We have a very happy holiday message from Molly MacRae today, on the eve of her new book, Plaid and Plagiarism! I can’t wait to read it! -AA

The holidays are here and I’m launching a new mystery series, so I feel like celebrating. Plaid and Plagiarism, book #1 in the Highland Bookshop Mysteries comes out tomorrow. The stories take place in Scotland, a place I dearly love, in a West Coast Highland town called Inversgail (which doesn’t exist except in my head and in the books). What better way to celebrate the season and the book, then, than with a traditional Highland drink—Atholl Brose.

According According to F. Marian McNeill in her 1929 book, The Scots Kitchen, “Atholl Brose emerges from the Highland mists in the year 1475, but may well be much older. It is mentioned by Scott in The Heart of Midlothian, and by Robert Louis Stevenson in Kidnapped.”

Molly MacRae talks birthdays and cake this month. Yum! And next month the first book in her new series comes out: Plaid and Plagiarism: The Highland Bookshop Mystery Series. -AA

“Most people who make cakes for people they love regularly employ mixes.”  From The Food Timeline

My husband has been employing a cake mix regularly, once a year for the past twenty or twenty five years when he makes a birthday cake for me. It’s very brave and good of him, because he doesn’t like to cook. The first time I made it easy for him and bought the mix and a can of frosting for him. He got the boys to help him and when they were done it was THE WORLD’S BEST BIRTHDAY CAKE. The only surprise was when he told me how much frosting was left in the can after he frosted the cake and what a good snack that leftover frosting made spread on graham crackers. Let me just say, very quietly, that the next year, and every year since then, all the frosting has gone on the cake where it belonged.

To tie this in with Amy’s love for all things vintage, notice that Mike is mixing the batter in our harvest gold Pyrex bowl with our harvest gold General Electric mixer. We received both of them for wedding presents in 1978 and still use them.

I was delighted to be interviewed for this article by Judy Buchenot on an upcoming talk I’m giving. I got to discuss some of the favorites from my collection. Kyle took some photos of me in a vintage dress for the photo.

I included the honey ketchup onions I made a few Thanksgivings ago. My family loves them – I just don’t tell them what is in them!

1 3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup shortening

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour milk

1 tsp. vanilla

4 tblsp. melted chocolate

2 cups sifted flour

1 level teasp. baking powder

1/2 teasp. baking soda

1/2 cup boiling water

Sift flour with baking powder and soda. Cream shortening, add sugar gradually, egg yolks, melted chocolate and vanilla. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour milk and water. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in two large or 3 small layers, about 25 minutes at 350F. Put layers together with chocolate filling.

Chocolate Filling: 6 teasp. flour, 6 teasp. sugar, 2 teasp. cocoa: Mix with thick cream and heat.

My mind is on Halloween now, between planning for the third grade party and all the themed things in the stores. But I am also thinking about winter. My writer’s group, the Windy City RWA, hosts a writers’ retreat every couple years. Next year it will be 3/3 – 3/4, and I am helping coordinate it. Have you every wanted to get away and get inspired to work on those books you started but never finished? Take the time for yourself. The early bird rate covers meals, a workshop with Barbara Samuel, and a lot more.

But back to now. Enjoy another recipe from the 1983 church cookbook I keep finding treasures in: Monster Cookies.

2 C. sugar

2 C. packed brown sugar

1 C. shortening or butter

6 eggs

3 C. peanut butter

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

9 C. oatmeal

1/2 lb. M&Ms (plain)

4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 C. chocolate chips

1/2 C nuts (optional)

325F  12 – 15 minutes

Mix all ingredients together by hand. Drop on greased cookie sheets and bake.

“Serves an army! Very nutritious!” I’m not kidding. It says those things.

It feels like fall around here, and we took the boys out to a local pumpkin farm last week. What are your fall rituals?

I think this recipe would be fun for a Halloween party. It’s from the same 1983 church cookbook I’ve been blogging from recently.

Popcorn Cake

1/4 C. oil

3/4 C. butter

1 lb. marshmallows

(also popped corn)

Melt first three ingredients in double boiler. When melted, pour over 4 quarts popped corn placed in buttered bowl. Stir well to coat evenly. Place into greased tube pan or any size pan desired. (May add mixed nuts, gumdrops or M&Ms).

My son Owen’s dream  for the last couple of years has been to grow a pumpkin. Last year’s crop didn’t make it past July. This year, one hardy pumpkin is holding on. You can see we put chicken wire over it to keep the eager possums and squirrels away.

This cake recipe is much easier than growing a pumpkin. It’s another from the 1983 Faith Evangelical Church cookbook I’ve been perusing lately. I love this as it’s a cake mix recipe.

1 large can pumpkin

1  13 oz. can evaporated milk

4 tsp. pumpkin spice or 2 tsp. cinnamon & 1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 C. sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp. salt

Yellow cake mix

3/4 C. butter or margarine

9×13″ cake pan   350F   50 minutes

Mix and pour first 7 ingredients into (ungreased) pan. Pour yellow cake mix over that. Melt butter and pour on top of cake mix. Bake.

Be sure butter or margarine covers all the dry cake mix.

Molly MacRae returns with an amazing and interesting cake in between book deadlines. Her next book, Plaid and Plagiarism is coming December 6. Can’t wait! Oh, and Molly? I’d rather have bear than prunes! -AA

Chocolate Oatrage Cake

Last month I turned in the manuscript for a book, my ninth, and celebrated by ignoring other commitments, like sending a post to Amy for this blog. I hope this recipe makes up for it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the finished product because by the time I remembered to take one, we’d eaten the cake. How was it? Delish.

Chocolate Oatrage is an old standby. It’s quick and easy and requires no special ingredients. It’s my family’s version of a recipe for Oatmeal Cake found in the 1976 edition of the More-with-Less Cookbook: suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world’s limited food resources, by Doris Janzen Longacre. As you can see by the notes, subtractions and additions, at this point it’s almost a handwritten recipe. You don’t even see the part of the recipe for making a topping because we’ve never topped the cake with anything.

You might ask why, if I’m referring to the cake as Chocolate Oatrage, does the recipe say Chocolate Stoatrage? There’s a perfectly sensible answer. My children liked to edit recipes and food packages so that it appeared we ate more adventurously. Fat became bat (and low fat became low bat). Black beans became black bears. Oats became stoats. Mmm. Nothing like a steaming bowl of stoatmeal for breakfast or a spicy black bear burger for supper.

Here’s the recipe (as we make it). I hope you like it as much as we do.

Chocolate Stoatrage Cake

Serves 16-18

350º

30 minutes

Preheat oven to 350º.

Combine and let stand 20 minutes.

1 ½ c. quick oatmeal

1 ½ c. boiling water

Cream together until fluffy.

½ c. shortening

1 c. dark brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

Add oatmeal mixture. Beat well.

Mix together.

1 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt (if using unsalted butter for the shortening)

1 ½ c. chocolate chips

Add to creamed mixture and beat well. Pour into greased and floured 9×13” cake pan. Bake 30 minutes or until tests done.

Cut when cool.

It’s definitely apple picking weather and we had a quick trip last weekend to pick some. Josh lifted up Owen to reach the high ones.

So I have apples on the brain. Here’s another gem from a 1983 church cookbook in my collection: Apple Harvest Cake. You don’t find too many vintage recipes with whole wheat flour, though this still has a lot of sugar.

1 1/4 C. flour

1 C. sugar

1 T cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

3/4 C. oil

3 eggs

1 C. chopped nuts

1 C. whole wheat flour

3/4 C. brown sugar (packed)

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. soda

1 tsp. vanilla

2 C. peeled and chopped apple

Tube pan, greased and floured

325F  50 – 65 minutes

Blend together all above ingredients until moistened except apples and nuts. Add 2 cups peeled and chopped apples and nuts. Mix well. Bake until toothpick comes out clean. Glaze with 1/2 – 1 cup confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 3 – 4 tsp. milk (add more if needed) mixed, drizzle over cake. Serves 10 – 12.

Another delightful recipe from the same 1983 church cookbook where I was blogging from earlier in the week. I don’t know if we can call this salad. It’s a take on Hawaiian Salad and Frozen Fruit Salad, both vintage cookbook staples. I wonder about the addition of the cheese. Any cheese?

1 -16 to 20 oz. can pineapple chunks

1/2 C sugar

1 T cornstarch

2 beaten eggs

1 C miniature marshmallows

1 C. diced cheese

Drain pineapple; add water to juice to make 1 cup. Cook together with sugar, cornstarch and eggs until thick. Add marshmallows, pineapple and cheese. Chill.

What are you cooking this weekend?

I’m still doing some fill in at the library in the midst of a busy summer teaching an online grad school course, working for AuthorRx, giving talks, working on a couple books coming up, and trying to spend time with my wonderful boys.

When I go in to the library to cover a desk every few weeks or so I usually have a cookbook from a reference librarian friend who spots funny donations he thinks I would enjoy. This one is an absolute gem. It’s a 1983 church cookbook and the excellent selection of no-nonsense easy recipes is fantastic.

Here’s Blueberry Dessert:

15 crushed graham crackers

1/4 C. melted butter

1/4 lb. (about 20) marshmallows

1/2 C. milk

1 C. whipping cream, whipped

1 can blueberry pie filling

9×9″ pan

Combine graham cracker crumbs and melted butter. Put 1/2 of crumb mixture in bottom of 9×9″ pan. Over low heat, melt marshmallows in milk; cool. After cool, add whipped cream to marshmallow mixture. Put 1/2 of cream mixture on crumbs in pan. Top with blueberry pie filling and then remaining cream mixture. Sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture. Refrigerate. Serves 9.

Molly’s June post takes us to some Jello cookbooks. How can she not like Jello? These are always among the favorite in my collection – prunes aside! -AA 

Two dear friends gave me a couple of cookbooks they bought at an estate sale recently. They found one and thought it was kind of fun. A little later, they found the sequel to the first one, and they knew they couldn’t leave either of them behind. They were pretty sure I’d like them. Were they right? Absolutely. How could anyone not love The Joys of Jell-O and The New Joys of Jell-O?

I don’t like Jell-O and never have, but these cookbooks are such a charming snapshot of popular culture from 1963 and 1973. And the first one includes “The Story of Jell-O . . . And Why It Grew.” Grew? Ew, but I read the story and loved it from the very first sentence: “Jell-O Gelatin first grandly shimmered its way into American dining rooms in 1897.” What a great image. I like almost anything that shimmers. Then there’s this sentence a little further along: “And it’s easy to fix all kinds of ways – some we’ll wager that have never entered your mind.” They’d win that bet, all right.

I only have two quibbles with these gems. One is that although there are wonderful photographs of some of the creations, and many that look as though they glow in the dark, there aren’t pictures of all of them. I might not like Jell-O, but I do like staring at pictures of it. Here’s one of my favorite. These kids are “enjoying” their Jell-O. They are? Really? My other quibble is that the second book does something I didn’t think possible; it ruins prune whip.

Amy thinks it’s the prunes that ruin prune whip. We’ve agreed to disagree about that (until I give her some in a blind taste test and she’s blown away by a spoonful of prune whip as it’s meant to be). But I’ll wager we give identical answers to this question: If there’s always room for Jell-O, is there room for Jellied Prune Whip?

Answer: Noooooooooo!

I’m recovering from foot surgery and am getting ready to spring into some exciting new things with this blog and my site. Stay tuned! In the meantime, enjoy Molly MacRae‘s delicious and delightful monthly post. -AA 

Here’s a treasure that looks like it’s about to disappear – a recipe written in a spiral notebook my mom gave to our boys about thirty years ago. The handwriting is mine, but the recipe is Mom’s and it’s for the best lemonade there is (except for rosemary-infused watermelon lemonade, but that’s a different animal altogether). If you like your lemonade tart and refreshing, this is for you. Anyone want to guess what the two-year-old was drawing? My husband thinks it’s the goat. I think it might be a picture of my husband.

Lemonade

6 ½ cups water

1 ½ cups lemon juice

1 cup sugar (white or brown or a combination)

Stir, chill, drink, mmmmm. 

March kicks off with another funny post from popular mystery author MollyMacRae. What are your favorite family recipes? Did you change them?

Stay tuned for some lucky St. Patrick’s Day posts and a March giveaway as this blog celebrates 10 years of vintage recipes! -AA

My Auntie’s Antipasto

Here’s a recipe from my Great-Aunt Ruth. I don’t think I had a taste of it more than a few times back in the 1960s, but I remember it as utterly delicious served on saltines. Great-Aunt Ruth was also my godmother, and she drove a big black car with tail fins. She was extremely cool. I love that she made a “typo” in the last line – “take out and hour before using.” I make this same typo – often – when I’m typing.

Celebrate fun desserts and recipes this month, featuring my Alana O’Neill Blast From the Past novella. Scenes from an upcoming St. Patrick’s Day story will be included.

Are you new to the Alana series? She’s an antique mall  bookkeeper who is an adventurous rather than skilled cook. She also helps solve mysteries. In Blast, she encounters the mysterious appeal of chili chocolates, murder, and a necklace while hosting a Valentine’s Day festival at the antiques mall. Her intrepid teen son Elliott is around to sample chocolates and maybe have a little romance himself. If you’d like the first Alana story, simply sign up for my quarterly newsletter and a free copy will be sent to you.

I will have weekly drawings for jewelry, recipes, cookbooks and more this month. Simply comment after the recipe posts or post one of your favorite dessert recipes!

Frozen Fluffy Strawberry Pie

2 1/2 cups lightly toasted coconut

1/3 cups butter

1 (3 oz.) package cream cheese, softened

1 (14-oz.) can Eagle Sweetened Condensed Milk (not evaporated)

2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen unsweetened thawed strawberries, mashed or pureed (about 1 1/2 cups)

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 cup (1/2 ) pink whipping cream, whipped.

Additional fresh strawberries, optional.

In large saucepan, melt margarine, stir in toasted coconut. Mix well. Press into bottom and up sides of 9-inch pie plate; chill. In large mixer bowl, beat cheese until fluffy; beat in Eagle. Stir in pureed strawberries and lemon juice. Fold in whipped cream. Pour into coconut crust (mixture should mound slightly). Freeze 4 hours or until firm. Before serving, garnish with additional fresh strawberries if desired. Return leftovers to freezer.

Molly MacRae kicks off an exciting February with this fun pudding recipe! At least there are no prunes! Molly always knows how to keep her many readers entertained if not well fed. Stay tuned for a February Blog Blast right here with chances to win prizes. -AA

It’s February, and I’m already wondering where the year is going to so fast. Maybe it’s zipping by because I’m writing as fast and hard as I can on a new book, hoping to meet a deadline that’s coming at me as though it’s in hyper-drive. So what better recipe to share than one called Hurry-up Pudding?

This is another recipe from Dutch Oven: a Cook Book of coveted traditional Recipes from the Kitchens of Lunenburg. It’s a wonderful collection of savory and sweet treats, each of them facsimiles of handwritten recipes contributed by members of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Lunenburg Hospital Society in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in 1953. I haven’t tested Hurry-up Pudding, yet. It looks easy enough, but lacking that crucial piece of information – bake for ??? minutes – it’ll have to wait until I have time to jump up over and over to see if it’s done. And that’s another missing piece of information – what do you suppose the pudding looks like, and what’s the consistency when it’s done? All clues welcome!

Hurry-up Pudding

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

2 tsp. B. Powder

½ cup milk

1 cup raisins or dates

Sift together dry ingredients

Add milk and mix well.

The add raisins or dates

Bake in a moderate oven,

And serve with whipped cream.

Florence E. Hewat

(Mrs. W.A.)

Molly MacRae kicks off our food posts for 2016 with new cookbooks and another interesting recipe, though this one sounds pretty good! At least, it’s better than the Prune Whip she almost put up…What are your cooking – and reading goals for this year?-AA

What better way to celebrate the New Year than with new cookbooks? I have three, but I’m going to taunt you by spreading out the joy and only showing you one today. You’ll hear about the others in February and March. This month it’s Dutch Oven: a cook book of coveted, traditional recipes from the kitchens of Lunenburg, compiled by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Lunenburg Hospital Society in 1953. A dear friend in Nova Scotia sent the book to me. Every recipe in it is handwritten, and many of them are illustrated with charming line drawings. The book is a gem. So is Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, by the way. The town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, being the best surviving example of a planned British colonial settlement in North America.

There are lots of fish and game recipes in the book, delicious-sounding baked treats, and a section called “Men’s Dishes.” There’s also a recipe called “A Curry” that starts out with this admonition: “A curry is never that vile travesty – a cream sauce disgustingly tinted with curry powder!” I thought about teasing Amy by sharing the book’s recipe for Prune Whip, but instead, because we both write and love mysteries, we’ll start the New Year out right with the recipe for Mystery Cakes. These sound awfully good, although I think I might add chocolate chips to the topping mixture. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like these cakes. Have you?

Mystery Cakes

½ cup soft butter

½ cup brown sugar

2 cups sifted pastry flour

Cream butter and sugar, add flour

Blend together and turn into 9 or 10 inch cake tin. Pat evenly.

Combine 1 ½ cups brown sugar, 2 tbsps. flour, 1 ½ tsps. baking powder

1 ½ tsps. salt, 2 eggs, 1 cup chopped dates

½ cup coconut, 1 cup chopped walnuts.

Spread on top of first mixture in pan. Bake 40 minutes in a moderate oven. When cool frost with butter icing. Cut in size desired.

Happy New Year! 2015 took me in lots of new directions, and 2016 already has some fun plans. A favorite thing that happened was renewed interest in jewelry and accessories, to the point where I am selling things in a boutique and planning on an Etsy shop. What are you looking forward to in 2016?

Here’s an interesting clipping – 3 ingredients, but…?

2 (7 oz.) packages strawberry jello

1 cup Eagle Brand condensed milk

2 (7 oz.) packages coconut

Mix together coconut, 1 package dry jello and  milk in large bowl. Refrigerate 6 hours or overnight.When ready to shape into strawberries, place 1 package dry jello in a small bowl. Take a small amount of coconut mixture and shape into a strawberry. Roll lightly in dry jello.

Hmm. I don’t know about that one.

Last post for the 2015 earring challenge! Thank you Sarajo at SJ Designs Jewelry for inspiring me in so many ways this year! The pink and white pair is made from re-purposed vintage jewelry and the black and turquoise make me think of New Year’s Eve!

I hope you all have a healthy and Happy New Year!

Here’s a great and easy recipe someone made for a recent party. Yum! What’s your easy go to recipe for the holidays?

Chocolate Walnut Crumb Bars

(makes about 30 bars)

1 cup (2 sticks) margarine, softened

2 cups flour

½ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

2 cups (12 oz) semi-sweet chocolate morsels, divided

1 ¼ cups (14 oz) Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped walnuts

Beat margarine in large mixer bowl until creamy.  Beat in flour, sugar and salt until crumbly.  With floured fingers, press 2 cups crumb mixture onto bottom of greased 13 X 9 inch baking pan;  reserve remaining mixture.  Bake in pre-heated 350 degree oven for 10 – 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown.

Warm 1 ½ cups morsels and sweetened condensed milk in small, heavy saucepan over low heat, stirring until smooth.  Stir in vanilla extract.  Spread over hot crust.

Stir in walnuts and remaining morsels into reserved crumb mixture, sprinkle over chocolate filling.  Bake in 350 degree oven for 25 – 30 minutes or until center is set.   Cool in pan on wire rack.

A few more gift pairs of earrings. I know they are similar to other favorites from this year, but they are fun to make! I can’t believe there is only one more post with the earrings. It’s been so eye opening – I started making earrings, now I’m filling orders for infinity scarves and having trunk shows. I really wanted to get an Etsy shop up but ran out of time. Next year! My inspiration for all of this is SJ Designs Jewelry and her year long challenge. I can’t wait to see where this all leads next year!

Readers here know I love handwritten recipes and the way they reveal clues about their owners. Molly MacRae shares some details about her stash in this delightful post. -AA

In September, I shared some of the treasures from the stationery box of clippings and handwritten recipes my grandmother collected between 1901 and 1914. The box is full of intriguing hints about her kitchen and her life, and I feel incredibly lucky to have it. So can you imagine my surprise and delight when I opened the present my sister gave me for my birthday a few weeks ago? First, the present was enclosed in a really snazzy red plastic portfolio. If you love office supplies, like I love office supplies, you know how I feel about that portfolio. LOVE IT. But the beauty of that bright red portfolio pales beside the sheaf of yellowed ledger pages inside it. On the pages are more handwritten recipes and neatly glued clippings from Granny – and from her mother. It’s so cool. And difficult to read, but that makes it even cooler, to my mind.

There are pages of fish recipes, sauce and pickle recipes, cake recipes, and pudding recipes – many of which I’ll be happy to try (or try to decipher) – but there’s also a buried treasure. Glued to a corner of one of the pudding pages is a clipping for Delicate Pudding. Granny rewrote the recipe’s name, above the clipping, in her own delicate hand. The recipe is from Mrs. H.J. Pepper of 509 W. Park Street in Champaign, Illinois. Granny didn’t live in Champaign. She never did. But more than a hundred years later, I do, and I live about eight blocks from where Mrs. Pepper lived. Her Delicate Pudding sounds good, too, so I’ll definitely give it a try. And wasn’t her name perfect for someone who liked to cook? 

Are you making several types of holiday cookies? What do you make each year? This recipe does not have much information but sounds interesting:

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 1/2 cup flour

1 cup coconut

1 cup nuts

1 lb. dates

2 Tablespoons hot water, dissolve 1 teas B. Soda (baking soda). Pour over dates.

Um, how are these Lucille’s Drop Cookies as specified? I believe the dough is poured over dates and each is a cookie? What do you think?

Only a few more entries in the earring challenge this year. It’s inspired lots of other changes for me, and I’m thankful to the talented designer at SJ Designs Jewelry for hosting the challenge. The purple and black still need some finishing up, but I’m keeping those! The snowflakes were for a friend to give her sister for her birthday.

Are you making any gifts this year for the holidays?

I found a wonderful pamphlet tucked inside a recipe box – advertising a Betty Crocker Lemon Pie contest due “midsummer 1939.” Along with that is this delightful “Holiday Spaghetti:”

1/2 lb. spaghetti

3 qt. boiling salted water

1/2 cup Shortening

1 large onion, finely minced

1 green pepper, finely minced

1 8-oz. can mushrooms

1 lb. ground round steak

3 tsp salt

1 tsp. sugar

3 1/2 cups canned tomatoes

4 to 8 tbsp. grated cheese

Break spaghetti into 1 1/2 – 2 inch pieces. Cook till tender in boiling salted water. Drain. Melt shortening in large frying pan. Add onion, green pepper, sliced mushrooms and cook slowly till onion is golden yellow. Add round steak and 1 tsp. salt. Cook 10 minutes.

Add remaining salt, cooked spaghetti, sugar and tomatoes. When whole mixture is hot, transfer to buttered baking dish and sprinkle top with cheese. Bake 15 – 30 minutes in moderate oven (350F) in 10-inch casserole. Garnish with crisp broiled slices of bacon, and sprigs of parsley just before serving. Serves 6 – 8.

Here are a few holiday earring pairs I made to get into the season, as part of the challenge that talented designer SJ Designs Jewelry hosted this year. I’m barely keeping up now with the other things I’m making, the new job, shows and the new anthology coming out (more on that soon) , but am still enjoying making these!

 Are you thinking about your Thanksgiving menus yet? Chances are you won’t want this one on there. It’s from one of my favorite handwritten recipe boxes, marked from a woman and “30s-40s-50s”. This one has a grocery list on the back of it, too.

“Carrott Pudding”

4 cups ground raw carrots 1 t. salt

1 cup ground suet  1 t. cinnamon

1 cup sugar 1 t. allspice

1 1/2 cup flour 1 t. cloves

1/2 lb. raisins/currants  2 t. Baking Powder

Mix dry ingredients and add to other ingredients which have been combined. Steam three hours and serve hot with hard sauce.

Interesting. Does it count as a vegetable even with the 1 cup sugar?

I’m in a silver and blue mood with earrings this week. I had to run a lot of stuff to the boutique this week, though not earrings, so I’m late making these for my designer friend SaraJo’s challenge. These are for me this time and all the beads are from vintage jewelry that I took apart. What are you creating this week?