Fall in the Cottage

Fall in the cottage this year may include much cooking. I have really gardened a lot this year, and I love spending time outdoors and enjoying nature, but I have been missing the kitchen.

I got started on my baking right away this week with a blueberry muffin recipe out of a vintage cookbook.

I have been tweaking the cottage corner also. I am thinking the more I play around here, I almost have a functioning kitchen.

This recipe book was from 1944, and it is a jewel. The recipes are simple and to the point. You can make almost anything with this cookbook with a working pantry. It was published during WWII, and food rations and nutrition were of key importance. I find that really enjoyable to read; maybe I am kind of weird, but I can read a cookbook like any other book and enjoy it. 

The first recipe I tried out of this cookbook was Blueberry Tea Muffins. 

The recipe was heavy on baking powder because the author wrote cookbooks for Rumford Baking Powder, so the muffins were a little dry. I found that with a few adjustments you could make these similar to some famous blueberry muffin recipe, like the Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffin Recipe, and that would have made them more moist. The techniques for mixing and baking were the same. 

I am going to talk more about this cookbook in a later post. I have my own recipe for beef and noodles, and I found that this cookbook was as close to my recipe as I have ever found. I really value a recipe book that can make a wonderful meal out of such meager ingredients. This type of cooking was really the backbone of the meal times in the 1940s.

In Victory,

Sherry