Lime Ring Mold

Recipe

My first gelatin recipe. I’ve been waiting for one to pop up as gelatin recipes, in all their various forms, were a staple in every mid 20th century household. Grammie’s Lime Ring Mold recipe was not listed as a salad per se, so I’ve added it to the blog as a stand alone post instead of including it in the Infamous Salad Week.

What the hell is the vinegar for (other than comic relief from the absurdly large bottle of it in the photo below)? The directions never say where to put it and no other Lime Mold recipe calls for it so I left it out.  I was also unsure of the amount of cream cheese but I went with 8 oz after consulting many other Lime Mold recipes and I sprayed the mold with a tiny bit of coconut cooking spray (also per other recipes). Grammie’s recipe never says to drain the pineapple but I did anyway. Grammie was a bit lazy when she wrote this recipe down.

The ingredients look so pretty all together but I may have let the Jell-O thicken too long in the refrigerator.

Grammie

So this isn’t really a photo of Grammie but this was her kitchen and she probably took this photo of my dad wearing Grampie’s shoes and hat. He must have been around 2ish which would date this photo as 1949. This is not the kitchen I remember.  By the 1980s, that table was replaced by a counter top with lower cabinets and the table was moved just to the left of where the photographer was standing.

Final Product

Evidently, I’m a scared chef; scared to liquefy whipped cream if I beat it too hard, scared to turn the Jell-O back to electric green lime water, and scared to just about beat anything too much because every time I use a stand mixer to make cookie dough, the cookies flatten into super crispy disks of shame. I should, however, have beaten the shit out of this recipe because it looked nothing like the beautiful milky green creations of the Lime Ring Mold recipes I saw online. Oh no, instead it looked like cat vomit after she ate green crayons and styrofoam.

 

VERDICT: Horrible

Aside from how the Lime Ring Mold recipe turned out looking, the taste of it was way too sweet.  This totally could have been user error in not mixing the ingredients together enough but if I ever made this again (an actual possibility just to see if I could get it looking right), I would beat the ingredients like they were trying to rob me.

The 12 year old didn’t like it.  One of the neighbor kids, L., did so a care package may mysteriously show up at their house today.

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Cherry Cream Cheese Pie

Recipe

I’m really excited about making this dessert.  Ever since that horribly salty Chicken Casserole, I’ve been craving some sweets and I’m hoping that this Cherry Cream Cheese Pie is going scratch that itch.

The ingredients were pretty straightforward, nothing too terribly bad, but I had some trouble with the directions.

Okay, so let me preface this next photo by saying that I’m pretty sure Grammie knew how to make her pie crust correctly but just didn’t bother laying it out in explicit directions. But since I’m trying to follow her directions to a “T,” I made a crust which is not only an embarrassment to myself, my family and, well, everyone else, but the immense shame of what happened in this pie plate is something that will haunt me to the grave. The Hubs begged me not to include the photo.

Patting in the crust just wasn’t working for me.  Can you tell?

Mixing the cream cheese concoction with the whipped cream also gave me some trouble.  There was no “folding in” per se. There just wasn’t enough of the cream cheese mixture to make it something that the whipped cream could fold into.  I tried my best but it didn’t mix very well.  I still licked the spatula and it tasted okay.  Plus, once you slather anything with a can of cherry pie filling, all is forgiven, right? If you look closely at the photo below, you can see some spots of cream cheese mix that didn’t combine with the whipped cream. Another embarrassment. Oh, and I forgot to add the lemon juice.  *sigh*

Grammie

This photo of Grammie was taken at her sister’s house in California in September 1967. She looks very happy and I absolutely love this photo of her.

The Result

VERDICT: Not So Bad

This is so good!  It is light and fresh and not too sweet and I’m totally making this again and I don’t even care that this is a run on sentence. I might just have to rename this recipe Run On Sentence Pie, it’s that good. Now, you all know that after the debacle with the crust, that part of the dessert was not going to be up to snuff but once I took the first bite, all was forgotten (if not forgiven).  The crust, of course, fell apart but the flavor of it was still good.  The Hubs thought the Cherry Cream Cheese Pie was okay but he’s not a sweet eater (and therefore wouldn’t know a good pie if it hit him in the face) and the 12 year old wasn’t thrilled about cherries which means that this whooooooole pie is mine.  Oh yeah.

Goody Good Bars

Recipe

A lot of the recipes in my Grammie’s recipe (chocolate) box had the name of the person that shared the recipe.  This one did not.  Maybe they didn’t want to own up to being the person that put ONE SOLID POUND of powdered sugar in a single dessert? I’m not going to lie, I’m a little scared.

Okay, so I’ve assembled the ingredients.  The only substitution I’ve made is one stick of butter instead of  one stick of Oleo (read: fake stick of death. Okay, okay, margarine does not cause death but I’m clearly on Team Butter).  The Great and Powerful Google told me that a stick of Oleo was the same size as my stick of butter now. I’m not sure what constituted a ‘large’ cream cheese in the 1950s-1970s but I’m using 8 ounces and we’ll see how it goes. The recipe doesn’t specify, so I’m going with unsweetened coconut flakes.

Steps 1 and 2 completed! The instructions did not say to grease the jelly roll pan so I didn’t bother.  Doesn’t look half bad.  The second step called for 1 pound of powdered sugar which was a LOT more than I thought it would be.  I just kept adding and adding and adding  spoonfuls to the scale.  I barely had enough but just squeaked by.  That 5 minute whisking was no joke either. I’m glad I opted for the mixer instead of hand mixing! As I was mixing, I thought maybe shredded coconut might have been a better choice, but it might not matter that much in the end.

Grammie

While the Goody Good Bars are in the oven for the next thirty minutes, I thought I would post a photo of my Grammie, Inez.  She labeled it herself as she wrote “Me” in the margin below the photo (not shown).  Grammie was born in 1910 so that dates this photo to about 1914-1918.  I remember her telling me a long time ago that she was five years old when this photo was taken which tracks with the drop waist white dress, over the knee socks, and white ribbons in her hair. On the reverse side of the photo (not shown) is printed POST CARD with defined spaces for correspondence, name and address, and the stamp.  Grammie also labeled that side with “Me.” She was so cute!

Final Product

Verdict: Horrible!

It would be easier to mainline sugar directly into your veins than to make these, even though the Goody Good Bars were pretty easy to make.  I know it said one pound of powdered sugar but holy cow.  Even the twelve year old passed on them initially. He said he might like them but wasn’t in the mood for them at the time.  A pre-teen boy NOT in the mood for a sweet treat?  Luckily, my neighbors have three kids so I’m going to take them over there.

If I were to ever make these again (never going to happen), I would use shredded coconut instead of flaked coconut (thank goodness I opted for unsweetened!) and cut waaaaaaaay down on the powdered sugar.  The top started browning at 30 minutes so I took them out but I think they could have stayed in a bit longer.  The bars were quite sticky to cut and the knife picked up bits of the bars. Greasing and/or flouring the jelly roll pan is definitely not needed as the bars released very easily.

UPDATE

Verdict: Not So Bad

The next day, I tried one (NOT because I was too lazy to make breakfast) and 24 hours made a huge difference.  I mean, it’s still sweet but it’s not so sickeningly sweet as yesterday.  They also firmed up and are less sticky.  I would suggest letting them sit for 24 hours even before cutting them. They are the 12 year olds new favorite thing in life so I’m not sure the neighbor kids are going to get any.

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