Laura Ingalls Wilder Recipe: Tomatoes with Cream and Sugar

I bought this Little House Cookbook with such high hopes of making all the recipes just like Ma but really, they're not that great. What did I expect, gourmet flaky crusts from a family who was just scraping by with no grocery store for miles? I don't know but have since come to my senses. Here's one that seemed pretty good but kind of disappointed me. Doesn't my glowing review make you want to try it tonight?

Ripe Tomatoes with Sugar and Cream
Red-ripe tomatoes, garden fresh
Parsley, lettuce, or wild sorrel, a few leaves
Medium cream
Sugar in bowl

To peel the skin, insert a fork in the tomato's stem end and plunge the tomato for 3 seconds in boiling water. Or rotate it next to an open candle flame until the entire surface has been seared. Without removing the fork, peel off the skin with a knife. Cut the tomatoes crosswise in slices and arrange on a platter with some greens. At the table, each person adds cream and sugar to taste.

Janet's Notes: In my opinion it's not necessary to peel the tomatoes. So a simplified recipe is this: slice tomatoes and pour cream and sugar on them.

The verdict: Eh. Not bad but the sugar on the tomatoes did not really work for me. I thought it would because tomatoes are naturally kind of sweet, but I prefer salt.

Long Winter Wheat Bread, Cheater's Version

I separated the wheat from the chaff!

I was reading my Little House cookbook today and remembered the Kern jar of wheat berries given to me by my friend Leslie. Leslie's aunt is a genuine cowgirl and grows wheat on her farm. I've been saving the wheat for something really special (for two years now) and the time has finally arrived.


I was going to take the wheat and grind it in my coffee grinder, and make the bread that Laura and her family ate during The Long Winter to keep from starving. Thank goodness for dreamy Almanzo and Cap Garland with his flashing blue eyes, who traveled a zillion miles through a blizzard to get more wheat from that weird guy who was hiding it in his walls. (I know. You just have to read the book.)

So I'm all excited, until I read the description: "You are not likely to find this coarse, heavy loaf as satisfying as Laura did--unless you eat nothing else during the day, help to grind the grain, and share it with five hungry people in a room where a bottle of ink might freeze." Hmmm. Good point. Why would I waste my precious wheat on a crummy recipe?

Change of plans: wheat berry bread. I used this recipe as a jumping-off point but as you can see, changed many things, including the addition of homemade granola (Don't tell them you got it at Honey's cafe--dang it. Did I just type that out loud?).

Bread Machine Wheat Berry and Granola Bread
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup cooked wheat berries
1/2 cup granola
4 cups bread flour
1 Tbsp. yeast
1 tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients in bread machine and process on dough cycle. Bake in loaf pan (I used two because it seemed like a lot of dough) at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Janet's notes: Don't use two loaf pans. It's not really that much dough and I wish I had made one nice big loaf. If you use this bread as morning toast, leave the salt at 1 tsp. but if you want it for sandwiches, I'd add another teaspoonful. I was a little worried about not adding any butter or oil but it came out surprisingly tender. I'd also have used a cup or two of whole wheat flour in place of the white bread flour if I had it.

Laura Ingalls Recipes: Vanity Cakes

Mailman Mike (via Amazon) delivered my very own copy of The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker today. Both the library and I are very happy, as I can now return the long-overdue copy that I couldn't bear to part with.

I flipped through and immediately stopped when I got to Vanity Cakes. Remember in By the Banks of Plum Creek when Laura had a birthday party and Ma made these, and then Laura chased Nellie into the water with the leeches in it?

"She made them with beaten eggs and white flour. She dropped them into a kettle of sizzling fat. Each one came up bobbing, and floated till it turned itself over, lifting up its honey-brown, puffy bottom. Then it swelled underneath till it was round, and Ma lifted it out with a fork. She put every one of those cakes in the cupboard. They were for the party."

-Excerpt from By the Banks of Plum Creek

The cookbook mentions a time when Laura was interviewed about vanity cakes, and here's what she said: "Were crunchy, not sweetened, and were so light, really a bubble that they seemed almost nothing in one's mouth. They were a golden color when fried. They simply puffed up when fried until they were nothing but a bubble." The cookbook also mentions the difference between balloons and bombs being dependent on the cook's deep-frying expertise, which I'm proud to say I do not have.

Vanity Cakes
Lard, 1 to 2 pounds (I used Canola oil)
Egg, 1 large
Salt, a pinch
White flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose
Powdered sugar for dusting


Pour oil in a pot to a depth of 3 inches. Heat it to 350 degrees. In the bowl, beat the egg and salt for a full minute. Beat in thoroughly 1/4 cup of flour. Add more flour, one Tbsp. at at a time, until the batter is too stiff for beating but too soft to roll out.


Cover a dinner plate with flour. With a teaspoon, spoon the batter onto the plate in six separate portions. With a knife turn each spoonful of dough over to flour it, then drop it into the hot oil.

Cook each cake for at least 3 1/2 minutes, during which time it may need help in turning. If it darkens quickly, the fat is too hot. Drain cakes on brown paper and dust with powdered sugar.

Oh man...can't wait to cut into these and see how they turned into a bubble!

Dang it!

Janet's Notes: First off, I used a tiny pot because a 3" depth is a heck of a lot of oil. And while I normally don't worry too much about the minor details, I did use a candy thermometer because I wanted balloons, not bombs--turned out it didn't help. Finally, keeping the oil at 350 degrees was difficult. My oil temp soared up to 400 pretty quickly and turning down the flame didn't bring it back down fast enough, so the Vanity Cakes cooked faster than 3 1/2 minutes. I doubt that made the difference though. You put a big lump of dough in the fryer and it all of a sudden magically disappears and turns into a big bubble? I don't buy it.

My guess is that Laura didn't have a lot of delicious food on Plum Creek (they lived in a dugout underground, after all) and this was a treat worthy of a birthday party for her. Another opportunity to let my kids know how spoiled they are, and isn't that what motherhood is all about?

They taste like nothing.

Verdict:
Janet: They taste like a fried cream puff but without anything delicious inside.
Vince and Sean: No thank you.
Elise: (See photo caption above.)
Max: Can I have a popsicle instead?

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls, wearing her "lunatic fringe" bangs, as Ma disdainfully called them. They were all the rage, and she curled them with a heated pencil.

I love the Little House series of books. I love them so much I want to marry them, and I seriously considered the name Laura when I was pregnant with my daughter. I have read the entire series of 9 books straight through no less than 20 times and my dream vacation is to Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. My family does not care to join me.

If you know this series, you know a lot of time is spent on lengthy descriptions of food, which happens to be one of my very favorite subjects. Recently, I came across a "Little House" cookbook by Barbara M. Walker at the library and was excited to find the apple turnovers from Farmer Boy featured.

"At noontime everyone was allowed to move about the schoolroom and talk quietly. Eliza Jane opened the dinner-pail on her desk. It held bread-and-butter and sausage, doughnuts and apples, and four delicious apple-turnovers, their plump crusts filled with melting slices of apple and spicy brown juice."

-Excerpt from Farmer Boy

The recipe for the apple turnovers starts by talking about the crust, and how Mother Wilder (mother of Farmer Boy Almanzo) would probably have made puff pastry, but the cookbook authors recommend ordinary pie crust "to those who have not developed the puff-pastry knack." Sounds like a challenge to me. Puff pastry it is.

Apple Turnovers
Crust:
1 1/4 cup white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
5 Tbsp. lard (Ugh. Let's do butter instead)

Mix flour and salt (I went modern and used my food processor.). Add butter, cut into small chunks and process until the mixture is uniformly coarse. Add 3 Tbsp. ice water. Press the dough into a ball and chill.


To make it puff pastry:
Divide 6 Tbsp. butter into thirds. Roll the dough into a rectangle roughly 5 x 15 x 1/8 inch thick. Take a third of the butter in your fingers and pinch off small pieces. Cover the rectangle with these butter dots, except around the edges.

Fold the short ends of the dough toward the center, overlapping them like a business letter. Press gently and fold pastry in half the other way. If pastry has broken anywhere, patch it by wetting the surfaces to be joined (the crust won't puff if hot air escapes).

Roll the dough out again to a rectangle and repeat the buttering and folding operations. Chill dough again before rolling to a rectangle the third time. Once more knead the butter, dot the dough with it, and fold. Chill if dough begins to warm. Roll folded dough into rectangle 5 x 15
inches.

Apple Filling:
2 tart apples
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
Peel, core, and slice apples into small dice. Mix with sugar and spices. Divide dough into 5 sections. Cut and roll out a little more, then put about 3 Tbsp. apples in center of dough. Fold into a triangle and seal edges with water (I crimped them with a fork as well).

The book says to fry the turnovers and then dust them with powdered sugar, but I brushed them with melted butter, sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar, and then baked them in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes.


I am not a fan of cooked fruit but these turnovers were great. The pastry was what made them.

Check out the puff in that pastry!