Yes! Ever since my book club read The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom several years ago, and the host served us molasses cake like the slaves made in the kitchen house on the plantation in the novel, I've been meaning to make it myself. It was so simple and flavorful, served with a dollop of whipped cream.

Yoyobon - You want to know what you've done to the already well-rounded me? I just now googled the recipe, printed it, and walked over to that shopping list pad on the side of my fridge and wrote "molasses" as the first item on my next grocery list.

Simple Molasses Cake from The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

"French Women Don't Get Fat" has several recipes in the book that I tried. Cooking with champagne gets to be a bit costly, however. (The author works for a champagne promoter).

I made beef bourginon recently because it sounded so good in a Louise Penny book. :) I can't/don't cook, but it came out pretty good.

When I was in high school I went through a Monty Python phase. During one of the episodes they went on about vanilla blanc mange so much that I found a recipe and made some.

Donna

What kind of molasses do you use? I keep a bottle of Brer Rabbit for when a recipe calls for a small amount, but my preference for taste is sorghum which is hard to come by except in the fall at specialty shops.

Not from a book but when my BiL dropped in to visit while on a trip to the UK, I made him a sandwich snack with doorstopper slices of white bread and a thick butcher-cut rasher of hot fried bacon. He took a bite and said appreciatively "Onslow's bacon butty!" referencing the TV show "Keeping Up Appearances."

It was naughty of him not to mention that he was supposed to be on a diet!

I use either Brer Rabbit or Grandma's Original . I picked up a circa 1930's recipe book published by Brer Rabbit on our library's free shelf with all kinds of molasses recipes in it. I love the original Molasses Hermits recipe in it as well as all the molasses cookie varieties.

I bought my jar of molasses, but have not yet made the cake. I bought Brer Rabbit and had to choose among mild, regular, and blackstrap. Not knowing what was what, I bought regular.

Yoyobon - What's a Molasses Hermit?

Kathy, wise choice getting "regular".....power up your printer, here's the recipe for the hermit bars !

I usually drizzle white icing over mine before I cut them into narrow bars.

http://grandmamolasses.com/chewy-hermit-bars-recipe/

Oh my, those hermits look delicious. That recipe is now on my TBB list.

Meanwhile, the molasses cake is in the oven. (By the way, it was "full flavored" molasses I bought, not "regular.") Apparently my reading retention skills are slipping. As are my neat-baking skills. The molasses got away from me and I had to clean the entire outside of my white Kitchenaid mixer, and tip that heavy thing over to clean molasses off its underside also. Then there were two long molasses drips all the way down the front of my white cabinet door. And the three small puddles of molasses on my floor tile. This experiment has not gone smoothly. But the aroma in my kitchen is lovely!

Kathy, the worst mess I ever made in my kitchen was when I dropped a full container of hot, made-from-scratch spaghetti sauce while attempting to put it in the refrigerator. It spattered from the top shelf to the floor and over the contents of and underneath the fridge. That was my first, last, and only attempt to make that stuff!

Oh Carolyn - I can picture that. What a mess!

When I was first married I dropped a raw egg on the kitchen floor and recalled that if you put lots of salt on it and let it set overnight it will clean up quickly. Unfortunately I forgot about it and early the next morning a cousin whom I rarely saw dropped by for a surprise visit.

On the 'mess' theme. My S-in-L, a charming young man in many respects, considers himself to hold great culinary skills, but obviously expects the kitchen scullion (me) to do the pot-washing and wiping down of walls/floor etc after one of his forays into MY kitchen.

One of my cousins had frittered away her afternoon and not prepared dinner for the family, so she cooked something easy and made a lemon meringue pie to cover up her procrastination. When she took it out of the oven, she dropped it and it landed upside down. She said she sat down on the floor beside it and cried.

I had a surprisingly good result from a culinary mishap. I made a coconut cake but it tasted of raw flour and was undercooked so I put it in a plastic cake container, intending it for the dog, who ate most things. She once came home proudly carrying a paper bag with sugared buns covered in ants!

I forgot about the cake for a few days and when I did open the container I thought it smelled nice so I cut off a slice and found that the summer heat had finished the cooking process. The dog missed out!

My best tip for mishaps with undercooked potatoes that have lumps in the mash, finely chop salad or spring onions and stir in. The lumps won't be so obvious!

Annpan even the mention of lumpy mashed potatoes makes me gag. At secondary school it formed part of our so-called diet (mostly carbo/stodge) almost every day. We had to line up and a nun would splat a dollop of grey, lumpy spud onto the plate possibly accompanied by an unidentifiable piece of meat and maybe an over-boiled carrot. I wonder we didn't get scurvy as we received almost no green veg or fruit!

My husband still teases me about the time, at least 30 years ago, when I put green beans in the Crock Pot then forgot about them for a week or so. :)

Vee, that meal sounds horrid!

Donna

Green beans.....in a crock pot ??? They cook in 10 minutes on the stove ! They must have been plenty cooked after seven days !

While reading one of the Three Pines books I came across a reference to Quebecois Pea Soup and googled the recipe. I love making pea soup and wondered what would make it Quebecois, aside from being created in Quebec . My Sicilian nonna always made pea soup and would serve it with elbow macaroni or ditalini in it. ( not cooked in it but served with it in the bowl of soup). I later discovered that it was a version of Pasta e Fagioli which we always associated with red sauce and beans ( many add meat as well ) . Live and learn.