bussete1's Blog

Date Cake
Apr 15, 2008 | 3:45 PM PST
Tags: old recipes , Date Cake

I've never heard of a date cake before.  Grandma never made this for me.  I wonder how it tastes?  I guess there's one way to find out.

Date Cake

1/2 cup butter

1 cup milk

1 cup chopped figs

3/4 cup walnuts

2 cups flour

2 eggs

1 cup brown Sugar

1 cup quartered Dates

1 cup raisins

3/4 cup pecans

2 teaspoons Baking Soda (if sour milk is used, use soda and baking powder both)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon each cinnamon and allspice

1/4 teaspoon each Ginger and cloves

Cream shortening, sugar, and eggs.  Add fruits, nuts, milk, flour, spices, and extract.  Combine Baking Bowder with flour; Soda with milk (sour or buttermilk).  Bake 30 minutes.

Is good to serve as a pudding with whipped cream or some sauce.

Spice Cake
Apr 13, 2008 | 3:03 PM PST
Tags: spice cake , old recipes

In my Grandma's homemade cookbook, above this recipe is written, "Variety is the very spice of life, and gives it all its flavor."

Spice Cake

1/2 cup shortening

2 cups brown sugar

3 eggs

1 cup sour milk

1 teaspoon soda

1/4 teaspoon of each -- cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon

2 cups cake flour

Mix sugar and shortening until it is foamy, then yolks.  Beat whites to a froth then beat them in.  Add sour milk, soda, flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder sifted with the flour.

There are no baking instructions, so I'm guessing it's 350 for 25 minutes or done, like most cakes.  Enjoy!

Recipies
Apr 12, 2008 | 2:10 PM PST
Tags: Beet relish , old recipes

I was given all my grandmother's recipes when she passed because I'm the only one in the family who's into cooking.  In those recipes, I found a little notebook with all the family recipes that she had written down when she first got married.  There's also a gift list in the back of all her wedding gifts.  It's so cool, I wanted to share some of the recipes with others.  I'll just do one for today.

Beet Relish

1qt. Ground Beets

1qt ground cabbage

1 cup horse radish

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tsp pepper

Enough cold vinegar to cover the mixture.  This is good to eat with meat.

Spring Fever
Apr 12, 2008 | 11:54 AM PST
Tags: mint , purple coneflower

It's been a tough winter.  My bulbs are up in the front garden, and I'm thinking ahead to when the bulbs die down for the summer and I have a weed-infested mess.  I found someone in the area who has 5 kinds of mint, ready and willing to give me a few swatches of each.  Since mint is so invasive, I'm contemplating puting it down as a ground cover in my bulb garden.  It's completely hemmed in by cement, so I shouldn't have to worry too much about it taking over the lawn.

We get a packet of seeds every year from the water company.  This year it's Purple Coneflower.  Maybe I could plant those in the front bulb garden, too.  I'm going to go into the community section and see if it would be wise to have mint and coneflowers in the same garden.  Coneflowers are much taller, so they should be able to still get the sunlight they need.  The question is, would the mint choke out the coneflowers through the root system?