Originally, I was going to blog about banana cream pie, as a tie-in to novella about a vampire who owns a food fight club. Banana cream pie was one of the club specialties, and it’s one of my favorites as well. But the anthology with the novella in it was postponed, so since I write historical romances as well, I decided to go that route instead.
I’ve been messing around with old-fashioned cookbooks for a while now. I didn’t think you’d have much use for artificial asses’ milk (excellent for invalids and those otherwise lacking in –ahem– vigor) or Dr. Ratcliffe’s Restorative Pork Jelly (a lovely broth, good for making Chinese soup, but I had to buy a huge hunk of pork leg to make only half the recipe). Instead, here’s a recipe for plum cake (which contains no plums, although it probably did at some point in the distant past). I adapted this recipe from a Victorian cookbook, Beeton’s Book of Household Management, changed a few items, and baked it the Christmas before last (hence the holly in the photo).
“A Nice Plum Cake”
3 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. soda
½ tsp. salt
1-1/2 cups currants
1/3 cup diced candied lemon peel
1 stick butter
1-1/4 cups milk
Bake in a greased loaf pan at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out more or less clean. It’s good! There was too much batter for one loaf pan, so I made six muffins with the rest, and they were fine, too.
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| Coming August 1 in all e-formats |
