Tag: Retro Recipes

Dessert, Sweets

Wannabe Making Whoopie

by Wendi13 Comments on Wannabe Making Whoopie

Whoopie!

Pies, y’all. Wannabe Whoppie Pies.  But that’s not what I started out to make.  Nope, not in the least.  I set out to make a Retro Recipe for Vanilla Wafers.  I’ll admit that maybe my attention was spread a little too thin.  I had orange chicken going in the kitchen, was stumbling my way through a sewing project in the dining room, and really wasn’t paying attention to Vanilla Wafers.  I creamed the butter with half of the sugar called for and didn’t realize it until all the eggs and half the flour and milk had already been added.  I then spent a good five minutes trying to figure out which would be a worse way to break the recipe – by having not enough sugar or by adding more sugar too late in the process. I decided to gamble and see what would happen if I added the rest of the sugar along with the flour.  To say that what I pulled out of the oven was not what I was expecting would be an understatement. Continue reading “Wannabe Making Whoopie” →

Random

Retro Recipes

by Wendi7 Comments on Retro Recipes

Retro Recipe Study 4

As I may have mentioned once or twice, my grandmother embraced convenience foods.  TV dinners, box cake mixes, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese…these were foods I grew up with.  But she had a secret.  She had been sitting on a gold mine of retro recipes from random cookbooks.  One day, long before I developed an interest in cooking, she handed them over to me.  Maybe she knew that eventually I would embark on my own adventures in the kitchen.  Or maybe she thought these might spark an interest in me to stop eating out of boxes.  Whatever the reason may have been, those pages got tucked away in my three ring binder as more of a curiosity than anything.  Many years, and several moves later, I finally took a look at them and realized that I had been given a window into the past. Continue reading “Retro Recipes” →

Dessert, Sweets

Retro Recipes – Cinnamon Cake

by Wendi11 Comments on Retro Recipes – Cinnamon Cake

Retro Recipe - Cinnamon Cake

When the weather predictions call for snow measured in feet, instead of inches, my first instinct is to fire up the oven and get baking.  There’s something hard wired in my brain that says copious amounts of time locked inside should be celebrated with sugar, butter, and flour.  Luckily, all the ingredients for Cinnamon Cake were safely tucked away in my pantry as SNOMG (thanks Pigtown for this catchy phrase) came barreling into town.  I say luckily because if you’ve ever been inside a grocery store the night before a big winter storm around these parts, you know that it’s that last place you want to be.  So to kick off the first really big storm of the decade, I rocked it old school with one of the recipes in a random collection of cookbook pages that I got from my grandmother.  I have no idea what cookbooks these may have been or exactly how old they are.  But trust me, Cinnamon Cake stands up to the test of time.  And it makes a great snack when you’ve just freed your car from 2 feet of snow.

Cinnamon Cake

BAH Note: I get all confused when a recipe says sifted flour vs. flour sifted.  To me, flour sifted means you measure then sift where sifted flour means you sift then measure.  Since I have no great way to sift directly into a measuring cup, I say fluff your flour a bit then measure.  Don’t be alarmed when you put the melted butter and cinnamon sugar on top of the batter.  The edges of the cake will bake up around it and then it will sink through the batter in places.  This end result is similar to a coffee cake without a crumb topping.

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 1/2 cup sugar plus 1/2 cup sugar, divided
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 2 cups sifted flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 4 tablespoons melted butter plus 5 tablespoons melted butter, divided
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Butter and flour a 9 x 13 pan.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs.  Slowly add the 1 1/2 cups sugar and continue to beat until very light.

Add the dry ingredients and milk in several additions, alternating between wet and dry, beginning and ending with the dry.

Add the 4 tablespoons of melted butter and mix until thoroughly blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it out evenly.  Drizzle 5 tablespoons of melted butter over the top of the batter.

Combine 1/2 cup sugar with the cinnamon in a small bowl.  Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the top of the cake.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until a tester comes out with only a crumb or two.

{printable recipe}