These will be fun to look through.

Cool!

Never heard of SwansDown. Were they known for having good recipes?

Thanks, Carol! I remember Swans Down Cake Flour from waaaaay back.

I love stuff like that -- thanks for sharing!

Nice, thanks for sharing. Swans Down was my mom's go to brand of cake flour. It's only available in certain stores where I'm at now, although Pillsbury's Softasilk brand is available everywhere. I'll take a look through those booklets. There are probably some very good from-scratch recipes there. I don't bother with recipes that start with "take one package of yellow cake mix". That's not an issue with a recipe that calls for cake flour.

I usually use AP for cake, but do use Swansdown when I want that flyaway texture. I love old fashioned recipes, like the original red cocoa for red velvet cake and other velvet cakes besides red. :) (BTW, I just learned that the "German" in German chocolate cake (which I don't eat or make because I can't have coconut) came from the name of the guy at Baker's chocolate, which was on the label as Baker's German's Chocolate. Mr. German invented a sweet baking chocolate, and the recipe comes from a lady in Texas.)

German chocolate cake is extremely popular in Texas, and my German grandmother made it often when I was growing up. Hers had both coconut and pecans in it, in addition to chocolate.

I have the Frugal Gourmet's book, Three Ancient Cuisines, and I've made a few recipes from that. I also have The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, originally published in 1901 with recipes from New Orleans, most of which are extremely simple, but there are a few that call for some unusual ingredients.

I get the idea that food used to be much simpler and often blander in the past, but then I often like the simple recipes.

Until COVID hit, I had a box of Swansdown in my pantry. The Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe calls for both cake flour and bread flour. At the beginning of the COVID lockdowns, I was having trouble getting flour amongst other things so I used up the cake flour and the bread flour and haven’t replaced them yet.

Well now you’ve totally busted my romanticized idea of the origin of German chocolate cake! I never had a clue about Mr. German, but there it is on wikipedia. I love German chocolate cake — and it must have both coconut and pecans!

FWIW, pretty sure I've never bought SwansDown cake flour - not even sure it's available around here.

However, I do like old recipes - esp. for baking - and have quite a large collection of vintage pamphlets and cookbooks. I often enjoy just reading them. Many are very nicely illustrated.

All purpose flour can be subbed for cake flour pretty often nowadays. I understand flours today are not the same as they were long ago - the quality is better and more consistent, in general.

P.S. I just noticed at least one of the booklets is recipes using their 'Instant Cake Mix'. Do they still make mixes, I wonder?

Thanks! I love looking through older cookbooks. Especially baking ones. It's interesting to see the different ingredients.

I know I've bought Swan's Down and prefer it but normally end up coming home with Softasilk too.

@Lars I have The Picayune's Creole Cook Book too. Mine is published in the 80s and is updated by Marcella Bienvenu. It's the First Random House edition if that matters. She has put notes in the margins as to what different things mean. I haven't cooked from it but love looking through it.

I started using cake flour when I was 9 to make cakes (my favorite was Angel food), and I would always sift the flour before measuring and then sift again with other dry ingredients. I got a blue ribbon for my chiffon cake at the county fair when I was 10, but that was the only year that they allowed boys to enter the cooking contests.

My mother would only make cakes from box mixes, and so when we went to family reunion picnics, I would bake a cake for it. Other female relatives turned their noses down on box mix cakes, and so I never used them. I would also separate the eggs and beat the whites separately, especially for the chiffon cake, which I baked in a tube pan.

I would also use cake flour for making pie crusts and biscuits, if we had some that needed to be used. It's been a while since I have bought cake flour, since I seldom make cakes, except for torta di mele, which does not require cake flour.

I want to try this recipe:

The second page of that one is a recipe for 'German' chocolate cake, which reminded me about that fact pillog shared - it's called that because the chocolate brand that originated the recipe was 'German's' not because it's from Germany.

I browsed them all. My favorite is the one copyrighted 1953. Nice balance between illustrations and text. Some of the very early ones are a bit hard on my eyes. Now the problem is not how to make those delicious recipes but who is going to eat them all!!

Carol, thanks for that "Beat N' Eat Frosting" recipe, what a blast from the past. I used to make it a lot when I was a young teenager, and I'd forgotten about it until now. We liked it a lot, mostly on chocolate cakes.

Annie

I looked at wishiwereintheup's favorite from 1953, "Cake Secrets" and found this text:

"You can be nine or ninety, rich or poor, a famous career woman or the queen of a little white house in the country.

But when you go out in the clean, quiet kitchen and set forth your shining cake pans … or shoo away a wistful man lured in by the oven's perfume … or carry high a candle-lit masterpiece to the strains of Happy Birthday (or maybe to wolf whistles and double O's) … that's when you wouldn't change places with any woman in the world.

-From Frances [Lee] Barton, Consumer Service Department

GENERAL FOODS CORPORATION, 250 PARK AVE., NEW YORK 17, N.Y.

Copyr. 1953"

Then I began to wonder, "Who is this Frances Barton?" and why did she write like this? I found this article, which has more information about her. It seems that she was on the radio from 1932 to 1935, and so she might be expressing attitudes more from the 1930s than from the 1950s, although they probably were not much different.

I was trying to imagine her shooing men away who might trespass into her kitchen, and I immediately got an image of Aunt Bea shooing away Andy Griffith.

An adorable teen boy on one of the quick tick-toc but maybe y-tube quick 3 minute postings has been cooking from early 1902-1920-ish books. Impossible to find and link those postings. 90% of the time he is surprised how good they are. When supplies were limited and use what you have.

"I was trying to imagine her shooing men away who might trespass into her kitchen, and I immediately got an image of Aunt Bea shooing away Andy Griffith."

Or Hazel shooing away Mr. B and Sport.

I saved some of the pdf’s for references. I like pound cake but I find it dense, heavy texture and packed with calories, until I found a recipe online and baked a light, soft Castella sponge cake. It goes well with afternoon tea for dessert.

I've shooed. My kitchen can accomodate half a dozen, at least, working, but there's no place for kibbitzers, lingerers, and volunteer not-finished-yet cake testers, where they're not in the way. Lars is right, the stereotype of mom is the cook and the menfolk are to be shooed, is way out of dare, and my shooing does not discriminate by gender. In fact, there's one cousin who isn't unwelcome because he doesn't block the way, finds what he wants without bothering me, and rather than asking ”can I help” which is usually a non-starter if not a downright progress stopper, he sees a task that needs doing, which he knows he can do, and asks if he can do that, again requiring little to no supervision. So, yea men and go for gender parity, but, to the rest of them, stay out of my kitchen! Shoo!

Ha - my tiny kitchen barely fits 2 - and they need to be on very good terms 😄

I mainly shoo women away from my kitchen because they get in my way, and I'm used to doing everything my way and by myself. It slows me down if someone insists on butting in and trying to help.

Both of my kitchens are small, but I do like having help when I cook outdoors, as there is plenty of space. If someone wants to learn from me, then that is a different story, and I am more than happy to teach, but I am not happy is someone tries to help and does not follow instructions.