Old School Pastry from PastrySampler.com
Moonshine – you know, that clear, strong, distilled spirit with a high alcohol content generally made from backyard stills. Just reading the word conjures up images from prohibition times, backwoods stills, and cases of unlabeled bottles being carted around in beds of pick up trucks. …
I found a recipe for Cherry Tomatoes in Cream in The Southern Junior League Cookbook, a compilation of Southern recipes collected during the 60s and 70s which I shared on the Pastry Sampler blog. I was flipping through the cookbook (a recent used book find) and …
Kitchen thermometers are about as common as skewers and are now in just about any supermarket’s kitchen supplies aisle. But what if you were making candy say 80 years ago and they weren’t so common, or more expensive than your budget allowed? Well, you’d still make candy; you’d just use the The Cold Water Test.
The Cold Water Test Chart
Begin with a boiled sugar syrup. Gather a 2 cup clear glass liquid measure (such as Pyrex) and fill it half way with cold water. Not iced water, just cold water. Pour a teaspoon of the hot syrup into the cup of water and pick up the resulting sugar ball in the water. The table below tells you the approximate temperature reached by the look of the ball. You will notice as the sugar boils, it produces a thicker product with a darker color, too, as it cooks and continues to cook.
Here is an old pudding recipe to share. The recipe is for a baked pudding rather than the traditional, moist steamed puddings often served during the holidays, called Thanksgiving Pudding. It’s from Practical Cooking and Serving from 1902. It was written by Janet McKenzie Hill. …
What is a cobbler? It can be basically defined as a baked fruit dessert with some kind of crust to it. But, while I usually term cobbler with a biscuit crust, others will identify a cobbler with a pastry crust. Looking back through old cookbooks, …