Baking Aspirations by Christine Johnson

Confession time here. I’m a huge fan of baking shows. Holiday Baking Championship, Cupcake Wars, The Great British Baking Show and its American counterpart—I love them all. And their creations? Sigh. Gorgeous cakes, almost too pretty to eat. Fresh bread out of the oven that I can practically smell.

After acquiring a gorgeous pie cookbook filled with mouth-watering photos, I decided to bake one pie per week this past winter. I found willing guinea pigs—er, tasters—and bought my supplies.

Where to begin? I decided a yummy chicken pot pie sounded good. Several hours later (why did I choose such a difficult pie?), it came out of the oven and was ready for tasting. I declared it a success, and my tasters agreed.

No, this isn’t my effort. Mine wasn’t nearly as symmetrical. No photos were taken in order to protect the unskilled.

Alas, the next pie—a chocolate cream pie—turned to disaster when the filling went from thick at room temperature to soup in the refrigerator. I still don’t understand the chemistry of what happened.

A quiche fell flat but tasted good. The frozen strawberry cream pie required a machete to cut into pieces. And the list went on. Needless to say, I won’t be entering The Great American Baking Show anytime soon. On the plus side, all my tasters said they were willing to keep trying my creations. Bless them, Lord! And the key lime pie in a gingersnap crust was delicious.

Are you a baker? Or, like me, do you love to watch cooking shows and dream of being so skilled?

In my latest book with Love Inspired Historical, Mail Order Sweetheart, the heroine, Fiona, needs to get a husband quickly. She has tried to attract a husband with her baking skills. Unlike my efforts in the kitchen, her rolls and breads are a total success. Her efforts to get a husband? Not so much. With her savings dwindling and her seven-year-old niece en route to live with her, Fiona makes one last gigantic effort to attract a man of means.

Christine Johnson

Mail Order Sweetheart (LIH, June 2017)

Freedom’s Price (Revell, June 2017)

http://christineelizabethjohnson.com

Grandma's Cookbook

Hello all! Christine Johnson here today on the eve of the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving. I love this holiday because it's all about food and family (and American football). What's not to love?

Holiday food is especially poignant because it brings back taste memories. My mom's sweet potatoes and mincemeat (actually mince-fruit) pie instantly transport me to Thanksgivings past. Christmas comes with a load of food memories. One I can still taste today is my grandma's plum pudding.

Educational Point #1 - Traditional pudding does not come in a box. For those of us who grew up in the Jello generation, this kind of pudding is a rich and moist cake. 

When I began writing this November's book, Legacy of Love, I wanted the heroine to attempt to make my grandma's plum pudding. To portray this accurately, I needed the recipe. So I asked my mom if she had it. She didn't, but she remembered my grandma saying it included suet. Suet? I instantly thought of the blocks of greasy birdseed that we put out for the birds in the winter. That wonderful moist cake included birdseed?

Educational Point #2 - Suet doesn't have to have birdseed in it. Apparently it's fat rendered from beef, as opposed to fat from pork, which is called lard.

Though I figured that out, I was no closer to the actual recipe. After extending the search, one of my aunts not only had the recipe, she had the whole cook book! 

 

 

Here is the very page with the recipe, from the Modern Priscilla Cook Book from 1924. As you can see, it's very well-used. It's also called plum duff, though Grandma always called it plum pudding. She served the pudding with hard sauce, so called because of its texture. The firm butter and sugar sauce would melt on the warm pudding. Oh yum, I'm getting hungry! Maybe I should make it. Then I read the recipe.

 

Educational Point #3 - Older recipes can be less than precise.

 

First, the cook needs to mix a lot of dried fruits and nuts into the suet and let "ripen" for a week. Okay. How does one "ripen" fruit and nuts in fat? I suspect it does not involve a refrigerator. Cooking also involves steaming in molds for four hours at an unknown temperature. How? Alas my grandma didn't leave any notes in the margin for future generations, but she did tuck into the cook book a modern photocopy of an English Plum Pudding recipe with more detailed directions. Though I can understand this recipe more easily, it lacks the charm and simplicity of the 1924 version. My heroine, a novice cook, might have produced a perfect plum pudding instead of the catastrophe that summoned the hero to make a food rescue.

 

For me, Christmas will always recall the taste of my grandma's plum pudding. What special taste memories do you have for the holidays?