Old Style Texas Tornado Cake

Texas Tornado Cake

It may go by many names, but this wonderful cake with it's coconut and walnut frosting is moist, delicious, and very easy to make!
Texas tornado cake contains fruit and nuts, with coconut icing. It’s not clear when this cake was invented, or where it’s from. Some insist that “Texas tornado cake” is another name for an “earthquake cake.”

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs 3 cups fruit cocktail with liquid
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped nuts
Frosting:
1 Stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk 1 cup flaked coconut

Directions:
Cream together sugar, eggs, fruit cocktail, baking soda and flour. Pour into lightly greased and floured 13x9x2-inch cake pan. Mix brown sugar and nuts together and sprinkle onto unbaked batter in the pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes or until golden brown on top. While still hot, poke holes into the cake to allow the frosting to seep inside. Ice cake while hot.
Frosting Directions:
Boil margarine, sugar and milk 2 minutes. Stir in coconut. Spoon over cake as soon as cake is taken from the oven. I am sure you will be enjoying this delicious cake just as much as I, and others did!

Lithuanian Apple Cookies

The flaky, buttery dough is wrapped around the cinnamon/sugar-covered apple slices.

Ingredients
FOR THE APPLES:
Ingredients

FOR THE APPLES:
4 Medium Apples, Peeled, Cored And Cut Into Thick Slices, About 6 Slices Per Apple
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon

FOR THE DOUGH:
2 cups Flour
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1/4 teaspoons Salt 1 1/2 Sticks of Butter Cut Into Half-inch Cubes
8 ounces, weight Farmer's Cheese, Cold
You can choose to cut the dough into long strips, or circles. It's up to you.
2 Tablespoons Sour Cream

FOR COATING THE COOKIES:
1 whole Egg White Lightly Beaten
1/3 cups Sugar
Instructions:
Prepare the apples. In a medium bowl mix the apple slices, sugar and some cinnamon, enough to cover the apples. Set aside while you prepare the dough.
Preheat the oven to 200ºC (about 400ºF). Line a baking sheet with Silpat or parchment.
To prepare the dough, in a food processor pulse flour, sugar and salt to combine. Add cubed butter, cheese and sour cream and pulse until all ingredients come together and form a ball.

Take the dough out of the food processor (I used a blender)and place it onto a floured surface. If it looks like it is too sticky to roll with the rolling pin, add a small amount of flour and knead with your hands until it looks like it can be rolled with the rolling pin.
When the dough is ready, cut about a quarter of the dough and roll it into a long narrow rectangle. Then cut it into long strips about 2 cm wide (or circles). Take one strip and wrap it around the apple slices in an overlapping manner, covering all of the apple slice with the strip. If the strip is too short, add a piece of another strip. Pinch the ends of the cookie so that there are no holes.
Dip one side of the cookie into the egg white, then into the sugar, and place it on the baking sheet, sugary side facing up. Continue with the rest of the cookies. Bake until the cookies are deep golden brown, about 25 minutes. Don’t try to eat them straight from the oven; let them cool a bit before serving because the apple inside will be hot.

I cannot tell you just how good these simple treats really are. You really have to try these out!

Icelandic Christmas Cake

Icelandic Christmas Cake
This Icelandic cake recipe uses lemon flavoring and cardamom extract in a unique and delicious Christmas cake you'll want to make anytime of the year. I changed the recipe I used just a little substituting Maraschino cherries, and orange extract, instead of raisins, and lemon extract. I had just made a Fruit Cake, so I wanted something different, but the original recipe is below. Either way, it's a wonderful cake.

Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup butter
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon cardamom flavored extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 11 inch loaf pan.
Cream the butter or margarine and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at time beating well after each one. Stir in the milk, lemon and cardamom flavorings. Stir in the flour and the baking powder.
Sift a little flour over the raisins then stir them into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes. I promise you will enjoy it!

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.

Visit the Irish Halloween past with this recipe for Barmbrack

Barmbrack

Halloween festivities are never complete without some traditional Irish treats to help you celebrate. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, homes are littered with the delicious treat known as barnbrack (Barmbrack (Irish: bairín breac), also called Barnbrack or often shortened to brack, is a yeasted bread with added sultanas and raisins), which is an Irish fruit loaf. The title comes from the Irish Gaelic 'bairín breac' which literally means 'speckled loaf.' In traditional Ireland, each member of the family would get a slice of the delicious cake. But you had to be careful when chewing the delicious treat, as there were several charms hidden inside wrapped in baking paper which signified omens for the finder's future.

Barmbrack is the center of an Irish Halloween custom. The Halloween Brack traditionally contained various objects baked into the bread and was used as a sort of fortune-telling game. In the barmbrack were: a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin (originally a silver sixpence) and a ring. Each item, when received in the slice, was supposed to carry a meaning to the person concerned: the pea, the person would not marry that year; the stick, would have an unhappy marriage or continually be in disputes; the cloth or rag, would have bad luck or be poor; the coin, would enjoy good fortune or be rich; and the ring, would be wed within the year.

Barmbrack recipe
Ingredients:
3 cups dried fruit
1 1/4 cup cold tea
1 cup self-raising flour
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon mixed spice
3 cups caster sugar
Honey or Golden Syrup (optional – for decoration)
Directions:
Soak the fruit in tea overnight, then drain. Mix together with the rest of the ingredients (apart from the honey/golden syrup) and stir in the charms. Don’t over knead the dough, or your delicately re-hydrated fruit will break up.
Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed. Allow to cool in the pan for 2 hours before removing. Continue to cool to room temperature on a wire rack. Press the objects of choice into the cake through the bottom before serving.

Barmbrack is usually sold in flattened rounds, it is often served toasted with butter along with a cup of tea in the afternoon. The dough is sweeter than sandwich bread, but not as rich as cake, and the sultanas and raisins add flavour and texture to the final product.