Bad Manners and Brimstone

Atlas Obscura had an article about secret family recipes where the secret was "Grandma used a box mix" or "Mom found the recipe on a package." What secret recipes in your family were a surprise like that ? 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/secret-family-recipes-copied

Not a relative but a local legend from my childhood.

A member of the local Methodist Church was famous for her excellent fudge.  When the church had a bazaar, there was always a line out the door for Eva May’s confection.  Many women from the Catholic and Baptist churches tried mightily to replicate that scrumptious recipe and beef up their own church bazaar sales.  No one quite managed it. 

My mother  finally gave up and made some Christmas fudge using the recipe on the back of a condensed milk can. 

MIRABLE DICTU!  It was exactly Eva May’s fudge. 

I’m not sure if this is true but it’s entertaining.

The story is that a young woman loved her Grandmother’s chicken noodle soup like nothing else on the face of the earth. It was delicate and soothing with little nuggets of chicken and small, silvery noodles in a clear, tasty broth. 

The young woman developed a cold and a friend who lived in the same building invited her over for lunch. Chicken noodle soup would be served. The invitation was accepted but hopes for the soup were low.  Nothing could compare with the soup Grandma made.

The soup she was served was Grandma’s soup.  It was also the Lipton’s chicken noodle soup that came in an envelope. 

Quote from: Hmmm on September 06, 2018, 08:39:09 am

-My chocolate chip cake? Duncan hines yellow cake mix made with sour cream and with hershey chocolate chips mixed into the batter.

How much sour cream do you add ?

1 box of cake mix (yellow, not butter), 1 small package of instant vanilla pudding, 8 oz container of sour cream, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1/2 cup water, 4 large eggs  and mix in stand mixer 2 min. Add 1 tsp vanilla and stir in a cup of semisweet chocolate chips. Bake in bundt pan at 350 for 50 min. Once cooled you can drizzle with a chocolate glaze but we usually just dusted with powdered sugar.

We like the chocolate chips sinking to the bottom (or top once flipped) but if you want them disappeared through the cake, coat them with some of the cake mix before mixing into the batter.

My mum wowed people for decades with her caramelised oranges. Guests would wonder what expensive, sophisticatedly-bitter orange liqueur she had used to make it. Actually she got the recipe of a Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup tin some time in the 1960s, and there was literally nothing in the dish but oranges and golden syrup. (Plus dollops of whipped cream on top, of course.) i still make it. It's cheap, it's quick, it's really impossible to go wrong  - no burnt caramel, no sugar burns - and while I have eaten caramelised oranges made by far more skilled, expensive and laborious means I have honestly never tasted any that were better than Mum's and mine.

How do you make it ? Is it cold golden syrup + cold oranges, or do you heat both up ?

Is Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup strictly something you'd find in only the U.K.?  Or is it available it the U.S. too?  I don't think I've ever heard of it or seen it!

It is an iconic British thing - an absolute staple of the British kitchen cupboard - and all the English-speaking parts of the former British Empire import it and/or have a home-produced "golden syrup" which is essentially a copy of it. I dare say that any store in the US that has a foreign foods section might have it, and that you have equivalent syrups, perhaps corn-based.

How do you make it ? Is it cold golden syrup + cold oranges, or do you heat both up ?

You bake them. Here's how:

1. You peel 3 oranges, removing all the pith and stringy bits, slice them fairly thinly (a bread knife is best for this) and arrange them nicely in an oven-to-table dish. (I put them in a ring around the edge of the dish, just slightly overlapping each other, then make another ring in the centre; that looks elegant.

2. You pour on 2 heaped dessertspoonfuls of golden syrup. Ideally try to cover the oranges evenly, but it's the nature of golden syrup to come off the spoon in dollops rather than pour. Don't stress over it; it will all mix together in cooking.

3. Cook in a hot oven for about 20 minutes till the oranges are just slightly crinkled round the edges. Taste the mixed syrup'orange juice; if you don't find it sweet enough for your liking, (I generally do, but I don't have a very sweet tooth) add a little more syrup while the whole thing is still hot and runny. Leave to cool. Serve very chilled, decorated with whipped cream.

And you really couldn't get much simpler than that.

(If I'm feeling energetic and haute-cuisine I sometimes add a trick of my own: I cut some of the orange peel into very fine strips and scatter them over the oranges before adding the syrup. If you do this, be aware that baking orange peel smells quite weird and alarming, almost like burning plastic, though it tastes good when it's done, if you like a touch of bitterness.)

Thank you.  I have printed that out.  I hope that's okay with you.  It sounds delicious and I can look for the Golden Syrup at a couple of places that might carry it.  I see that it can also be ordered from Amazon.   

If you have a Cost Plus World Market near you, they usually carry the syrup.

Icebox cake with Christie's chocolate wafers and whipped cream.  It was only brought out for very special occasions, so I thought it was one of mom's "old country" recipes. 

Buttermilk pancakes. Sooo good!  They must be from the old country, too!  Nope, the buttermilk container. 

  My childhood was shattered.