
I really like this next recipe box. It’s a little yellowed
box with pink and blue flowers. The recipes, mostly written on index cards, are
themselves are a bit yellowed. Besides the index cards, there is a large
collection of recipes clipped from newspapers, butter boxes, cracker boxes and
advertisements.
There are no clues in this box as to the identity of its
owner. There is only one recipe with a name on it. It’s a recipe for Fresh Corn Fritters given by a Zhanela
Griffith. Whoever the owner of the box was, she was a pretty confident cook. A
large number of the cards only list ingredients, not measurements or directions!
Her writing is small and neat and she took care to make her own tabs for
sections like “Seafood.”
A few of my favorite recipes are for Ugly Duckling Cake, Mock
Apple Pie and a candy called Sea Foam.
There is a recipe for doughnuts made with potato and one for Emergency Cake (is this for a cake
emergency? Or cake during an emergency? No clue.) There were lots of fun-looking recipes to try but as I’ve been sick as a dog this week, the one recipe that
jumped out at me was one for Chocolate
Drink. It’s basically the richest hot cocoa ever.
Chocolate Drink
“This is the way: take three squares of chocolate, the
unsweetened kind, and add one-half cup of cold water. Put in a saucepan over a low
flame, stir until the chocolate is melted all nice and smooth. Then ass
one-half cup of sugar and just a dash of salt. Blend and stir and boil about
five minutes. Cool. When cool fold in one-half cup of cream, whipped fairly
stiff. Flavor with one teaspoon of vanilla.
To serve,
put a small ladle or a good tablespoon of the mixture in each cup and fill the
cup with hot milk. If you like a sweeter chocolate, use a little more sugar in
the chocolate mixture. And this same recipe makes a perfect chocolate sauce;
only when you use it this way leave out the cream.”
I can’t even begin to tell you how decadent and rich this
is. I mean it was so amazing, but I could only drink about ½ cup. I made very
few changes… I used Dove dark chocolate instead of baking chocolate and
granted… I did put Kahlua in the whipped cream because I’m sick and I felt like
it damnit, but the basic recipe as written is still very rich. I recommend making this as a dessert and serving it in espresso
cups. Trust me… it’s all you need of this yummy winter warmer.
Enjoy!
Erin