The Famed Mississippi Mud Cake Recipe

Mississippi Mud Cake

It is thought that the basic concept of this cake was likely created by a home cook sometime after World War II, because it was made with mostly pantry staples, simple ingredients that could easily be found. The actual name Mississippi Mud Cake and the exact method, probably got attached to it a little later though, with the first known printed recipe believed to have been in a newspaper column sometime during the early 70s. Its roots, however, are surely deeply implanted in the hearts of all of us who live in the Deep South. The photo below is a newspaper clipping of unknown year which included coconut.

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
4 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
10.5 oz. miniature marshmallows *(I used the large ones cut in half)
Frosting:
1/2 package powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/4 cup butter, softened
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Add the sugar, butter, cocoa, eggs, vanilla, and salt to a large mixing bowl. Whisk together until well combined. Stir in the flour and 1 1/2 cups of the toasted pecans.
Pour the batter into a greased and floured 15x10-inch pan.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from oven and top evenly with the marshmallows. Return to the oven and bake for 5 more minutes.
While the cake is baking, make the frosting. Place all ingredients in a medium bowl. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until combined and smooth.
Remove cake from the oven and drizzle chocolate frosting over warm cake. *If you used the large marshmallows cut in half as I did, you will notice that it is now easier to cut the pieces. All you have to do is cut between the marshmallows.

Old Recipes for Holiday Fruit Cake

The Orgin if Fruit Cake:
The earliest recipe from ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added.
Fruit cakes soon proliferated all over Europe. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast. Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the ‘Butter Letter' or Butterbrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruit cakes.

FRUIT CAKE 1881
One cup of butter, two of brown sugar, one of molasses, one of strong coffee, four and one-half cups flour, four eggs, two teaspoons of soda, two of cinnamon, two of cloves, two of mace, one pound of raisins, one of currants, one-quarter of citron.
Bake in layers and put together with icing. Be careful to cut paper for each pan before putting in the mixture. Leave out the currants if you like.

* Always bake at low temperatures: 250 – 300 degrees is best, but some recipes do go a little higher depending on their ingredients. These recipes do not specify.

Scotch Fruit Cake 1 1/2 lb flour
1lb fine Sugar White
12 eggs
12 oz butter
6 oz each citron, lemon & orange peel
60z Almonds
1 Nutmeg
Wine glass brandy.
Strew Caraway Comfits on top.

History of Popcorn Balls, Recipes and Memories

History of Popcorn Balls

Popcorn balls (popped kernels stuck together with a sugary "glue") were hugely popular around the turn of the 20th century, but their popularity has since waned. Popcorn balls are still served in some places as a traditional Halloween treat.

Popcorn balls were a fixture at many Halloween parties during the 1950s, a time when Treat or Treaters regularly enjoyed homemade treats rather than packaged store-bought candies. Chances are that many of you would receive at least one on your "Trick or Treating" rounds in your neighborhood, as well as fresh baked cookies.

One legend from Nebraska say's that the popcorn ball is actually a product of the Nebraska weather. It supposedly invented itself during the "Year of the Striped Weather" which came between the years of the "Big Rain" and the "Great Heat" where the weather was both hot and rainy. There was a mile strip of scorching sunshine and then a mile strip of rain. On one farm, there were both kinds of weather. One day in August, it rained so hard on the farm that sorghum syrup leaked right from the grasses and drained into the nearby cornfield (the cornfield was in a valley). The syrup flowed down the hill into the popped corn and rolled it into great balls with some of them hundreds of feet high and looked like big tennis balls at a distance. You never see any of them now because the grasshoppers ate them all up in one day on July 21, 1874.

Popcorn balls dated back to the mid-19th century. New York cookbook author E.F. Haskell included the recipe in her Housekeeper’s Encyclopedia first published in 1861. The following is one of those old, and vintage recipes.

Popcorn balls:
12 oz molasses
1 stick butter
1 cup popcorn, un-popped
Vegetable oil
Pour the popcorn kernels into a large, deep pan. Cover lightly with vegetable oil. Cover and cook on high heat until popped. His should yield 4 quarts of popped popcorn. (Try to remove un-popped kernels as best you can.)
In a small saucepan, bring the molasses and butter to a boil (about 249 degree; check with a candy thermometer).
In a large bowl, pour the syrup over the popcorn and mix together so the popcorn is sufficiently coated. With your hands, form tennis ball-sized sphere.
Let set, and wrap individually with plastic wrap. Yields 16 balls.

Alternate Recipe:
Popcorn Balls
3 quarts plain popped corn (about 1/3 cup kernels)
1/4 cup butter 10 oz. bag marshmallows
food coloring (optional)
Put popped corn in a large bowl. Set aside.
Melt the butter and marshmallows in a stove top pot, stirring constantly. When they are melted, take off the heat and allow the mixture to cool until it can be touched. If you like, stir in a few drops of food coloring.
Using a wooden spoon, gently stir the melted mixture into the popcorn. Next, butter your hands and work quickly to form popcorn balls. Place balls on waxed paper to cool.
After the balls are cool, you may use warm corn syrup to stick gum drops or other candy decorations to the popcorn balls. The popcorn balls may be stored in sandwich bags. This makes enough for about 15 two-inch balls.

These popcorn balls are great anytime, but as you know, they are especially fun to enjoy at Halloween or Christmas time. It is up to you to keep the tradition going! Let your children, or grandchildren help you make some popcorn balls and give them the one of memories you loved so much. They are so easy to make and so very delicious!

Sometimes the oldest recipes give the best memories!

The History of the Peanut Butter Cookie

The First Peanut Butter Cookie
(Peanut Cookie) Recipe Below

As we have all heard, George Washington Carver (1864-1943), an American agricultural extension educator, from Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, was the most well known promoter of the peanut as a replacement for the cotton crop, which had been heavily damaged by the boll weevil. He compiled 105 peanut recipes from various cookbooks, agricultural bulletins and other sources. In his 1916 Research Bulletin called How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, he included three recipes for peanut cookies calling for crushed/chopped peanuts as an ingredient. It was not until the early 1920s that peanut butter was listed as an ingredient in the cookies.

The first to patent peanut butter was Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884. John Harvey Kellogg later patented a "Process of Preparing Nut Meal" in 1895 and served peanut butter to the patients at his Battle Creek Sanitarium.
The first peanut butter cookies recipe, by Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book (1902, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), suggested rolled peanut butter ball. Later a recipe for patterned Peanut Butter ball, which instructs the cook to roll the dough into balls and press them down with the tines of a fork, was published in 1933 edition of Pillsbury's Balanced Recipes.
The New England Kitchen Magazine (Vol. 3 No. 4, July 1895, pp 184-185) printed an article titled “An American Delicacy”. It gave a short history of the early use of peanuts and popular uses, but peanut butter was not mentioned. The idea of nut butter, peanut butter being one of the various nuts used to make nut butter had emerged about ten years earlier but was not yet publicly available. Nut butter was used in commercial candy making. What was found in the article was a recipe that was the precursor of the Peanut Butter Cookie.

The 1895 recipe is, as follows:
Peanut Cookies
1 tablespoon of butter
Pound or chop one cupful of peanuts
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt.
Mix the ingredients, and bake at 350 F. until golden brown.
The ingredient list with the exception of a higher amount of peanuts is similar to the early peanut cookies which used peanut butter. The article listed a U.S. Department of Agriculture pamphlet Farmers Bulletin, No. 25 and Miss Juliet Corson as two early contributors to uses of peanuts. So it is unknown who developed the “Peanut Cookies” recipe listed in the New England Kitchen Magazine article.