Introduction
Honk!
Honk!
Out of the way, World—Mrs. Dixon is at the wheel!
And what a womanly woman she’s becoming! Between numerous
assurances to a nervous Bettina (“[Frank] says I’m as good a driver as he is!”)
Mrs. Dixon gushes about her newfound domestic skills (“I’m really learning to
cook!”) and ever-strengthening marriage (“It seems [Frank] can hardly get home
quickly enough!”).
After a Mr. Toad-like ramble through the countryside
Bettina seems more than happy to accede to her companion’s wish to stop at a
local tea room, the “The Friendly Inn”.
And friendly it is—but not, perhaps, to waistlines. After
a brief chat with the proprietors Mrs. Dixon and Bettina find a table and give
their sweet tooth free reign!
Part 1
The
Menu
Tomato
Cup Salad
Iced
Tea
Bread
and Butter Sandwich
Vanilla
Ice Cream
Chocolate
Sauce
Marshmallow
Cakes
Preparing the Food
Tomato
Cup Salad
Once again I needed to choose a cooked salad
dressing…not an easy task as at least six are listed in A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband and a dozen or more in Bettina’s Best Salads And What To Serve With
Them!
Still, thanks to my family’s aversion to vinegar (1/3
of a cup is generally their limit) the list was trimmed in short order, and in
the end Bettina’s Cream Salad Dressing was the favorite.
(Still
hadn’t remembered to buy dry mustard, so the stuff out of the bottle was my
only option)
To
be cooked in a double broiler—yuck.
The
dressing came together quickly—too quickly, as it was rather lumpy and had to
be strained
Looks
good (good enough, anyway)
Of
course the tomato cups meant to hold the salad had need a hot water bath to
be easily skinned
Preparing the tomatoes wasn’t difficult…not was the
salad itself—but good grief! was it spicy. The chopped cucumbers and green
peppers did absolutely nothing to negate the peppery punch of the onions and
radishes…I can only hope that mixing in the salad dressing will help to tame
that bite.
Iced
Tea
Iced tea again?
I’m beginning to wonder if Bob and Bettina’s honeymoon
bungalow is located in the South—iced tea seems to be their favorite summertime
drink and crops up at almost every meal.
As this is being served in a tea room “dainty” is
the order of the day—bring on the lemon slices and mint leaves.
Bread
and Butter Sandwiches
The type of bread needed for these sandwiches wasn’t
specified so, just for fun, I decided to make my own. But homemade bread isn’t
my forte, so I decided to rely on my
trusty Joy of Cooking rather than
Bettina’s vague bread-making instructions and equally confusing lists of
ingredients.
Since I didn’t want to have to rush the bread through
its first rising I decided that Joy’s Slow-Rising
White Bread was most suitable—not the quickest bread to prepare but, as it has
all night in the refrigerator to rise, who cares?
Surprisingly
few ingredients for the so-called Staff of Life…
Stir,
stir…the dough was pretty sticky…
…and
didn’t look very promising when I dumped it out of the bowl to knead
Much
better. Ten solid minutes of kneading whipped it into shape and gave my arms a
workout too
Now
into the refrigerator for some midnight action...
Must
have been a slow night…the dough didn’t rise nearly as much as expected
That’s
better. Six hours in my warm kitchen woke it up
Drat!
Once again I didn’t have the proper-sized loaf pan. Supposedly this quantity of
dough should fill two 6-cup pans, but since mine are all bigger or smaller I’m
going to have to bake two different loaves of two different sizes
The
dough cut in two—small loaf on the left, large loaf on the right
Shaping
the dough was more challenging than expected—its slow rise made it tough and resilient
Time
for the second rise
Perfect!
Although
the loaves went into the oven at the same time the smaller loaf of course finished
first. And so desperate was I to ensure the loaf was neither over- nor under-baked
I impaled it with a thermometer.
Loaf
#2. The loaf didn’t brown as evenly as I hoped, but I wasn’t going to argue
with a thermometer that had hit the magic number of 195 degrees Fahrenheit.
Both
loaves finished. Now this lovely fresh-baked bread has to sit on the counter
until it’s stale enough to make sandwiches out of [weep weep]
Vanilla
Ice Cream
Hey,
it does say “homemade’ on the carton, right? <grin>
Chocolate
Sauce
Once again I had to contend with Bettina’s vague
measurements and the hope the her “1 square” of baking chocolate translates
into 1 modern ounce…
A
pretty simple sauce to cook up—just chocolate, sugar, salt, flour, butter, and
vanilla
Marshmallow
Cake
Bettina says to “use any white cake recipe” and it’s
so tempting to take that at face value and use one of the Joy of Cooking’s failsafe recipes. Unfortunately Bettina does list
a white cake recipe—even more unfortunately I’ve already tried it (Chapter 4
Bettina Gives A Luncheon) and am still having flashbacks.
Still, I’m twenty chapters beyond that now—surely it
won’t fail on me again.
Flour,
eggs, sugar, etc…nothing out of the ordinary here
Creaming
the fat with the sugar was easier than usual because for once I remembered to
take the butter out of the refrigerator early, to give it a chance to soften
Of
course the egg whites had to be whipped and added to the batter separately (a
favorite Bettina complication). I always feel that I should really get into the
early-20th century spirit and whip the whites without the help of
modern appliances (fortunately for my hands and wrists that sentiment never
lasts)
Cause
for celebration—I get to use my gem pan for the first time. A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband said
nothing about greasing and flouring the cups, but I’m not foolish enough to skip
that step
Look
tea room-worthy (so far)
Now for the icing—White Mountain Icing, my old
nemesis. In the past it’s been very hit or miss but, as I’m now using anti-crystallization
techniques gleaned off the Internet (use a thermometer, avoid sudden changes in
temperature etc) I think it’ll work this time
Once again my
electric mixer swoops in to save the day...
Looks
OK, but now it has to cool to room temperature (Danger, Will Robinson!) The
recipe says not to add the quartered marshmallows until it reaches that point
as “the little bumps are attractive when spread on the cake”. Hmmm…I’ve never
considered lumpy cake particularly eye appealing, but presumably the owners of
“The Happy Inn” know what they’re talking about!
How It Looked
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