I made Watergate cake for a Dopefest two decades ago.
Has anyone seen Eskimo cookies since they were kids, if even then?
That’s basically mine, except I chill 1/3 of the jello to set. (that’s the green ‘sea’)… I beat the rest of the liquid jello with the cream cheese, add drained cut up pears, a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch of cinnamon. Pour that on top of the green set jello layer and chill it.
Never heard of this. Looked it up and found coupe Nesselrode, which is very common in Switzerland, especially in the fall.
Made some a few weeks ago. I used to like the slice and bake ones I could get at the store better, but I found a recipe that I quite like. And I rolled the log in sprinkles, so the end result has a ring of sprinkles. Very important to have good vanilla. Otherwise, not that good.
Love lemon meringue pie, but it takes time. Might make one soon. My grandmother lamented the demise of Chiffon cakes, as these were her favorites. Similarly to a lemon meringue pie, the egg yolks and egg whites are used separately, which means more work and more dishes. And if you’re unlucky, the egg whites won’t cooperate, making for a very frustrating experience.
Recipe, please? I found this recipe from Alton Brown, which has the advantage that it dosn’t call for pickling spice.
This recipe assumes you’re going on a canning spree and will be putting up sixteen quarts of the stuff in your larder. I made a 1/4 batch and I still have 4 1/2 bottles. That was for the rind of two impressively large supermarket pre-cut slices but not a whole watermelon.
Watermelon Rind Pickles
2 qts white vinegar
10 lbs sugar
2 Tbsp whole cloves
2 Tbsp whole pepper corns
4 sticks cinnamon
1 qt water
3 Tbsp picking lime
1 large bottle red maraschino cherries
1 medium bottle green maraschino cherries
rind from one or more large watermelons
*Use rind of large melons. Cut off all green skin, and cut the rind into small pieces. Soak for 24 hours in 1 gallon of water and 3 Tbsp pickling lime. Drain and rinse in a collander. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and cook for 2 hours. Drain and cover with fresh hot water. Let stand in hot water while making syrup.*
Syrup: [vinegar, sugar, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, water]
Boil the syrup mixture for 15 minutes. Add melon rind and cook for 30 minutes. Let the rind stand overnight in the vinegar mixture. Add one large bottle of red maraschino cherries and one medium bottle of green cherries. Use the juice from only the red cherries. Add 1 tsp red food coloring. Bring the mixture to a boil. Put in jars and seal.
Canning: sterilze the jars first by immersing them in boiling water then letting them air dry. After ladling the rind pickles and syrup in, cap them with new mason jar canning caps. When all jars are filled, invert the jars lid side down in a wide pan with 3-4 inches of boiling water, this helps the lid seal. After 4 minutes lift out of the water and place lid side up to dry. After awhile you’ll hear a “pop” as the canning jar lids snap in as the contents inside cool, and this verifies airtight seal, and you can now store these jars w/o refrigeration until opened.
The Maine Diner Indian pudding recipe (it’s still on the menu under that name):
https://newengland.com/today/food/maine-diner-indian-pudding/
Baked Alaska seems to me to be in the category of show-off food, or stuff you order because everyone in the restaurant turns their head to see what’s being served to you. Fajitas are the same thing, given that they come sizzling on a small cast iron pan.
Do they still make Bundt cake mix?
Use to love jello stripe-it-rich cake. Damn I need to make one now.
I’ve never seen an impressively large watermelon here in Switzerland. They seem to like the petite ones. So I think I’ll try scaling it down even more. Thank you so much for sharing your recipe.
Asked my parents if they had ever made them. Never made them, not sure if they had ever eaten any. Interesting.
I was fascinated by the Jello that self-separated into three layers: classic jello at the bottom, froth at the top, and a middle level that I readlly didn’t like much, but certainly contributed to the mystique.
Jello 1-2-3! Loved that stuff.
What color do your pickles turn out? The ones I found at the Old South Mountain Inn were a bright green. But Grandmother’s were a dark, rich brown, very similar to her fig preserves. (At least in my memory, which was 45 years ago, so…) Her pickles had a creamy, almost fudgy texture - again, similar to fruit preserves but with a little more firmness. I may have to give your recipe a try, to see if I can capture the magic. (But I can’t, because it’s missing the most important ingredient, essence of Grandmother.)
Mom makes ambrosia for Thanksgiving dinner every year. Hers is nothing like your father’s, though - it’s a fruit salad of canned mandarin orange segments, maraschino cherries, and shredded coconut, served in the juice of the oranges and cherries. She serves it as a salad rather than a dessert.
You’ll find a recipe for Nesselrode pie here:
Ours are a cheerful red with some dark bits (the green cherries, the whole cloves, the cinnamon stick bits) among them, in a deep red syrup.
Our ambrosia recipe consists in its entirety of grated coconut and segmented oranges (very carefully sliced out of the membrane-y wedge coverings, so they’re loose and unfibered). No raisins, cherries, pineapple, whipped cream or anything else. There’s no real reason to prefer something simply because it’s an older and more traditional method, but people who have only had the complicated kind should try the other just to see what it’s like.
Ambrosia
2 dozen juicy oranges
2 cups grated fresh coconut
About 1/2 cup sugar
Peel each orange with a very sharp knife, passing the blade just barely under the skin of the orange plugs. Then cut down beside each plug inside the separating skin and pull out the plug — now devoid of tough skin. Be sure to remove each seed. Squeeze the skin and core to collect the juice. Add coconut and sugar, adjusting the amount of sugar to account for the sweetness of the oranges and coconut (which can vary considerably). Chill and serve.
ALSO —
Fig Preserves
*Wash figs. Slice an orange, without removing the peel. Add one slice per quart of figs. In a ratio of 1 lb sugar to 1 quart figs, pour sugar over figs in a dish pan, and let them soak overnight. Then simmer very slowly until the figs are chewy and the syrup reaches the consistency of room-temperature white Karo syrup (about 3 hours). Remove the orange slices. Pour preserves and syrup into heated jars and seal with paraffin. *
Ours are the dark reddish brown described by Slow_Moving_Vehicle. I haven’t ever made them, my Dad’s the one who made most of the family pickles and preserves. They were his mom’s recipes before him.
The ambrosia I made based on my mother’s recipe is a little different; a drained can of fruit cocktail and another of mandarin orange segments folded into a bowl of whipped cream. Depending on what’s available, perhaps some sliced banana or berries mixed in. And then cover the top with mandarin orange segments or strawberry or whatever. No marshmallow and no coconut.
There was once a posh 40s-style cafeteria in Minneapolis (long since converted into a disco, if it’s still there) that served prune whip. I loved it!
When I was a child I remember having what must have been a layer of steamed sponge cake covered with lemon curd. It was delicious! I never knew what it was called, and no one I’ve talked to since remembers it.
A few months ago, I found a whole Boston cream pie (actually a cake) at a local supermarket. I couldn’t believe my luck! I hadn’t seen one in ages.
I don’t know how Grandmother made her fig preserves, but the description of the texture and color sound very similar to how hers turned out. Your Dad’s not from North Carolina by any chance, is he?
I read, somewhere - sorry no cite, that it was a way to show off that you had a refrigerator/freezer rather than just an icebox and had the time & skill to pull it together successfully. Now, we just pull out our liquid nitrogen.