welcome friends welcome back to Sunday
morning in another edition of our old
cookbook show and today we're going to
do something out of the Walsh County
cookbook from the Walsh County Record in
Grafton North Dakota now this was
originally printed in 1936 it's a
community cookbook these are recipes
that were submitted by residents to the
newspaper between 1933 and 1934 printed
in this book in 1936 and then this is a
reprint of the original book celebrating
the 100th anniversary of Grafton North
Dakota and this would have been put out
in 1982 I believe so piles of really
good recipes in this book and we're
gonna start it today making this apple
cake it's got an interesting mix of
ingredients and I'm really looking
forward to tasting this so I'm gonna
start out it says to use lard or butter
I've got a pile of pure lard hanging
around but I think butter will work
really well in this recipe so I'm gonna
put this in and get it creaming while
the butter screaming we'll do our dry
ingredients so I have flour here and to
that I'm going to add baking soda
cinnamon nutmeg
actually that was cloves the next thing
is nutmeg I'm gonna grate in some nutmeg
okay the butter looks pretty good so I'm
gonna put the sugar in and cream those
together and we'll mix the spices into
the flour so Grafton North Dakota about
two hours south of the Canadian border
pretty much due south from Winnipeg for
those who are interested in if that
helps and I find this book to be very
interesting because when we started this
project we got a lot of comments from
people saying why are there dates in
every one of your recipes that we were
doing recipes from towns around the
Toronto area from the same time period
mid to late 30s and pretty much all of
the
cakes had dates in them and we got a lot
of comments a lot of Americans said why
are there always dates and Canadian
recipes there shouldn't be you know
during the Depression nobody could
afford dates there wouldn't be dates
there wouldn't be dates Americans don't
cook with dates and I just took that as
oh okay maybe that's just one cultural
difference between the two countries we
use dates and Americans didn't then I
got this book and I thank my cousin in
Arkansas for sending this to me thanks
Brett out of two hundred and maybe ten
recipes in this book a full 25 of them
are recipes that have dates in them or
featured dates so I don't know if that's
because North Dakota is touching Canada
it's Canada adjacent and we spilled over
or if in rural communities dates were
well-known and during this time period
dates could have been much cheaper than
they are today so I have no clue what
that all means but they were definitely
cooking with dates in North Dakota in
the 1930s
okay next in are a couple of eggs
so just like every recipe from this time
period very few directions it pretty
much only tells me to bake it in a loaf
pan so I'm kind of playing this by ear
of how to mix this together there is
half a cup of strong coffee so I figure
I have to put in the flour a little bit
of flour a little bit of coffee a little
bit flour it mix those back and forth to
get a really good batter so I'm going to
spoon in a little bit of flour and then
as soon as that's mixed in dribble in a
little bit of coffee and then come back
with a little bit more flour okay all
mixed together so I'm going to pull this
out and we've got three more things to
put in I chopped nuts I'm using walnuts
I think they would be period-correct for
this geographic location I think walnuts
so and fold the walnuts in says chopped
raisins but I guess this is where you
would put in the chopped dates if you
had them and if there's anyone in
Grafton North Dakota who knows why they
used so many dates in Grafton at this
time period maybe somebody from the
newspaper or the Historical Society
please let me know very interested to
find out last ian is a chopped apple
okay so into a loaf pan and into a
moderate oven for an hour
oh it is a cake
some raisin some is our there's raisins
and there's pecans or walnuts
it's got all the right flavors for a
nice cake super moist isn't it mm-hmm
and you didn't even notice that there's
a half a cup of coffee in it what yeah
so the copy the coffee just enhances all
the other flavors you don't taste the
coffee at all um it's just they're
lifting everything else so this is super
super moisture it is true sometimes you
can hide the coffee
hmm that's lovely mm-hmm well you know
what it needs a cup of tea
of course would be great um and I wasn't
sure it says you could put in dates ah
of course it does but um but I wasn't
sure if you would need to take the
raisins out to put the dates in but I
think you could just put some dates in I
think you could just probably put half a
cup or a cup of chopped Gates's yeah
dried dates don't turn to add a lot of
moisture to okay kind of like raisins
they have flavor and texture but not
necessarily um moisture that is an
absolute winner whew you could enter it
in the fall fair I could enter it in the
forbidden I would have to I would have
to give Helen major full credit for the
recipe yes this is a winner
all right thanks Helen thanks for
stopping by see you again soon
you
