Surprise! A blog post after all these years! When I last left you (in 2016) I was in the throes of working out how to live zero waste, and cooking my way through great grandma’s cookbook, as well as eating out the cupboard. Well, we ended up eating out the cupboard entirely in order to move to Japan for 5 years. Then eating it out again to return! (Yum!)
So, why the sudden return to this blog? The short answer is that I have something to say! I cooked another of the recipes in great grandma Ethel’s cookbook, and I want to share it. Also, over the past several years I’ve been making YouTube videos, a skill that I picked up over lockdown. Most of these have been card making videos, but the past few months I’ve been putting up some life videos again, as we settle back into Australia. These are slightly longer versions of this blog, really, with snippets of life, house, craft and garden. My channel is called donnaisplayingpaper.
And, as part of the September activity, I made Mountain Cakes, the next recipe in grandma’s cookbook. Here’s her recipe.
This recipe led me down a real rabbit hole. Patty Pans. I know what they are, and use silicon ones myself, but were they even invented in 1927, and did they mean the same thing then? It turns out that the answer is yes. Patty Pans were big in the USA from the early 1900’s and were being made in Australia from 1914 onwards, so definitely the same fluted pans that I know as patty pans today.There’s a blog post on the topic here.
Once again, grandma is famously light on the instructions. Here’s my version, slightly modernised and with such wonders as an oven temperature and times.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 125g butter, softened
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 2tsp cream of tartar
- 1tsp bicarb soda
Mix and bake in patty pans.
Only joking! Put all these ingredients into one bowl and mix gently until they’re just combined. Then spoon the mix into patty pans. Mine made about 15. Bake at 180ºC (350F) for 20-25 minutes. Cool on a tray. These are fantastic eaten warm straight from the oven! Or you could serve them as I did to our taste tester guests, with fresh fruit and whipped cream.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope that you’re recovering from the shock of the sudden return to blogging. and that you’ve enjoyed this little interlude.
Until next time,
Blessings,
Donna
Playing House 