welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're
going to do
out of this cookbook a little bit
tattered a little bit battered it is the
1912 edition
of what is essentially known as the
fanny farmer cookbook
although they changed the name with the
different printings over the years so
this one is called a new book of cookery
by fanny merritt farmer published in
boston 1912
amazing recipes in this book a lot of
very interesting things
and one of the really interesting things
in this book is the advertising in the
back
of products that we still see today on
the shelves
and products that we look at and go wow
they actually sold that you could buy
that stuff
and today we're going to do a recipe for
a caramel potato cake
i find recipes that put potatoes into
them to be very interesting because
potatoes bring an interesting texture
both to breads
and to cakes so we're going to start out
i'm going to use the stand mixer
the stand mixer did not appear in
american kitchens until
after this book was published by
probably six or seven years
but i don't want to do it with a wooden
spoon if what you have is a wooden spoon
and you want to do this in your kitchen
with a wooden spoon and get the full
experience
go right ahead so i'm going to start out
i'm going to cream the butter first
okay once the butter is softened and
creamed i'm going to add in
sugar and i'm going to continue beating
this until the sugar is
fully dissolved into the butter
while the sugar and butter are coming
together we'll deal with the dry
ingredients
so this is flour baking powder
cinnamon cloves
and some nutmeg
and as much as this is called a caramel
cake there's no
actual caramel in the cake the caramel
shows up
later as a boiled icing so we're going
to do that
while the cake is baking so i'm just
going to mix this together
get the dry ingredients sort of brought
together pretty nicely
looks like the butter and sugar are
creamed together so i'm going to add
in some eggs turn the mixer down
add in the eggs one at a time and i find
this just makes it mix together
nicer and once the first egg is in
put in the second
looking good the eggs are mixed in now i
get a lot of negative comments
about cracking an egg and putting it
directly into the bowl with the batter
and people get so upset with me
i'm supposed to supposed to crack an egg
put it into another bowl
check and see if it's a good egg and
then put it in
in all my years of cooking and i've been
cooking a long time uh
i have never come across a bad egg and
so i reached out to
a bunch of my friends who also cooked
for a living and said have you
ever had a bad egg and pretty much the
answer across the board was
no they had never experienced a bad egg
where we live in canada
eggs are generally safe
and incredibly fresh two to three days
between being laid
to ending up in the grocery store and i
use the eggs
within a couple of days and we go back
and get more so i've never had a bad egg
i'm not worried about it if you're
worried about it then please do put it
into a bowl
and please yourself in your own kitchen
next up is the mashed potato and it
doesn't ask for a whole lot of mashed
potato
just a half a cup so i'm going to put
that into the batter at this point
and for everybody who's going to ask
that is just potato that's been
boiled in salted water because i always
boil in salted water
and then mashed i haven't added any
butter any milk there's no salt and
pepper added at the end when you're
mashing it it is just
plain potato mashed up and yes i left
the skins on
so next it asks for milk
turn the mixer down a little bit so it
doesn't splash in goes the milk
often with a cake like this this i would
expect to alternate between the milk and
the flour mixture
this one says to put the milk in when
you put in the potato
and then start adding in the flour nut
meats
and grated chocolate so a little bit of
flour at a time
mixers on low
okay last of the flour
and i'm using chopped pecans
and the grated chocolate
okay just mix that together until it's
all incorporated
so this particular recipe doesn't say
what
size or shape of pan to use
which isn't uncommon um for this time
period
but it is a little bit strange because
all of the other cake recipes
in this book tell you the size
the shape and the depth of the cake pan
that they want you to bake it in
this one gives no indication so i've
chosen a 9x9
square i thought an 8x8 might be better
but i wasn't quite sure so i'm going to
see 9x9 seems to be okay
might be a little on the thin side i'm
going to spread this out
and then i'm going to bake it in a
moderate oven
into the oven for 55 minutes
okay next up is the frosting and we're
going to start out in a heavy
saucepan and i'm going to melt this
butter now here's a little bit of
confusion about this cake recipe
it tells me it's called a caramel potato
cake
and it tells me to go to page 350
to make the frosting and i had assumed
because i see on page 351 i see a
caramel frosting
and i assumed that the caramel potato
cake would have a caramel frosting since
there's nothing
caramelly in the cake but no it tells me
to use the fudge frosting on page 350.
so i don't know if there's a double
mistake in the recipe if
there's a typo if it should have been
called a fudge potato cake rather than a
caramel potato cake
i don't know we'll figure it out when we
get to the tasting so it tells me once
the butter is melted that i should add
in
sugar and
milk stir this together
bring it to a boil and boil for 10
minutes
okay now i'm supposed to take this
chocolate unsweetened chocolate and melt
it in
and let it go another five minutes
and you need to be careful not to let
the chocolate
stick to the bottom or the side of the
pan because it will burn on so
monitor your heat pretty closely turn it
down if you need
to this is not gonna need five minutes
i'm about two minutes
in and i think i've got the right
consistency so i'm gonna take it off
now uh put in some vanilla
and then you beat this until it's the
consistency that you want to put it on
the cake so
let's see what happens
and then spread that on the cake
hey
and icing that's kind of a you don't
have to get icing
no i don't like icing cakes if you've
ever seen me ice a cake you'll know that
i don't like icing cakes
and the icing in this instance didn't
work out
you'll notice it's a little bit lumpy it
is a little bit lumpy the times given
in the icing recipe seemed off when i
started but i followed it because that's
what i do on this
particular segment yes and 10 minutes of
boiling to begin with was far too long
and then once you add the chocolate it
was a further five minutes of boiling
way too long
um i cut it at like two two and a half
minutes i think
okay and was done with the boiling and
it ended up kind of chunky
we'll see what happens i'm sure it'll
taste great the other
i kind of want to eat both of them
separately okay i'll try it together
first
it's very dense
is that polite oh it might
just be that i got a i had a piece of
fruit in there no i had it in the fridge
okay i put it in the fridge because it's
really hot here today
um get out of the way i'm having another
slice
so it's it's hard to cut through because
it is really cold
and it could be that i'm just trying to
cut through a nut
so you that's pretty good
it's a winner that says it's a winner so
you've got two reasons i'm gonna have
some icing just to you know
there's a unique flavor to the icing
it's just milk sugar
butter and chocolate really and a little
bit of vanilla huh like it really it
really is a very simple
boiled it's a fudge icing here's problem
number two with this recipe
it's called a caramel potato cake
and yet there's no caramel in it at all
i had expected the caramel to come from
the icing that i was going to put a
caramel icing but no it's a chocolate
fudge icing but the one up
on top is called the fudge cake yes do
you think they got the mixed up i think
they might have got it mixed up but
anyway this one has potatoes the cake
has potatoes in it
um and i think that adds to the flavor
the nuts add to the flavor the shaved
chocolate as i think it's this is the
winner
the inside cake is good i actually like
the icing
mist named or not um icing fail or not
i will have no trouble polishing this
off
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you