps more recipes to get through. So I decided to half this one but it wasn't until I had mixed the first part up that I realised I'd still put in two eggs! Luckily it didn't seem to make a difference from what I remembered the first batch to be. I also forgot to halve the spices but I love spicy cookies so that definitely didn't bother me.

Ok so next you add the coffee and applesauce. Mix the dry ingredients together then stir into the wet mix. Here's where another mistake happened. You need to chill for at least two hours! I didn't actually start making these until around 3pm so it was after 5pm when they came out to go into the oven.

Here's the mixture before it went into the fridge:

You then heat your oven to 200C (400F) and drop rounded tablespoonfuls of the dough a couple of inches apart on a greased baking sheet. Bake 9-12 minutes or 'until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly'. The books also says if desired frost with Lemon Butter Icing when cool but I didn't do this as it was so late by the time mine were done and to be honest I don't think they need icing (frosting).

Here's mine before going into the oven. I did a tray of 12 small ones and then got impatient and did 6 HUGE ones. I'm not quite sure how I would have got 3 - 4 dozen out of this mixture unless I'd made them tiny.

I definitely need to work on my rounding technique!

Here's the finished product (minus a few samples):

 These were truly delicious. They are more like a cakey type cookie than a crisp cookie so it's more like eating a little sponge cake. A divine spicy soft little sponge cake. These will definitely be a keeper in my house.

Next up Orange Drop Cookies :)
Happy Baking!

Where Did I Go?

Where did I go? Good question. As per usual I started a blog then failed to keep up with it. I've now decided to give it another go and try my hardest this time to stick with it. Finding time to blog is the hardest thing I think. Anyhoo give me one more chance please. First up - Applesauce Cookies :)

I'll leave you with Betty throughout the years.

The Project

I've been lucky enough to get my hands on a 1963 copy of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book. I've been wanting it for a long time now but being in Australia, it's not so easy to find unless you want to pay a ridiculous amount for shipping. This is the book in all it's 60s glory:

My mission is to bake every single one of the cookies in this glorious book. That's more than 450 different types of cookies. Luckily I have two little boys to help me eat all this sugary goodness. I have to stick to the original recipes with two exceptions. I will be changing shortening to butter and if I come across an ingredient that I can't find here Down Under I'll have to find the closest substitute.

The book begins with lots of hints and tips on baking, storing and freezing cookies along with a troubleshooting guide should, heaven forbid, your dough turn out dry or soft. The first lot of cookies are drop cookies and cookie number one is - Applesauce Cookies.

I'll sign off with a quote from Betty herself, "Happy the home with the full cooky jar".