Cranberry Bread Pudding
A different kind of bread pudding, with cranberries!
Tag: wartime
Cranberry Chiffon Pie
Very light cranberries mousse pie – would make an outstanding Thanksgiving dessert!
Scalloped Oysters
Another recipe from the Maritimes in Wartime, this dish is meant to stretch your small amount of oysters into a meal for a family, and it does so pretty darn well!
Ingredients
125 g egg noodles 3 tbsp butter 3 tbsp flour 1.5 cups milk 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1/4 tsp mace salt and cayenne pepper 4 hardboiled eggs, sliced 12 oysters (I used frozen) buttered breadcrumbs
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F and butter baking dish. Cook the egg noodles in salted water for 6-8 minutes and then drain. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add flour and cook for 1 minutes. Add the milk, stirring to remove lumps. Simmer while stirring, until thickened. Add parsley and seasonings and remove from head. Alternate layers of sauce with layers of noodles/oysters/eggs. (I just mixed them all together). Cover with breadcrumbs. Bake for 15 minutes.
This was pretty easy to put together – noodles, white sauce, boiled eggs and raw oysters (yes, they cook fully in the 15 mins this dish bakes).
Draining the noodles and oysters 
White sauce
I fully drained the oysters. I think I might try saving the oyster juice once they thawed, and adding that to the dish. Currently, it’s not very oyster-y.
Everything coming together 
Final mix 
Before oven 
After oven
The verdict
I really like this dish! It was a nice casserole, and I liked the egg and oysters. Given that we are not currently living under wartime rationing, I’d probably double the oysters, leaving the rest of the recipe the same.
Also, do use the cayenne – it really goes surprisingly well with the oysters.
Washington Pie
I have made my share of errors in trying to recreate these recipes. But nothing has failed as spectacularly as this dish from Wartime Recipes from the Maritimes. Partly because it failed TWICE.
First, this is NOT a pie. It’s a cake. Submitted by one Mildred Smith of Wolfville, NS (shout-out to all my Wolfville connections), the intention is that the two layers of cake are separated by a gelatin-based filling. And that was the problem …
Ingredients
Cake: 1/4 cup fat (used butter) 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg, beaten 1/2 tsp vanilla 1 1/3 cups flour 2 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup milk Filling: 1 tsp powdered gelatin (this is 1/3 of a package) 2 tbsp orange juice 2 cups milk 1 tbsp sugar 1/8 tsp salt
Instructions
Prepare the filling at least 4 hours before serving. Soften gelatin in the orange juice. Heat 1/2 cup of milk and stir in softened gelatin, sugar and salt, stirring until dissolved. Mix n the remaining milk and refrigerate about 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Beat until thick and smooth. Preheat oven to 375F. Grease and flour two 8" cake pans. Cream fat and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth. Combine dry ingredients, and add to batter alternating with milk. Pour into pans and bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool completely before layering with filling.
First of all, don’t try to substitute lemon juice for orange juice. That immediately curdled the milk (duh), and I had to restart.
The filling seemed pretty straightforward, until the “beat until thick and smooth” step.
I got the filling made and in the fridge, and then baked the cakes.
Then, after 4 hours, I tried beating the filling. This was fairly comical. I first tried with a spoon. It was still pretty liquid-y. Then I tried with the mixer. It got aerated, but not “thick” or “smooth”.
I beat and whipped for a loooong time. It looked kinda like whipped cream at this point, so I decided to try construction. It might look like whipped cream, but it definitely does not have the structural support of whipped cream.
You probably saw this coming. The filling rapidly exited the sides of the cake and overflowed the plate. Some of it soaked into the cake and we poured some more on top, so it was tasty. But not exactly what was intended.
Now, if I was looking for low-fat homemade ersatz whipped cream (which would likely have been popular during rationing), this would have fit the bill.
This was such an utter failure that I had to try again, and hopefully redeem myself before posting this recipe. Attempt 2 involved slightly more gelatin (1.5 tsp versus 1 tsp), more than 4 hours in the fridge, and a fair amount of hope.
Once again, I unsuccessfully tried beating with a spoon (thicken, damn you!), and then the mixer.
No luck. Fortunately, I learned by lesson the first time, and didn’t actually proceed to sandwiching the layers. Again, we used the filling as a sauce. I think it was a bit less runny than the first time.
By the next day, the filling was firmer (more like actual whipped cream). Still not stiff enough to layer, though.
The verdict
Everything was tasty, but did not assemble as promised. The filling was like a very loose pannacotta, and added sweetness and a nice milkiness to the less sweet cake. The filling was a pretty good substitute for whipped cream by the next day too. I think much more gelatin would be needed to support the weight of the top layer, and even then I’m not sure how well it would hold together after beating.
(Mildred Smith from Wolfville, why is it so confusing!?)
Do you have a suggestion on how to make this work? PLEASE TELL ME. (In the comments.)
Banana Meatloaf
It was finally time to make our blogs’ namesake again. Yes, this is meat and bananas. Surprisingly, this is not the only meat and bananas recipe in Wartime Recipes from the Maritimes. Check out Roosevelt Chicken for another one that we’ve tried.
This recipe is from the Antigonish Casket, an unusually-named local newspaper that my family members used to subscribe to, and which was still a going concern up until a few years ago.
Ingredients
4 bananas, peeled 1 pound ground beef 1 cup soft breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion 1/2 tsp dry mustard 2 strips of bacon Salt and pepper
Instructions
Preheat oven 350F. Grease a baking pan or sheet. Mash two of the bananas, and mix with the ground beef, mustard, breadcrumbs, onion, salt and pepper. Shape into a loaf and place on prepared pan. Lay the two strips of bacon on top. Bake for 40 minutes. Slice the remaining two bananas and lay those on top. Baste with pan juices and bake for another 20 minutes. Let sit 5 minutes before slicing.
I used more like 1.5 lbs of beef (because that’s what I had), so the banana flavour in the main part of the loaf was a bit more muted than the past time we made this – a little sweet/tropical flavour that you can’t quite place. But the bananas on top tasted very clearly like banana.
This recipe is not meant to be put in a loaf pan, but to have a loaf formed and then baked on a baking sheet or similar. Otherwise, you can’t complete the basting instruction.
The verdict
It’s a bit of an odd dish, but not exactly bad. Our kid especially liked the roasted bananas on top, and said they tasted like banana bread – dinner and dessert in the same dish! (He requested some in his lunch the next day).
I’d make this again, but mostly because it’s unusual.
Cranberry Maple Syrup Pie
An interesting (and super easy) pie that uses non-rationed (and very Canadian!) ingredients.