Brian Francis's Blog, page 10

Bazaar-o-Rama Week 2

It's the second week of Bazaar-o-Rama, my annual tour of church holiday bazaars!

What treasures did I find? Click here to find out!

Popcorn Candy Cake

Call me a fuddy-duddy caker, but I bypass the microwave and cook my popcorn the old-fashioned way. First, I put on my petticoat, then I grow the corn, gather it in my apron, dry it and pop it on the woodstove. Pa and I usually do a jig before settling down to a bowl while the kids play with dolls made of sticks and mud.

As much as I enjoy popcorn (pronounced “pup-corn” in certain caker circles), I’m not sure that using it for a cake makes a lot of sense. Mainly because the unpopped kernels can play psychological warfare with you. Is that a peanut? Or a kernel? All I can say is keep your dentist on speed dial and nibble like a squirrel.

In spite of dental dangers, this cake was pretty good, although a little chewy. And I could've done without the gumdrops. Or jujubes. Are they the same thing? I get confused. Anyways, I made it in an angel food pan. If you do the same, don’t soak it in water like the recipe says or else the water will seep through the bottom and you’ll end up with something that looks like a mountain of wet Kleenexes. And that can be a hard one to sell to dinner guests.

1 16-oz package miniature marshmallows
¾ cup vegetable oil
½ cup butter or margarine
5 quarts popped popcorn (about 20 cups)
24 ounces gumdrops
1 cup salted peanuts

In pot, melt marshmallows, oil and butter. Stir until smooth. Set aside. In large bowl, combine popcorn, gumdrops and peanuts. Add marshmallow mixture and mix well. Press into 10” tube pan. Cover and refrigerate for at least 5 hours. To unmold, dip pan in hot water for 5-10 seconds.

Hey! Have you checked out Bazaar-o-Rama 14 ? If not, what are you waiting for?

Source: Decidedly Delicious Desserts (I can’t find the cover for this one. It’s somewhere. I think.)

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It's Bazaar-o-Rama!

No need to pinch yourself – you're not dreaming! Bazaar-o-Rama, my annual tour of church bazaars is back for another spellbinding year!

Click here to see what I got my first week out. Or, if you're on your desktop/laptop, just click on the Bazaar-o-Rama 14 tab at the top.

Orange Cottage Cheese Salad

I don’t know what Sunday dinners were like with your family, but in my caker household, they were pretty special. My mom would put away her casserole dish, slip on an apron, boil herself a cup of Nescafé and spend the afternoon actually making a meal. It took us awhile to understand the concept of passing different dishes around the table. Sometimes, my sisters would cry and complain that it hurt their arms. I guess that explains why caker forearms are so underdeveloped.

Usually, our Sunday meal included coleslaw (we were a creamy kind family), roast beef (sprinkled with Lipton onion soup mix), mashed padaydas (which had about as much flavour as air), canned corn and store-bought white dinner buns. Usually, there was a salad because my mom was concerned about our vitamin intake. This Orange Cottage Cheese Salad was pretty popular with us. (Hello?!? It has Cool Whip.)

There’s something about the soft, squishy bits of cottage cheese, artfully blended with the Cool Whip, that really does it for me. And talk about colour! Why, the only thing as pastel-pretty as this salad is its green sister, Watergate Salad. Never make me choose between them.

1 pound cottage cheese (see note)
1 package (3 ounces) orange JELL-O
14-ounce tin of pineapple chunks
10-ounce tin of mandarin oranges
1 tub Cool Whip

Sprinkle JELL-O over cottage cheese and stir. Drain pineapple and mandarin. Add to cottage cheese mixture. Fold in Cool Whip. Chill and serve.

Note: I just bought a big tub.

Hey! I smell turkey pies! That can only mean one thing – bazaar season is upon us. Join me for Bazaar-o-Rama starting this Friday. I travel around to bazaars throughout the month and post all the crap treasures I find. Needless to say, it’s pretty exciting.

Source: Favourite Recipes from Skudesnes Lutheran



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Caker Cooking says "Arrivee derche!"

The Captain and Tinelle. Wayland Flowers and Madame. Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. All great love affairs must come to an end.

In this case, it's ours. In the three and a half years since I started this blog, we’ve cried a little, laughed a little and burped a little. Okay, we burped a lot. But I think my caker work here is done.

I’ll be wrapping things up at the end of December. But despair not. There’s lots of fun headed your way.

Watch for Bazaar-o-Rama, my annual tour of church bazaars, starting next Friday. Then it’s time for my month-long Caker Christmas extravaganza. (If I were you, I’d start stocking up on the gold spray paint.)

Until then, put this on repeat and we'll see you Monday with a new recipe.

Tootsie Roll Squares

Let the caker record state: I can’t get with Tootsie Rolls. It’s not that I won’t eat them (they have sugar, after all), but I’ve never been able to figure them out. Are they supposed to be chocolate? Why so many sizes? How are they related to Tootsie Pops? And the whole poop resemblance thing – intentional or not?

For Halloween, I usually buy candy I don’t like. That way, I don’t find myself mid-November, eating four mini Coffee Crisps for breakfast and wondering why I can’t zip up my GWGs. This year, I bought a big bag of Tootsie Rolls. After four kids came to the door (none were in costumes and looked like they were in college), I turned to the nine pounds of leftover Tootsie Rolls and had an idea. (This was a big deal as ideas don’t happen often for me.)

I searched through my caker cookbook collection and found a recipe for Brown Cow Squares. Anyone remember this brown liquid? You mixed it with milk. I usually sucked it straight from the bottle. See what happens when caker kids aren't breast-fed?

I substituted Tootsie Rolls for the Brown Cow and you know what? My invention was delicious! The Tootsie Rolls got all gooey-like and were a nice compliment to the peanut butter. Now if only I had remembered to unwrap them first. Oh, well. I’m sure the wrappers will pass. Eventually. LOL!

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup soft butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
3 eggs
½ cup brown cow (see note)

Combine flour and baking powder. Cream together butter, peanut butter, sugars and vanilla in a large mixer bowl. Add eggs, one at a time, beat well, after each addition. Stir in flour mixture alternately with milk into creamed mixture. Spread half the batter in a greased 9” x 13” pan. Drizzle with half the Brown Cow. Repeat layers. Bake in 350° oven 35-40 minutes or until done. Cool. Cut into squares. Makes one pan.

Note: I laid out about 12 Tootsie Rolls per layer. MAKE SURE YOU UNWRAP THEM!

Yep, looks like poop. For other feces-inspired ideas, check out the always-classy Kitty Litter Cake.

Source: Centennial Central School Cook Book, Arva, Ontario, 1995

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Egg-in-a-Hole

My kitchen reno is now entering its fifty-third week. I’m starting to forget how an oven works. (Oh, who am I kidding? They were always mysterious boxes to me.)

While I was trying to figure out what to make this week using the utensils I have at my disposal (mainly a coffee maker and an iron), I remembered there was a family-sized electric griddle in the garage. I bought it for all those large family gatherings. Which, you know, I never have.

I blew the dust off and fired it up to make Egg-in-a-Hole. Once again, I have to wonder how many cakers failed English class. It’s not that we can’t spull. It’s just that we’re so bad with words. We seem to be a people hellbent on giving our food the most uninspiring names possible. Consider Make Do Squares. White Stuff. Bun Spread.

We can now add Egg-in-a-Hole to the Unfortunately Named Caker Recipe Hall of Fame. While it’s tasty and convenient (cakers love anything involving clever assembly tricks), would you want to try Egg-in-a-Hole if you saw it on a menu?

“Whose hole is it?” I’d want to ask the waiter. “And was the hole warshed before the egg went up there?”

1 slice bread, buttered (for each serving)
1 egg

Cut a round hole in slice of bread. Butter one side and brown in frying pan. Turn over and drop raw egg into the hole. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook soft or firm, as desired.

Source: Madoc Centennial Cookbook, 1978

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Meat and Tater Pie

Well, folks, I’m into week four without a kitchen, thanks to mother’s “hurt” back. (It didn’t stop her from going to polka the other night.) But I had a brilliant idea. Why not borrow a friend’s kitchen? The only problem was finding a friend. It took me a while (and a lot of money) but I finally met a fellow caker who was willing to let me use his oven to make this Meat and Tater Pie.

This recipe comes from Pie Fare from Paris Fair. Now before you grab your beret and paint a moustache on with eyebrow pencil, that’s Paris, Ontario, not Paris, France. Talk about having an inferiority complex! Why would you set yourself up for that kind of fall? Ontario is weird, though. After all, this is the province of Paris, London, Stratford and Swastika.

Anyways, Meat and Tater Pie was delicious. In fact, my new friend (I think his name was Randy Andy) said the crunchy corn flake topping was the best part. It did get a little greasy on the bottom (I could only afford regular ground beef) so you might want to drain it before serving it up. Or sop up the grease with Wonder Bread.

As soon as we were done, Randy Andy told me I had to leave. He had someone else coming over to use his bedroom. Looks like I’m in the wrong business! LOL!

1 pound ground beef
1/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon mustard
½ cup crushed corn flakes
Combine: press mixture on bottom and sides of a 9” pie plate.

2 eggs
2 cups mashed potatoes (see note 1)
¼ cup chopped onion (see note 2)
2 teaspoons parsley flakes

Beat eggs; add remaining ingredients: spread in meat shell. Place plate on baking sheet. Bake 350 F – 35 minutes.

½ cup crushed corn flakes
2 tablespoons melted butter
grated cheddar cheese (enough to cover top of pie)

When pie has cooked 35 minutes, top with the grated cheese, then corn flake/butter mixture. Return to oven to bake 10 minutes until cheese melts.

Note 1: I used instant potatoes. Of course. But they were a little runny.
Note 2: Randy Andy said he would've sauteed the onions first as they were a little crunchy.

Source: Pie Fare from Paris Fair, Paris, Ontario

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Chocolate Mug Cake

Bad news, folks. I still don’t have a kitchen. Mother was carrying my new golden harvest oven up the stairs and threw her back out. (I told her she shouldn’t have strapped it to her back but she never listens.) So now she’s laid up in bed and ringing a bell every time she’s hungry or needs a warsh. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I have a stove sitting in the middle of my stairs.

Thank the good lord for microwaves. Who needs an oven when you’ve got this little caker miracle box at your disposal? You can cook anything anywhere: the bedroom, the bathroom, even on a road trip (provided you’ve got a really long extension cord.)

I was sent the recipe for Chocolate Mug Cake by Madame M for Reader Recipe Month, but ran out of time. I was a little conflicted about the recipe in that it doesn’t involve cake mix (non-cake mix cake doesn’t even exist in the caker world), but, as Madame M pointed out, there are no bowls to warsh. So I guess it’s caker enough.

Having said that, the cake wasn’t very good. It was spongy. As in, I only ate half of it and used the other half to wash the mug. Next time you want cake, it’s probably faster – and tastier – to eat a Ding Dong.

4 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon chocolate chips

Mix the dry ingredients in a large mug. Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Pop your mug into the microwave and zap for 3 minutes on maximum. (See note 1) Wait until the cake stops rising, and sets in the mug. Eat right out of the mug. Add a blob of ice cream on top if you wish. (See note 2)

Here's a closer look.









Note 1: Your cake will rise pretty high out of the mug while it’s cooking. It was pretty scary and I started screaming, which got Mother ringing the bell and yelling, “What’s going on out there?”

Note 2: Won’t help.

Source: Madame M

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Kitchen Reno Week

I’m undergoing a kitchen reno right now. I decided it’s time for this caker to prancercise his way into the 21st century. Here are all the things I’ve asked my handyman (a.k.a. Mother) to do:

1. Replace avocado appliances with golden harvest
2. Put up ruffled sheers from Sears
3. Put up flowered wallpaper border
4. Sew chair pads to match wallpaper border
5. Install showcase for my souvenir spoon collection
6. Get a “dishwasher” (apparently, it’s a box where you hide dirty dishes)
7. Hang extremely large wooden fork and spoon

Until my reno is complete, I don’t have a kitchen to cook in. And while some of you (mainly Eye-talians) assume that cakers don’t actually “cook,” we do need sources of heat. And my crimping iron simply isn’t going to cut it. So I’ve put together a list of some random my fave recipes over the years, just like a flashbacks episode of The Golden Girls. Minus the cheesecake.

Hopefully, I’ll be back to posting recipes next week. So long as Mother manages to haul the fridge up the stairs.

Popcorn Salad
Orville Redenbacher’s favourite side dish.








Battle of the Peanut Butter Cookies: Cakers vs. Mennonites
And you thought Godzilla vs. Mothra was intense.








Ruby Slipper Cake
The height of sophistication from the pages of TV Guide.








Cheerio Chews
So easy to make! And eat!









Patsy Recline’s Dingle Hoofers
The name says it all.