Soul Cakes Are the Perfect Halloween Treat for the Black Hat Society

Come October 31^st 150 million children (!!!) will venture into the streets, knock expectantly on doors and yell “TRICK OR TREAT!” Yet few people know the dark and winding road this nighttime festival has trod in order to become the second largest American holiday. 

The first celebrations of Halloween began in ancient pre-Christian Celtic Ireland, Scotland and northern France. During that era October 31th celebrated Samhain, a high holy day marked by the nighttime burning of massive bonfires, the wearing of animal skin costumes to frighten away hostile spirits and the offering of food and prayers to the protective spirits of deceased family members. 

These customs continued into the Middle Ages with the previous activities then becoming known as “Mumming”.  Bizarre cloth and straw costumes now replaced the prior animal skin costumes.  Under the growing influence of Christianity, the food, once offered to supportive ancestral spirits, was replaced by soul cakes. 

The poor of each village would visit the estates of the landed gentry and ask for soul cakes. It was expected that, for each small cake they received, they would say a prayer for the soul of a deceased lord of lady. The following song hauntingly captures the feel of that ancient day:

This humbling practice was known as “Souling”. Over the centuries the poor were replaced by the children of the village who by then accepted money and ale in addition to food. In Scotland the tradition shifted somewhat. There the costumed children offered to exchange a song, joke or dance, instead of a prayer, for their treats. They called this custom "guising, hence the modern word "dis-guising". 

In 1605 Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic terrorists were caught and executed for attempting to blow up both the Protestant King James I and the entire British Parliament.  His death (or courage, depending on one’s political point of view) is celebrated each November 5^th with raging bonfires, bonfire-themed cupcakes and the request by English children of “a penny for the Guy”, who had to pay for his own execution under 17^th century law. 

All of these traditions came to the United States thanks to immigration which is a constant stream of diversity that has greatly crafted the shape of American history.  Beginning with the Great Potato Famine in 1845, waves of both Irish and Scottish immigrants came to America and brought their October holiday customs with them. 

By the 1920s and into the 1930s, the popular of tricking and treating reached alarming and destructive proportions in America. Vandalism exploded in major urban areas, often prompted by poverty and anger over the inequality of the American dream. 

The sudden involvement of America in World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor halted this trend as hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men entered the military and food stuffs, including sugar, were greatly rationed. After the War ended in 1945, many returning GIs had seen enough of conflict and battle to last a life time and were now no longer interested in chaos and destruction. 

Available government housing loans, thanks to the GI bill, enabled the explosion of suburban neighborhoods, populated by happy newlyweds and soon thereafter their two ‘perfect’ children. As candy makers evaluated this new social trend, they quickly understood they were looking a vast and untapped market.

Women had endured the severe shortage of sugar during war years.  Their husbands had ‘dined’ for four years on simplistic K rations. And now there were all those children. In short, it was time to relax, settle into the 1950’s life style promoted by the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue Ad Agencies and enjoy a ‘new’ holiday based on revamped traditions that were over 2,000 years old. 

Trick or Treating is still part of Halloween in America though more modern (and health-conscious) parents moderate their children’s consumption of sugar. Costumes, both commercially themed and homemade, are still worn and not just by children. On an ever increasing basis, adults are joining in the fun and enjoying fright-themed treats and scary cocktails. 

If you wish, however, to return to the simpler roots of Halloween, consider making your very own soul cakes. Eat them before November 2^nd and you're sure to have good luck all year. Then you'll  know why for over 2,000 years mankind has celebrate the darkening days of Fall each year with fire, fun and friendship. Enjoy and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

SOUL CAKES

Makes 12 to 15 2-inch soul cakes (Eat within 2 days of Baking to Insure Good Luck!)

INGREDIENTS

For the Cakes:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground fresh if possible
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground fresh if possible
1/2 teaspoon salt
Generous pinch of saffron
1/2 cup milk
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup currants

For the Glaze:
1 egg yolk, beaten

DIRECTIONS

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
• Combine the flour, the nutmeg, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.
• Mix well with a fork.
• Crumble the saffron threads into a small saucepan and heat over low heat just until they become aromatic, taking care not to burn them.
• Add the milk and heat just until hot to the touch. The milk will have turned a bright yellow. Remove from heat.
• Cream the butter and sugar together in a medium bowl with a wooden spoon (or use an electric mixer with the paddle attachment).
• Add the egg yolks and blend in thoroughly with the back of the spoon.
• Add the spiced flour and combine as thoroughly as possible; the mixture will be dry and crumbly.
• One tablespoon at a time, begin adding in the warm saffron milk, blending vigorously with the spoon. When you have a soft dough, stop adding milk; you probably won't need the entire half-cup.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured counter and knead gently, with floured hands, until the dough is uniform.
• Roll out gently to a thickness of 1/2 inch.
• Using a floured 2-inch round cookie or biscuit cutter, cut out as many rounds as you can and set on an ungreased baking sheet. You can gather and re-roll the scraps, gently.
• Decorate the soul cakes with currants.
• Brush cakes  liberally with the beaten egg yolk.
• Bake for 15 minutes, until just golden and shiny.
• Serve warm.

Don't forget to donate to UNICEF this Halloween.

Their great work saves the lives of countless children around the world!

 Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Amish Rocket Science Ice Cream Is a Truly Great American Dessert

Sometimes when you combine tradition with innovation, the result can remind us all about the true nature of insightful creativity.

One such example is the Rocket Science Ice Cream Company located in rural Nappanee, Indiana.

Situated in the heart of Amish country, the store’s welcoming male and female staff wears long beards and longer dresses.

And why not? They are Amish, members of a devoted religious community that emigrated from Switzerland to the United States during the early 1700’s seeking religious freedom.

Known for their purposeful life choices, the Amish choose to step back from many of the tools that set the pace of modern life, such as cars, phones, faxes, fashion – even electricity. They feel such intrusions come at the cost of community, family life and personal peace.

As a result, many Amish men and women work (and own) businesses that focus on adding sincere value to life be it in the form of well-made furniture or quality food products.

Rocket Science Ice Cream follows in this latter tradition BUT with a twist. Their ice cream is made from the finest fresh ingredients BUT frozen right before the purchaser’s eye using liquid nitrogen, set to 320 degrees below zero.

Least you think this constitutes a revolt against Amish principles, nitrogen is a natural ingredient and is purchased in tanks by the Amish – no electricity required.

The result is outstanding, the products used are local and so is the employment. And there are NO PLANS to franchise or build a Dairy-Queen sized empire. That’s not the Amish way.

If at this point, you are curious to learn more about the unique and value-driven business practices of the Amish, consider reading - Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive. 

And thrive they do. While many Amish farmers and business owners arrive to work by a horse-drawn buggy or on bike, their businesses rarely fail!

Surprised? Don’t be. The Amish deeply believe in staying small enough to maintain quality, keeping a low overhead, treating both employees and customers with kindness and practicing ethical frugality.

What chef wouldn’t agree with that – especially when the ice cream produced is, pardon the pun, simply out of this world! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Gender Cupcakes Grow in Popularity as Kate and William Await Baby’s Birth

Currently all of England is involved in waiting for the birth of Britain’s newest prince or princess. 

And while Kate and William may be occupied with getting the nursery ready, England’s bookmakers are taking bets on everything from the baby’s sex to the baby name chosen by the royal couple.

In olden days, to borrow a phrase from Cole Porter, everyone would be wishing for a boy as only a male could ascend the throne to become the future royal ruler.

Thankfully that male-only tradition has faded away and now the first child born, regardless of its sex, can step into the line of royal succession.

But it’s still fun to guess: Will it be a prince or princess? And that has resurrected a charming English culinary tradition not seen since the birth of Diana’s own beloved sons, Princes William and Harry – Gender Cupcakes.

Hidden by frosting inside each cupcake is a sweet insert of pink (it's a girl!) or blue(it's a boy!) frosting.

When mixed and served at afternoon teas and birth wait parties, each guest declares their internal cupcake color and a tally is made. According to tradition, the winning color number will predict the child’s sex.

Truly a charming and very sweet custom – as enduring as Kate and William’s baby is sure to be.. 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Easy as Sliced Bread!

This week, 85 years ago, in 1928 O.F. Rohwedder delivered his newly invented slicing machine to the Missouri’s Chillicothe Baking Company and bread has never been the same since.

The uniform slices not only delighted many a weary housewives and legions of fatigued chefs, it also brought cheers from the companies that produced toasters. The standardized slices produced by Rohwedder’s marvelous new machine insured that irregular slices would never get stuck again (and horror-of-horrors never burn) in the toaster.  

As a result, toaster sales soared, resulting in a nearly endless variety of designs. Today collectors rejoice when they can locate these unique units. But the impact of sliced bread didn’t stop there.

The production of lunch boxes, especially those designed to catch the eye of school children, equally exploded and standardized to match the size of the newly standardized commercially produced sliced loafs of white bread.

Soon breads such as Wonder Bread constituted the key component of the “wonderful” sandwich Jack and Jane ate in their school lunch room – with few noticing at the time the vitamins missing from the bread.

Today school lunch programs are far more aware of nutrition – or at least should be.  From Michele Obama’s White House Garden to chef led programs such as those proposed by Jamie Oliver and Charlie Trotter, insightful school cooks are shifting from a commercially baked bread centered diet to one of locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables.

Yet old habits (good or bad) die hard and America STILL has an ongoing love affair with sliced bread, even including such phrases as “the easiest thing since sliced bread “ and  “as easy as sliced bread” in everyday speech.

So what’s the latest expression of affection for the grand ol’ loaf? It’s a birthday cake shaped like a beloved peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

A special novelty baking pan, entitled the "Cakewich Pan", shapes the cake into sliced bread shapes and fruit frosting mimics the traditional sandwich jelly.

Only in America!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

Milton Hershey, Caramels and Baseball Cards

Today when people hear the word “Hershey’s” they think instantly of chocolate. But that was not always the case. In fact, Milton Hershey’s first fortune was crafted from caramels and baseball cards.

Hershey began his rags-to-riches life story in Derry Church, Pennsylvania, the son of religious Mennonite parents. Yet it was his mother Veronica “Fanny” who was the guiding light of his childhood. She taught him the value of hard work and the Bible’s Golden Rule, remembering always to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

He learned to work hard for what he wanted and what he wanted more often than anything else was something his family’s limited means did not allow - candy.

He saved the few pennies he made each week running errands just so he could make a special trip to the local candy shop.

By the time he was 13, those candy shops were located in the seven different towns his family had moved to and from.

As a result, his grades were very poor in school. It is not difficult to understand why he failed at his first apprenticeship to a newspaper editor (try absolutely no spelling skills).

But he found his calling as a confectionery apprentice. He work hard, very hard, and in four short years mastered the creation of sweets from hard candies to chocolate fudge.

At the early age of 18 he was ready to start his own company.

Years of failure followed as he moved from Philadelphia to Colorado to New Orleans and finally to New York City always trying to find the candy that would make his fortune.

Penniless and discouraged, he returned to Lancaster, Pennsylvania so broke he couldn’t even buy ingredients. 

Everyone he tried to borrow money from to restart once again his business turned him down. He was, in short, a known loser.

Yet as he pleaded for additional funds at bank after bank, even with a major order from England for caramels in hand, one person only saw the opportunity that everyone else was overlooking.

That person was a lowly bank cashier at the Lancaster County National Bank.

Hershey was so grateful for this man’s support that he ran down the street in Lancaster, still in his work apron, with the English company’s check in hand to repay the loan that had saved (and started) his legendary career.

Soon orders were poring from around the world for his softer milk caramels, making him millions of dollars. But to his amazement, the largest orders seem to always come from Great Britain.

So at 37 years of age, he traveled to England and was amazed at what he found there.  British candy merchants were discarding the American baseball cards he enclosed with his pound blocks of caramel candies. They then cut the blocks into individual pieces, dipped them in chocolate and sold them for a per-piece price that by far exceeded the profit margins that Hershey was making Stateside.

Hershey quickly understood that chocolate, not caramels, was the future. He returned to America and sold the caramel division of his company to American Caramel Company for $1 million dollars (roughly $25 million dollars in today’s currency).

The funds generated by the sale lay the foundation for the Hershey chocolate empire, which still produces and sales chocolate around the world. 

American Caramel continued to produce caramels, packed with baseballs from 1909-1911. Baseball cards packed with caramels, instead of cigarettes or chewing tobacco, were popular with many mothers during this baseball-crazy era.

In fact, one of the most desired (and expensive) baseball cards sought after by modern collectors was produced during this period. Most recently the Shoeless Joe Jackson card released with the American Caramel Company sold for a stunning $79,000 at auction.

So when you're next at a game (or planning a sports related menu), remember caramels along with hot dogs and Cracker Jacks as part of baseball cuisine. They're sweet, versatile and definitely part of the all-American game of hope and challenge even in the bottom of the ninth or in life itself.

For as Shoeless Joe Jack would himself have been the first to say, "People will come!" if we but have the courage to believe that life is a Field of Dreams that we can make real - just as Hershey did with a little sugar and determined skill.

POST NOTE, April 8, 2013

No Smoking Please!

If you still have doubts that baseball cards (and caramels) still hold a place in America’s favorite game, just considerate that over the weekend a rare 1909 card sold for US$2.1 million.

Yes, that’s right – US$2.1 million! Wow! That card was of Honus Wagner, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Only 50 of the rare cards were produced by the American Tobacco Company before Wagner, who had never authorized their release, demanded the Company stop production.

Like Hershey, he did not approve of smoking and was concerned children would buy (and possible use tobacco) just to get the sport card.

In the future, his image on baseball cards was produced by the far healthier (and much sweeter) American Caramel Company. Bravo to an early baseball legend with a conscience ahead of his time, who cared more about children than self promotion! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013