1940s bakeday

Welcome to another historical bake day!

This time around, I decided to choose the 1940s, specifically post-war, for my time. I currently have a noir horror novella in the works set in 1947, so that’s when I pulled my recipes from! My main character spends most of his time in a diner, so I chose recipes with a diner influence.

As always I tried to keep to 2 big rules.

1. As much as possible, keep to tools that were already around. Although due to the later date of this bake day, this was a much smaller hindrance then normal!

2. Use authentic recipes as much as possible. Being one of two vegetarians with two gluten sensitivities as well as living in a house FULL of lactose intolerances, some things did need to be tweaked.
   

These recipes were taken from “Out of Alaska’s Kitchens” released in 1947. Just like the last 2 times, I had a marvelous kitchen elf named “mom” to help me out. 

Here is my menu:

Breakfast: Sour cream waffles with cherry pie filling and fresh vanilla whipped cream. 

Lunch: Golden rice with scalloped apples and cheese.

Dinner: Vegan veggie burgers prepared with a recipe from a french’s mustard ad dated 1948, homemade barbecue sauce, and rolled potato salad. 

Dessert: Chocolate pudding.

Let’s start with breakfast.

I got up at an unearthly hour so that everyone would be able to eat breakfast, (my brother worked the morning shift) and set to work on one of the oddest waffle recipes I’ve ever seen. It called for whipped egg whites, (How often have I written that in regards to bake days?) but this time I had a trusty mixer that I was actually allowed to use! The batter was muffin-mix thick, but despite the odd texture I chucked it into the electric waffle iron, (yes they existed, but no, mine isn’t exactly the same as a truly retro one) Once cooked up, this odd batter resulted in the best waffle recipe we’ve ever found! They were oddly fluffy, but this just meant that we didn’t die of a carb overload after breakfast.

Spirit also liked them!

After a nap, I set to work on lunch. 

“Golden rice” in case you were curious, turns out to mean carrots with a little bit of rice, covered with cheese. But despite being a little sparse on seasoning, it was quite yummy and pretty easy to prepare, if a little odd. As for the scalloped apples and cheese, I was doing pretty well with the recipe until I ran into the instruction of “cover with milk,” I wasn’t sure if they meant to pour a bit of milk over the top, or to drown the mess until it was truly covered. And in a moment of panic, I split the difference and soaked it half-way. It was pretty soupy, but quite tasty as well. 

Dinner was… an adventure. 

The burgers and barbecue were easy enough to prepare, but the rolled salad… didn’t quite go as expected. There was much more filling then I had anticipated, so I had to smash it into the potatoes so it wouldn’t just spill out the sides. We made an executive decision and tried to roll the salad with paper vs a cloth, which basically worked… until I broke the end off and dumped it on the floor. (Yeah, I’m a klutz.) I was instructed to slice the salad… this did NOT WORK! It smashed, and we ate smashed piles of mushy potato salad instead. However everything was quite tasty, and we were all stuffed afterward. 

Last but never least, we had dessert. 

I’m gonna be honest here, I’ve made pudding from scratch before… and the instructions looked VERY strange. They called for making it in a double boiler and letting it sit, covered and untended, for 20 minutes. I didn’t want to risk burning sugar, so I kinda ignored them a little bit… I used the recipe (with the sugar cut) but I just made it like I would any other pudding. It was delicious, much richer than a store-bought pudding, and we decided to serve it with the last of the hand-whipped vanilla cream… because it’d be a shame if it spoiled. ;)

Thanks for the read!