Old Recipes

My lovely Mum passed away a little over a year ago.  We all miss her, and our equally adored Dad who passed away many years ago, greatly.  One of the many things I miss (and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the family does too) is her cooking.  Mum made the best soups and mini beef pies and try as we might, none of us can get ours to taste quite the same.   Even when we follow her recipe.  I say recipe, what I mean is loose directions from Mum.  When we asked, Mum would tell us she doesn't use a recipe and that she just knew to add little bit of this, a pinch of that or a handful of the other.  But she did have some recipes, gifted from friends and family, which she used regularly. Mum also gathered new recipes to try from magazines (I definitely take after Mum in that respect). Recently I found myself going through one of her recipe books.  An old exercise book, falling apart of the seams, and made up a mix of handwritten recipes, clippings from magazines and recipes passed on by others on bits of paper.  Amongst the recipes I was very excited to find this well used one:

The reason I am so pleased to have found this is that it is Aunty Gipsie's recipe for pumpkin fruit cake.  I have very fond memories of Aunty Gipsie and her fruit cake, which she would bring to family gatherings or Mum would make.  I've tried other recipes, but they've never stacked up to be as tasty as this one.  Of course I had to have a go at making this one.  Luckily, I had some leftover steamed pumpkin in the fridge. One happy husband, who got to lick the bowl, and about an hour and a half later we had a delicious fruit cake.  I'm pleased to say it tasted exactly like the ones Mum and Aunty Gipsie used to make for us. 

R was especially happy as he got to have this cake all to himself, as opposed to sharing it with all and sundry.  He did share it with me though.

The handwritten recipe is a little challenging to read. I had to guess the size of the tin because, like many old recipes, it wasn't included. I wonder if there was just one size of tin for fruit cakes.  Anyway, here is the recipe for Aunty Gipsie's Pumpkin Fruit Cake:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound butter
• 1 and 1/4 cups of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup SR flour
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup of cold, mashed pumpkin
• 1 tablespoon custard powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 pound mixed dried fruit

Method:

Sift the SR flour, 1/2 cup of the plain flour and the custard powder.  Cream butter and sugar. Add beaten egg and the half cup of plain flour, before adding the mashed pumpkin (to prevent curdling).  Add the remaining flour, dried fruit and vanilla.  

That's the complete recipe.  The rest I had to guess based on my own experience of cooking cakes.  I used 23 cm cake tin and baked it in a moderate oven (180 degrees celsius) until a skewer in the centre came out clean. It took about an hour and a half all up.  I did put a bit of paper over the tin towards the end to stop the top burning.  Delicious served with a cup of coffee or tea. Enjoy!

I was also really pleased to find this recipe for savoury cheese biscuits which B and I made often when we still lived at home.  I haven't made these yet but I'm planning to very soon:

The following pics are of the recipe book.  It's a lovely piece of our family history:

I'm looking forward to trying many more of Mum's collected recipes.