The Candy Man Can!

Sammy, Laura Rebecca and I asked you to take a piece of culinary history, sprinkle it in sugar and create a wild sugar-soaked retro celebration. And over the course of October, you delivered in spades.

Take Pie Lady Brittany from Seattle WA for example. First out of the gate, Brittany covered it with chocolate and a miracle or two, offering us us the Whoopie Pie: a 1920's-era New England chocolate sandwich cookie she found in Betty Groff's Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook. The whoopie pie holds a special place in my heart as one of my mother's favorite confections from *her* childhood. Thanks for joining us Brittany!

Next up is Deb from Wisconsin, who devotes her entire blog Vintage Recipe to recipes of the retro variety. In Sammy's honor she stretches her baking muscles and offers us Lemon Cherry Treats, an adaptation of a recipe she found in the 1962 edition of The Art of Making Good Cookies, Plain and Fancy. They look like a perfect lunch box addition or after school snack on a blustery rainy winter day.

Naomi of Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried in the United Kingdom gives us gluten-free retro sweet treats with her raspberry and pomegranate studded Ballymaloe Tarts. She found these 'real food' pastries topped with fresh seasonal fruit in Jane Grigson's English Food, published in 1974. Your hostess is looking forward to recreating these in her kitchen soon, employing pomegranates as pictured and perhaps a persimmon or two.

Checking in from her One-Walled Kitchen in Phoenix, AZ, Julie offers two tasty alternatives to refined sugar desserts. She reaches back to the disco days of 1978, opens Rodale's Naturally Delicious Desserts and Snacks, and dishes up two desserts that replace sugar with honey: Peanut Butter Pudding and Biscuit Tortoni. Having mastered the luxurious pastry cream of the Bostini Cream Pie, I'm eager to try out these much more calorically reasonable creamy confections.

KJ from Canberra, Australia, the brilliant mind behind A Cracking Good Egg struggles a bit with a sticky sweet treat: Turkish Delight No. 1. She sources her recipe from the CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints and has a bit of trouble with the candy's custom to cling to every surface with which it comes in contact. I can't possibly summarize her story in three sentences nearly as well as she relays it. Go. Read her saga for yourself. We'll wait here...

Her hometown of Quebec, Canada provides just the inspiration Liz of Bits and Bites is looking for. She turns to Canada's answer to Julia Child and the "dean of Canadian Cuisine" Jehane Benoit's, consulting her 1955 publication celebrating the cuisine of Quebec. The result: Liz has found a new go-to pastry recipe in a book she's carted around for years but failed to cook from until now -- and an absolutely yummy looking Sugar Pie.

Gigi, the hostess with the mostest at Gigi Cakes, makes her home in Pasadena, CA and takes us back to the first half of the twentieth century with her contribution: Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. Her recipe is the 1925 winner of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company's annual recipe contest. Today we know the Hawaiian Pineapple company as the mono-syllabic Dole. And like several of the contributions to RR9, she's found a recipe that stands the test of time.

Peeking out from behind curtain number 8 is Melynda of The Things that Make Us Happy Make us Wise, whose Marguerites don't leave her with a lot of faith in the tastebuds of our culinary predecessors. With the observation that they "look like camel poop and taste like a sandstorm" Melynda wins my admiration for her way with words and the unofficial first place award for the most creative description in this round.

Theresa takes a break from blogging about vintage fashion at Vintage Style Files to share her experience with a retro recipe for Raisin Bon Bons. In response to our call for sugar-soaked sweet treats, she turns to Family Circle's 1972 Illustrated Library of Cooking's Dessert Edition section on candy making. Theresa thinks she'll make these again, next time selecting a chocolate that can stand up a little better to Florida's heat and humidity.

In Pittsburgh, PA Laurie of Quirky Cupcake celebrates the success of her hometown heroes the Pens with a Fresh Apple Cake from her grandmother's favorite cookbook: The "Green" Huntsville Heritage Cookbook published in 1967... and discovered yet another recipe worthy of repeating. This "perfect fall cake" packs powerful fruit flavor, is "moist, sweet and comforting" and "keeps for days."

Melody of Fruit Tart ponders the life of the fantasy stay-at-home-mom watching soaps and popping bon bons (none of which accurately reflects HER reality), checking in with some brightly colored sensational looking Bon Bon Cookies. She takes her inspiration from Betty Crocker's 1963 Cooky Book, experimenting with flavors and fillings to create cookies that double as eye-candy.

Moon represents one-third of the creative genius behind Peanut Butter Etouffee and offers her grandmother's groovy Sugar Pie in homage to Sammy Davis Jr. Her uncle calls it a "Vaseline Pie" ... I think it looks delicious, and delightfully, deliciously, sinfully 1970-something.



"ShannieCakes" Shannon from Corvallis, OR shares a childhood favorite of hers AND mine: the Chocolate Mayonnaise (Cup)cake. She says it's a southern thing and how the recipe made its way to my mid-western grandmother remains a mystery to me, but it's neat to see that someone else out there enjoys the moist cakes it creates as much as I do. I can't wait to try it topped with Shannon's salted caramel butter cream. Because there's not much that doesn't taste better smothered in caramel...

Gretchen Noelle of Canela y Comino in Lima, Peru channels her inner eight-year-old with her contribution to our sugar celebration: Snickerdoodles. She provides a careful history of the Snickerdoodle's emergence on the American cookie scene -- including several period recipes, one from the turn of the 20th century, closing with the recipe as she submitted it to the Peck Family Cookbook back in 1980.

Breadchick Mary treats us to the classic of all classics, Mamie Eisenhower's No Fail Fudge. Who in the United States hasn't enjoyed this marshmallow fluff inspired treat? Mary's a self-proclaimed expert on fudge, claiming Mackinac Island, Michigan as perhaps the fudge capital of the United States. Her childhood nickname for tourists, "Fudgies" had me giggling to myself as I read her post.


Speaking of fluff, check out Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness' neon pink cake -- her contribution to both our Retro Recipe Challenge and Marye's much acclaimed Boobie Bake-Off. She consults the Favorite Recipes from Irvington Kitchens, a 1938 publication of the Irvington (IN) Union of Ladies' Clubs for inspiration, chosing the Delicious White Cake and Buttercream Icing -- then tinting them pink with icing paste.

And lastly but not leastly, my tribute to the American bicentennial celebration, autumn, and all things soaked in alcohol: Drunken Apple Pound Cake. Which the Tribune claims -- since it's made with corn oil rather than solid butter or margerine -- is a-okay for people on a "newfangled" low-cholesterol diet. My, how very far we've come...


There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Seventeen celebrations of sugar (and sugar substitutes). Thanks to all of you who took the time to participate in RRC 9.

Hungry for more? Burn off some of the calories you've consumed here... run, don't walk back over to Naomi, from Straight into Bed, Cakefree and Dried. She's hosting Retro Recipe Challenge #10: Story Book Food.

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