Snowball Cookies. Oldfashioned, and Delicious!

Snowball Cookies, just like your grandmother use to make, and they are surprisingly easy and quick to make, and sure to bring big smiles to many faces!

Ingredients:
1 cup Butter,softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups finely chopped pecans
Powdered sugar for rolling.

Directions:
Cream butter and sugar in medium bowl until creamy. Add vanilla; beat until well mixed.
Add flour and pecans; beat at low speed, scraping bowl occasionally, until well mixed.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 16-18 minutes or until very lightly browned. Cool 5 minutes; roll in powdered sugar while still warm and again when cool.

Be sure to let me know if you tried these, and how they turned out for you.

War Time Victory Cakes

ONE-EGG VICTORY CAKE
From the Royal Baking Powder cookbook:

During WWII, America resorted to rationing certain goods. Everything from tires to shoes to nylons were rationed, along with many edibles such as sugar, coffee, and cheese. Fuel shortages made it tough to send fresh food across the country, and many processed foods had to be shipped to our soldiers and allies. Could you imagine though, telling your kid that you can’t make their favorite birthday cake because you already used up that month’s ration of butter!

One example of just deeply the war affected those at home in the U.S. can be found in cookbooks like these, which are featured in the National World War II Museum 'Arsenal of Democracy' exhibition. Written with wartime rationing and scarcity in mind, they advised the American homemaker on ideas about how to feed their families properly without using up too many of their supplies.

Here is a Recipe for one of those War Time Victory Cakes from the Royal Baking Powder Cookbook.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 cup milk
2 cups cake flower
2 1/2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions: Cream shortening well; add sugar slowly, beating in well. Add beaten egg and vanilla; beat until well blended. Blend syrup and milk. Sift together dry ingredients and add alternately with liquid to first mixture. Bake in greased square pan (8 x 8 x 2 inches) in moderate oven at 350°F. about 1 hour or in 2 greased eight-inch layer cake pans at the same temperature about 30 minutes. Makes 1 eight-inch or 1 two-layer cake.
Note: Honey may be substituted for light corn syrup.

Old Fashioned Potato Chip Cookies

Pecan Crunch Cookies (Also known as Potato Chip Cookies)

Ingredients:
1 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup crushed potato chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
Directions:

Cream together butter or margarine, sugar and vanilla. Add crushed potato chips & pecans. Stir in flour. Form into small balls, using about 1 tbsp. dough for each. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Press balls flat with bottom of a tumbler dipped in sugar. Bake in moderate oven 350 degrees for 16 to 18 minutes or till cookies are lightly brown.

Photo above from The Clara Project

Gooey Butter Cake

Hot and humid summers may be an unpleasant St Louis tradition, but there is another that is a little more fun, and very much more tasty...Gooey Butter Cake!
Gooey butter cake is a type of cake traditionally made in the American Midwest city of St. Louis. It is a flat and dense cake made with wheat cake flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, typically near an inch tall, and dusted with powdered sugar. Yum! At the bottom of the article is the Real St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake Recipe.

As the story goes, it is believed to have originated in the 1930's as a mistake by a St. Louis-area German American baker. The original bakery, owned by a John Hoffman, hired a new baker who accidentally inverted two ingredients (he was trying to make regular cake batter but reversed the proportions of butter and flour) resulting in a gooey cake that became a best seller in bakeries throughout the St. Louis area.
Another St. Louis baker, Fred Heimburger, also remembers the cake coming on the scene in the 1930's, as a slip up that became a popular hit and local acquired taste. He liked it well enough that Mr. Heimburger tried to promote Gooey butter cake by taking samples of it with him when he traveled out of St. Louis to visit other bakers in their shops. Are you ready to try your hand at it now?

Gooey Butter Cake Recipe:
Ingredients:
1 (18-ounce) package yellow cake mix
1 large egg
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 cups powdered (confectioners') sugar
Powdered (confectioners') sugar for dusting top
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 13- x 9-inch baking dish.
In a large mixing bowl, combine yellow cake mix, egg, and butter. Press mixture onto bottom of prepared baking dish; set aside.
In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until creamy; add the 2 eggs and vanilla extract. Blend in powdered sugar until well mixed. Pour batter into the crust-lined baking pan.
Bake 30 to 40 minutes or until cake is nearly firm when you shake if (you want the center to be a little gooey, so do not over cook the cake). Remove from oven and let cake cool in the cake pan on a wire rack.
When cool, remove to a serving plate and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Real St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake Recipe

1934 Cake Recipe, Economical Layer Cake

Economical Layer Cake
Ingredients:
1 Cup Sugar
1 Egg
1/2 Cup Butter
1 Teaspoon Vanilla (or other desired flavoring)
1/2 Cup Water
1 2/3 Cups of Cake Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
2 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

Directions:
Stir butter, sugar, egg yolk, and vanilla together
until creamy. Sift together the dry ingredients,
and add alternately with the water to the first mixture.
When well mixed, stir in the egg white, stiffly whipped.
Transfer to two 9 inch layer cake pans which have been
rubbed with butter, and dusted lightly with flour.

Bake about 25 minutes at 375 F. When cool, remove from the
pans, and put together with jam, jelly, any fruit butter,
Italian Cream filling, Creamy Icing, or Rich Chocolate Icing.
You can even put the cake together, just before serving, with
whipped cream, or with sliced, and sweetened oranges, or other fruit.
From: Round The World Cook Book by Iad Bailey Allen

Original and Vintage Pecan Pie Recipes

Pecan pie is a pie made primarily with corn syrup and pecan nuts. So the question now is...was there a Pecan Pie before corn syrup was invented?

There have been claims made of the traditionally Southern U.S. dessert existing in the early 1800s in Alabama, but such recipes have not been found. Attempts to trace the pies origin have not found any recipes dated earlier than 1886, and well known cookbooks did not include this dessert before 1940. Another claim is that the French invented pecan pie soon after settling in New Orleans, after being introduced to the pecan nut by Native Americans.

Because wild pecans were readily available, many Native American tribes in the U.S. and Mexico used the wild pecan as a major food source during autumn, but...
It wasn't until the early 1930's that a recipe for Karo Pecan pie was published by the wife of a Karo salesman. It called for Karo syrup, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and pecans in a pie shell, and since that time most recipes for Pecan Pie follow that formula.

Even before the ready availability of commercial corn syrup cooks in the south made pies with pecans. Many of the older recipes call for a darker commercial syrup, and some used molasses. A Northern U.S. variation used maple syrup. Never the less very few recipes showed up until Karo left the gate, and here it is now.

The Original Karo® Pecan Pie Recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 recipe pastry
2 Eggs, beaten
1 Cup Karo Syrup, Blue Label
*1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 Cup Sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter, or margarine
1 cup Pecan Meats

Directions:
Roll pastry 1/8 inch thick. Line a 9 inch pan.
Mix remaining ingredients together, adding Pecans last.
Pour into pastry shell, Bake in hot oven (400 F.)
15 minutes; reduce heat to moderate (350 F.) and
bake 30 to 35 minutes longer or until a silver knife
inserted into center of filling comes out clean.
*If salted nuts are used, omit salt. The New Classic Karo® Pecan Pie

Ingredients:
1 cup Karo® Light OR Dark Corn Syrup
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon Spice Islands® Pure Vanilla Extract
1-1/2 cups (6 ounces) pecans
1 (9-inch) unbaked OR frozen** deep-dish pie crust

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Mix corn syrup, eggs, sugar, butter and vanilla using a spoon. Stir in pecans. Pour filling into pie crust.
Bake on center rack of oven for 60 to 70 minutes (see tips for doneness, below). Cool for 2 hours on wire rack before serving.
To use prepared frozen pie crust: Place cookie sheet in oven and preheat oven as directed. Pour filling into frozen crust and bake on preheated cookie sheet. I hope you have enjoyed this little trip back to the early days of Pecan Pie.

Lets not forget the Health benefits of Pecans! Pecan nuts are rich source of energy, carry 690 calories/100 g and contain health benefiting nutrients, minerals, antioxidants and vitamins that are essential for wellness. You can add a hand full of pecan nuts in your diet to keep your diet meter complete with sufficient levels of minerals, vitamins, and protein, and they taste great! No matter which Old Pecan Recipe you choose, I am sure that you will love it. The most important thing is to just try it. You may just amaze yourself, and your friends, and family as well. Getting started is always half the battle, and please let me know if you try out any of the recipes. Feel free to share this with your baking friends...maybe they will make you a fresh Pecan Pie!